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IndiaSocial - Indias largest social media community, aims to bring together stakeholders in the Indian digital eco-system for engagement, sharing, learning and collaboration in a vibrant space physical and virtual. IndiaSocial is a one-stop destination for marketers, media owners, brand custodians and agencies looking for case studies, best practices, expert views, news and resources on social media in India. Our descriptor Social Media Open embodies openness - embracing all stakeholders; open discussions; akin to a sport field it showcases team spirit and a level playing field. Join us at www.indiasocial.in Join us on www.facebook.com/indiasocial Follow us on www.twitter.com/indiasocial Join us on IndiaSocial Group at www.linkedin. com/groups

(Copyright IndiaSocial) Disclaimer: All logos and brand images are properties of respective owners.

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CONTENT
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Evalueserve Using LinkedIn for lead generation and brand building

Foreword

Guest Article - Doing Good in the Digital Age - Prema Sagar

NASSCOM Acting as a catalyst for growth of emerging & start-up companies

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Breakthrough: Ringing the Bell Against Domestic Violence

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Guest article - Communities will be the next big thing in Marketing - Jessie Paul

Blank Noise: Raising voice against sexual harassment

Guest article - Creating Raving Fans Through Social Media - Toby Bloomberg

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Pratham Books: Engaging the community to bring a book in every childs hand

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Fastrack: Capturing the imagination of youth online

Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation the Heart Kids Tweetathon and how Twitter helps save lives

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Hard Rock Caf India live in concert on social media

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WWF Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour

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Axe Angels Club building virtual engagement via real personas

Guest article Social Media: Reinventing the rules for B2B players - Hari V. Krishnan

Guest Article Why social media can be so unsocial - Anurag Batra

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Viewspaper: Creating and strengthening the voice of the youth

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Nokia- email with ease campaign

Bollywood Buzz - Assessing the effectiveness of UTV movies online advertising

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Nokia Reaching out to the influencers in Search for N

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MTV Using social media to narrowcast to the Indian youth

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Guest Article - Dear Brands, Lets Get Social Faisal Farooqui

Channel [V] Building buzz using Twitter and mobile social networking around the re-launch

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Guest Article - Doing the math on social media - Karthik Nagarajan

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Mahindra Homestays engaging travelers and enabling owners

Guest Article - Are you missing the digital revolution? - Ramanujam Sridhar

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Jiyo Life Movement using content as the honey

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TATA DOCOMO Fighting the telecom incumbents on social media front

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Mitsubishi Cedia Sports the Great Driving Challenge

Samsung Corby Color Wars on Twitter Generating Buzz

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IndiaSocial
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Cleartrip How the brand travels through social media

Amita Malhotra
Lead Community Manager IndiaSocial.in amita.malhotra@indiasocial.in

Foreword

Revolutions well set,

now for the evolution

When we announced the launch of IndiaSocial TM in 2009, this was the headline of our inaugural post. That social media had become mainstream was beyond any doubt. However, there were many a questions being asked about the impact of social media, its ROI, relevant metrics to evaluate success and more. There was also a sense that while some good work was happening, but information about learnings, case studies, best practices was dispersed and not easily available. This would often come in the way of vigilant marketers who could see these changing trends but would struggle in the absence of empirical data to align their internal stakeholders to brace up and strategise more effectively. IndiaSocial evolved from this need to bring together stakeholders in the Indian social media eco-system for engagement, sharing, learning and collaboration in a vibrant space physical and virtual. We have created it as a neutral industry platform to showcase best practices, case studies, expert views and a strong repository of knowledge around social media in India. In Feb 2010, we invited brands and organisations to showcase their work and over 35 of them participated sharing some excellent work undertaken across various sectors.

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It made logical sense to compile existing case studies and some exciting new ones alongside expert views in one single location which would be easy to download, consume as well as share with others. The release of IndiaSocial CaseBook 1 sponsored by HP, in association with NM Incite is a key milestone on this journey of evolution. Here are 5 reasons why the IndiaSocial Casebook is a great resource for marketers and all those seeking to understand social media usage and impact in India
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the radio in nineties without going the whole hog. Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India speaks about how companies are using social networks effectively to find and acquire new customers and Karthik Nagarajan, Head of Nielsen Online India shares how discussion forums, message boards and review sites are the most underrated social segment. There are many more interesting insights and perspectives by Anurag Batra (Why Social Media can be so unsocial), Jessie Paul (Communities Next Big Thing), Toby Bloomberg (Social Media Strategy 10 steps to create raving fans and Faisal I. Farooqui (Dear Brands, Lets Get Social)
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One stop shop for case studies, best practices around social media across verticals ranging from not-for-profit, B2B, lifestyle, telecom, travel, and more. Straight from the horses mouth - These case studies are in the voice of people behind these campaigns - they have been authored by brands, organisations and their partners themselves. Right questions to get the right answers we didnt make it any easy for the brands and organisations to be featured as a case study. An exhaustive set of questions on the objectives, reasoning, approach, impact and measures of success were built-in to ensure that the outcome was of very high quality. Many wrote to us how the form compelled them to think through their own initiatives and understand the gaps. Experts Speak we have tried to amalgamate diverse views from stakeholders across the spectrum of marketing communication in India. Prema Sagar, Principal & Founder of Genesis Burson Marsteller speaks about how social medias reach and speed of delivery impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR) and on the other end, leading branding consultant and Founder BrandComm, Ramanujam Sridhar talks about the challenges around clients experimenting with social media much like

We would like to thank all the brands and organisations who have shared their insights and learnings through their case studies and helped us create this wonderful resource. We would also like to thank our lead sponsor HP and associate sponsor NM Incite for their support and encouragement. We are grateful to George Skaria, Founder, ThoughtSpring and Former Editor, Indian Management for all his guidance and inputs on the Casebook. A special word of thanks for my team at IndiaSocial and Blogworks - Neha Chandok, S. Swetha, Megha Talwar and Rajesh Lalwani who have all helped from conception, editing, production and marketing of the IndiaSocial Casebook. We would love to hear your feedback on this edition of the Casebook and suggestions on how we can produce an even better one next time. Also, we would be soon announcing the IndiaSocial Case Challenge 2. Stay tuned!

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Know where you are - this resource will hopefully set you on your path of social media discovery; if you are already on one it will enable you to benchmark your initiatives and if you are already a pioneer it will hopefully inspire you to set higher targets.

Using the power of the social media, a company can multiply the effects of its CSR efforts
In the hustle of business, we often forget that the wealth we create means nothing unless it leads to positive change in the lives of people. Peopleindividuals, who together form society, who together build economies, who together create movements. Corporate organizations have the means to effect positive change in the lives of these people. When they speak, they are heard. And when they speak on popular digital platforms, the potential for that change increases exponentially. This makes social media a catapulting mechanism for corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. As CSR evolves, it is becoming less about companies donating a certain amount to NGOs and more about becoming directly involved in a sustainable way as facilitators or even conveners for social change. This means that companies need to up the level of engagement with all the stakeholders for an initiative the people who the initiative targets, the implementers, the fund providers, and the potential facilitators. And the pace of this engagement has to be swift, almost constant. So what, then, could be better than social media platforms for this? Given social medias reach and speed of delivery, a multiplier effect spreads the message that a CSR initiative wants to push. Here is a sample. In May, social responsibility organization (RED) that supports people with HIV/AIDS, released a documentary on the effects of antiretroviral drugs on these people, and since then, more than one million people

Prema Sagar
Principal & Founder Genesis Burson-Marsteller.

Doing Good in the Digital Age

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have seen it on YouTube. Susan Smith Ellis, the CEO, recently announced their next goal at the Mashable and 92Y Social Good Summit: Ensureusing the social mediathat no child is born with HIV/AIDS by 2015. Given that this goal needs a high level of social engagement, Susan says, Social media will be the engine of our success. This confidence comes from having leveraged social media effectively since the initiatives inception in 2006, enabling them to raise $150 million since then. Susan and (RED) arent alone in their realization of the power of social media for change. MTV, Nike, PepsiCo, Intel, and several other organizations have integrated social media into their CSR strategy. There arent many examples of Indian companies doing this, though. The efforts in CSR and the efforts towards harnessing the digital media are in two different silos. So while they may be using social media, it somehow doesnt include their CSR efforts. NGOs, on the other hand, who bridge the gap between corporate organizations and the beneficiaries of their CSR initiatives, are increasingly realizing how powerful a tool social media can be. The Bell Bajao campaign against domestic violence is a case in point. Given the limited funds they have access to, NGOs realize that they have a constant need to innovate if they want more people to join hands with them. And so they are naturally drawn towards the digital media space. Genesis Foundation, which treats children in the areas of cancer, heart, thalassemia, organ failure or extreme deformities, uses unique events for fund-raising to meet their objective to

save the lives of critically ill children who are either orphans or from less privileged families. The foundation focuses on communicating through viral marketing, its website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Picasa, besides traditional media. The traditional media is in turn multiplied via the digital channels. Digital has been a great enabler for the not-for-profit sector particularly due to the lack of the ability to use traditional routes easily. Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, realizes the influence of digital media for social good, perhaps more than anyone else. Chris is the man behind Barack Obamas phenomenal popularity on the Internet during his campaign. After his success as Obamas digital campaign manager, Chris decided to use his learnings in the social sector. Today, he is building a social network specifically for this sector. In most large organizations, however, the challenge is to make social media a part of the overall vision. It usually enters through the marketing or public relations route and only then goes into the CSR space. It is an organic transferas the company spreads word about its offerings and achievements, doing good enters the conversation somewhere down the line. But the real leverage of social media will come only when it is conceived as a part of the CSR strategy from the beginning. That is because social good needs engagement that goes beyond conversations and raising awarenessthough these are important as well. The success of an initiative depends on converting the conversations into a call for action. The floods in Leh were a recent example of this. After the initial emotional reaction
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to the calamity on the social networks, the discussions soon moved to mobilizing relief funds and material for the region. While this is not an example of a CSR initiative, the same principles can be applied there. The idea is to tap into the emotional energies of the most number of people and help them channelize it towards the common social goal. Once an idea is out there, its ownership remains only partially in the hands of the company. In the social media realm, the idea is absorbed by the individual and made his or her own. And that is how it should be, since this sense of individual responsibility is the ultimate tool for any social initiative to be successful. If I feel I want to save the tiger, I will not do it for Aircel. I will also not do it just because Mahendra Singh

Dhoni wants me to. I will do it because I feel for the tiger, and because I want my friends to see me as a person who goes beyond daily selfish pursuits to care about larger issues concerning the world. And that is when I ask my friends to join in the efforts. The role of Aircel was to initiate the idea and to make sure it is visible in the places that I frequentincluding the digital space. Ultimately, every person believes he or she is capable of greatnessif only their voice could be heard. Social media does that for them. If a company can harness these disparate voices, they can become advocates of the initiative and amplify its effects. And for both, the company and the individual, it instills a sense of satisfaction that they were able to do something for the greater common good.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category : Breakthrough : 11 to 50 : Not for Profit organization

Case submitted by : Sanjukta Basu, Program Coordinator Internet and community outreach Website Facebook Twitter : http://bellbajao.org : http://www.facebook.com/BellBajao : http://twitter.com/bell_bajao

Breakthrough: Ringing the Bell

Against Domestic Violence

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Breakthrough is an innovative, international human rights organization, working to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity using the power of popular culture, media, leadership development and community education. Through initiatives in India and the United States, Breakthrough addresses critical global issues including violence against women, sexuality and HIV/AIDS, racial justice, and immigrant rights.

Background Executive Summary

One of the main reasons that make the Bell Bajao campaign special is that it has been able to sustain interest amongst the Social Media users even after a year of its launch via TV and Radio. The Bell Bajao blog has become one of the few platforms created by an NGO for user generated content. The online activities carried on by the Bell Bajao team are interactive, responsive and attentive of what others are saying. The campaign does not merely use the online space to showcase its work but sees it as a place to share, connect learn and reach out.
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Bell Bajao is a 360 degree campaign, covering TV, radio, press, Mobile video vans, with internet as one of the most exciting media. Domestic violence is one of the most recurring, yet least spoken issues in not just India, but all over the world.
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Because of the unique nature of internet as a medium it is possible to act, share and learn about various sensitive issues very easily without much resource spends. So, we wanted to create this online space for conversations on the issue. Prior to our site, there was no such space in the Indian context where people could talk about domestic violence, where people could share and learn and reach out

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Also India is a young country; with many enthusiastic and dedicated young people out there accessing the internet. We wanted to catch their attention and channelize them towards this pertinent cause Thirdly, we realized that the radio and TV ads were for a limited period of time, so we needed a space which could keep the campaign alive, so the interactive online space.

Stakeholders
Our main stakeholders were the youth present on the internet, which are capable of bringing a change in their respective homes and neighborhood. We wanted to appeal to the youth by breaking out of the traditional image of an NGO and use latest cutting edge technology to spread the message.

Twitter and YouTube. Instead of a traditional website, we decided to create a more dynamic user generated site. We continuously partner with popular bloggers to create content. At the same time, we learn from the blogosphere we keep a keen eye on what youth are writing, understanding what their problems are, how they articulate them and what solutions do they look for. We also integrated our offline activity with the online space, in order to bridge the digital gap. So, we used tools like Twitter to live-blog a training workshop in Lucknow. Budgets: We never had any resources or budget dedicated to the project to begin with. We are a small non-profit with limited resources, every penny we spend is spent strictly according to the terms of the grant.

Planning & Outreach

We started with background research and due diligence. We saw a lot of other websites that were operational in this field and we looked at those websites to see how they were handling similar issues. We looked at what was available in the Indian context and went through the process of seeing what we wanted to communicate on our website. We wanted to make the site engaging and youthful. Then we started creating the content. We had never done any activity in the online space before Bell Bajao website, so everything was a learning process for us. While we created content in-house, we approached a website designer for the design/ development. The online content was very different from the offline content.

Approach
Objectives: Initially, our main objective was to create an online space for people to discuss this issue. A huge number of young people facing violence, particularly in their homes and families, have no space in the Indian context to even talk about it, let alone take action. So, we felt that there had to be an online iteration of the Bell Bajao campaign. Strategy: Breakthrough strategy, in all its campaigns, is to change human hearts and minds to build peace, achieved by using pop culture, community building, unique partnerships and shared learning. In the Social Media arm of the Bell Bajao campaign too, we applied the same formula. We created online presence on popular Social Media platforms like Facebook,

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Quick Tips:
Strategic partnership with key players is very important. Outline your purpose - One of the challenges we faced was that we didnt know how to collate offline online components, activities, resources on the site and yet keep it simple. We went for a redesign within 8 months of launch. This time, we started by outlining the main purpose of the website. Be clear about sought action - one of the first things we wanted from our visitors was to take some action. So we have put things like, Be a virtual rights activist download tool, contests right at the front.

Impact Outcome
It was received with great success, people just loved the campaign. Since we were on Social Media, they could directly connect with us via our blog etc.
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80 percent of the blog traffic we got in the first 8-10 months came from directly typing bellbajao.org or from direct search results with Bell Bajao as the key words. The campaign has sustained itself well online- our blog sees at least two posts a week from users. The blog continues to remain an interactive and dynamic space, with users eager to comment and share their experiences. Many women shared stories of violence sometimes faced by themselves, sometimes by their friends and family. We ensured, and continue to do so, that we reply to all messages, give out all information sought by them and extend all other possible help to our stakeholders We have been successful in collecting voices and views from various men, celebrities and otherwise, for our initiative, Bell Bajao-Champion Voices this was launched with the second phase of the Bell Bajao campaign. The

For mass media, we created traditional media products like flyers, brochures etc. But on the website, we had a downloadable tool kit, which had information on how net users can become virtual rights advocate (an online version of our training program), hosted contests, polls etc. We post informative, engaging and stimulating news, links, videos, blogs, articles and photographs pertaining to violence against women on a daily basis for our audience to engage intellectually.
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champions are mostly men and boys from various walks of life who are seen as great youth role models capable of inspiring change In Social Media, measuring the impact has always been a challenge. We earlier thought the more hits our google analytics show the higher the success, but then does it really work that way? Blog traffic only show how many people visited the site, it doesnt reflect how many people took any action!
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Testimonials
Heres a list of all the press coverage we have received. Besides, every other day we receive emails from friends around the world who want to collaborate with us and create a similar campaign in their country. Many bloggers have written about the campaign and linked to our blog. Here are a few of them:
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Indsight.org Anneofcarvesville.com Indiaoutsideindia-Devayani Blog.Dawn.com

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So, we also measure number of people are using the downloadable tool kits or number of people are spreading the Bell Bajao message in their communities We received emails and testimonials where people shared how they have benefited from the site

Cesar Robles, Communication Officer of PyD Vietnam, emailed us on how they found the information on the site, particularly the FAQs extremely useful and therefore used them in their campaign against domestic violence in Vietnam.

Awards and mentions

Our social media efforts have been recognized worthy of forming case studies- for India Social and Tactical Technology Collective (http://www.tacticaltech.org/- in progress). We have also been honoured as one of the thirty youth icons of South Asia by Kindle Magazine

Strategy and Execution

Blogworks helped us pro-bono in the background research; there were other friends too who helped with overall strategy. The main campaign Bell Bajao was created pro-bono by Ogilvy & Mather. For the Social Media initiatives, we got pro-bono support from various people. To name some, Rajesh Lalwani of Blogworks helped us pro-bono with research and due diligence prior to the launch of the Bell Bajao website. A list of all the media partners and supporters is here.

What Next
Bell Bajao is now a popular site with fairly good blog traffic but we still have a long way to go. The Bell Bajao campaign itself is going to enter its second phase, with that there will be some changes in the site. We want to make it simpler, with even more cutting edge interactive pieces and more action items for visitors. We also hope to add language dimensions (blog in Kannada, Hindi).

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Blog: http Facebook Twitter : Blank Noise : N/A : Not for Profit (Other) : Long Term : Jasmeen Patheja, Founder Member, Facilitator : //blog.blanknoise.org/ : http://www.facebook.com/ blank.noise : http://twitter.com/BLANK_ NOISE

Blank Noise:

Raising voice against sexual harassment

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Blank Noise is a volunteer led collective that was set up in 2003, seeking to address street sexual harassment/ violence.

discussions are impacting the way different stakeholders in the issue of street sexual harassment are organizing their practice which in turn creates space for collaboration. Blank Noise as an idea that transferred via several events and campaigns!

Background
Blank Noise is a volunteer led collective seeking to address street sexual harassment/ violence. It intends to:
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Executive Summary
When Blank Noise began work in 2003, eve-teasing was largely considered a non-issue, which would often elicit a smirk or gesture of vague sympathy. Over the years we have witnessed, and perhaps participated, in the increasingly mainstreaming of the issue of street harassment and violence against women which has now attained enough significance to have become a major poll issue during the current General Election campaigning in Bangalore and to be consistently covered by national and local media through reportage, comic strip and targeted campaign. Dialogue occurs on the internet and in public spaces. The internet based dialogue creates a resonance with women and men from across the world. Ideas that emerge from these
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Change the perception of eve teasing as something which is a joke or prank, to one which the public takes seriously and assumes responsibility for Explore, define, question, trigger debate on the boundaries between wooing, flirting, violating, teasing, approaching, harassing in public spaces Attempt definitions around intangible elements that could be considered to constitute harassment: for instance looking Define and emphasize those acts and processes which are very tangible and clear-cut rights violations

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Build a relationship between women and cities: to imagine and enable us to see the city as a place to which we belong as citizens with rights rather than the often touted constructs of Image Courtesy: Blank Noise us as someones mother/sister/ daughter/ on the street
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Bring into focus street sexual harassment as an issue that concerns both men and women Bring women to question their notion of fear and threat thereby also bringing into debate notions of class and caste- i.e. who do we fear? Why do we perceive a certain person as a threat? Which person becomes threatening? When do we feel threatened? Generates research with public participation and equally emphasizing on information dissemination, thereby building knowledge with appropriate forms of media internet (Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Orkut), posters, videos, street actions.

safety pins, chilli powder)and yet these everyday decisions were never discussed. The issue of fear experienced by women in public spaces was never seen as an issue. It was always just eve-teasing, something to be dismissed as trivial. I remember day dreaming while taking a walk in my neighbourhood and then suddenly being grabbed by an unknown, unidentified man. I yelled back in rage and shock and began to walk after him. Along the way I asked people at the auto rickshaw stand for help and was simply told he ran away. I remember sharing this incident with friends at college and the responses ranged from: It happens, ignore it. How come it happens only to you? What were you wearing? Be more careful! Another incident , another day, walking in my neighbour and a

Blank Noise was initiated in 2003. One of the earliest responses I received was :Why talk about eve-teasing? Why not something more serious? I arrived in Bangalore at the age of 18 to study fine art. Over time I realized that I moved through the city hyper-alert, cautious, with a clenched fist, a dont come near me attitude. My friends would only go out in groups, or with a male friend. If they went out they knew exactly where they were going, how they were going, what they were going to wear and most importantly how they were getting back home, what they were carrying in their bags as weapons of defense(pepper spray,
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cyclist spat over me. It was humiliating. I remember throwing away those clothes. I couldnt understand what I had done to be at the receiving end of this irrational, sudden attack, and I couldnt understand how people around me werent recognizing this as an issue. I was aware that women in varying degrees feared public spaces but were not talking about it. There was a need to form a collective that would address the issue of street sexual harassment. Blank Noise was created when I was in my final year at art school (Srishti School of Art Design and Technology) with a group of 9 students who were willing to go through a process that would involve them, their personal accounts and testimonials. As an art student I was deeply interested and motivated by art practice that could work with communities, that could exist in public, that could heal, provoke, question. I was interested in work that could be built via participation, that could be a dialogue or collaboration.

initiating conversations, events and ideas about street sexual harassment.

Approach
The various projects initiated under Blank Noise areq

I never ask for it: I never ask for it has evolved through various stages since the first idea in 2006. I never ask for it attempts to seize the notion of she provoked or she asked for it. No woman of any age, colour, or character ever deserves to be sexually violated or what is lightly dismissed as eve-teased. Twitter announced: Tweet what you wore when you experienced any kind of sexual violence and add #ineveraskforit Women and men from across the globe retweeted the message and as a result hundreds such tweet testimonials have been gathered. Tweeters have been provided image options for their twitter page. Facebook announced: I NEVER ASK FOR IT. The event ask people on Facebook to change the Facebook status message to what they were wearing when they experienced any kind of sexual violence and add I NEVER ASK FOR IT.
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Stakeholders
Every volunteer is a stakeholder. Blank Noise volunteers, who are almost equally both male and female, come from varied backgrounds and cities/towns and, since many campaigns are conducted on the Internet, tend to be urban, English-speaking and largely within the age group of 16-35 years. They find Blank Noise through social media events, college workshops, media reports and friends. Blank Noise tries to introduce the idea of a volunteer as an agent. Each volunteer (also called an action hero) has a local network that he/she can influence and interact with,
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Change the display photo to an image from Blank Noise, Take a photo of the garment worn at the time of experiencing any kind of sexual harassment,

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Message to your friends/ family/ colleagues/ male or female and get them involved.

Both Twitter and Facebook events were used for virality spreading the message of questioning the notion of blame. In parallel this campaign is also being directed towards organizing clothes collection drives. A nationwide campaign asking women to send in one garment they wore at the time they experienced street sexual harassment. Each garment was a witness and a testimonial to the experience. The garments were installed on the streets of various cities in the form of a travelling exhibition. Blank Noise has been receiving an entire range of garments from saris, salwar kameez, school uniform, swim suit etc. This campaign is to challenge the assumption that women ask for it; ask for harassment/ violation because of the clothes they wear. We are seeking to state that all kinds of women, all kinds of socio eco backgrounds, all age groups, at all times of day and in any kind of garment have experienced violated and that there is no such thing as asking for it. Twitter and Facebook have led to interest from women across the world and we are working towards have clothes collection drives across cities not only in India but across the world.
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Museum of street weapons of defense (year 2008. Medium. Internet. Blogspot. Facebook): This project examines fear and defense mechanisms or tools women adopt to deal with the city. The museum of street weapons is a compilation of weapons and confessions ; everyday objects that have become weapons of defense such as safety pin, Baygon spray, talcum powder, a heavy bag. Excuse me? Compilation of misdirected terms. Build it like you heard it: (year 2007 medium. Internet/ BlogSpot) is a compilation of food names, objects, statements, songs, that women have been called or referred as while out on the streets. Step by Step Guide to Unapologetic Walking (year 2008. Medium poster + t shirt): is a compilation of things to remember while walking; to ensure the walk is unapologetic. Blank Noise blogathon (2006): Blog event asking bloggers to share their experiences of street sexual harassment. As a result hundreds of bloggers participated leading to a mass online catharsis. The viral transfer of testimonials went from one blog to another and the anonymity of the medium created a space for people to speak fearlessly. This event established street sexual harassment / violence or teasing as that which is experienced almost every day and is seen as normal but as that which alters ones relationship with the body and the city. This event established eve teasing as an urgent issue. While the event took place on the internet, the testimonials spread

Things to do at home on a hot summer afternoon/ I never ask for it (year 2009 medium. Internet): collects proverbs statements and sayings in different languages that imply women ask for it. E.g.: jithe gur uthe makhi/ where there is sugar there will be a fly/ if you are a girl guys will be after you.

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because the mainstream press hugely supported it. This event brought emails from volunteers from across the country wanting to have Blank Noise chapters in their cities. This event made eve-teasing an urgent instead of a trivial one.

street sexual violence

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Impact Outcome
With Blank Noise our aim was to build a collective and to have street sexual harassment be recognized as every persons issue, irrespective of their gender. It is challenging to measure the impact of Blank Noise and we are still grappling with methods that would help us understand it.
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2 years ago a known person emailed us saying she was at ladies satang in Calcutta and she overheard a group of women discuss the project and its ideas. We would never know of this kind of impact, which reaches a non-internet audience and how it influences them. Each person engaging with the project brings a unique dimension to Blank Noise and takes away something that is meaningful for the concerned individual Blank Noise has been built by hundreds and perhaps thousands of people. There are those who have blogged about it, spoken about it, tweeted about it. Individuals have contributed both online and on the streets of various cities. The collective itself is multitudes of conversations, conversations that exist amongst a group of friends, random people in public, on Facebook, twitter, blog posts. The press has supported Blank Noise through the years. The press takes the project to another audience/ participant.

If impact is measured solely by the number of people in the Blank Noise community Orkut (2000+) Facebook (3063+) Google groups (3000), Twitter (600+)and the stat count blog hits per day, it excludes information such as how many individuals started thinking about street sexual harassment as an issue that concerns them? How many men and women took the conversations from the internet to their personal lives, to their home and friends? Individuals who participate in Blank Noise push their own notion of fear, comfort, boundaries thus bringing about a change in them. This personal shift makes a volunteer an Action Hero. Action Heroes challenge themselves in public. They walk the streets without apology and do not believe it was their fault, or that they deserved to be sexually assaulted/ ask for it if they experience

Credits Strategy
Volunteers/ action heroes who proposed strategies and ideas

Credits Execution
Jasmeen Patheja has been supported by the following institutions for Blank Noise: Srishti School of Art Design and Technology,(2004-2005), Sarai CSDS Fellowship (2005),
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Akademie Schloss Solitude Germany, Ashoka Innovators for the Public.

What Next
Blank Noise has been fluid and organic since its start but now needs another kind of structure as issues of sustainability emerge. At this point Blank Noise is moving getting registered as a non profits organisation. While it would continue to work with volunteers it will also now focus on employing staff. At Blank Noise we have events planned that need a certain scale for its public engagement, it needs a generous budget as well. Blank Noise has survived on enthusiasm and spirit from hundreds and thousands of individuals, but we also need to be able to sustain ourselves and are grappling with these questions. We hope to get registered by April 2010.

Testimonials
Founder member Jasmeen Patheja was made a fellow of Ashoka Innovators for the Public for work towards Blank Noise. Blank Noise was commissioned by the Bronx Museum of Art, to participate in a retrospective show looking at public art practice. Blank Noise was selected as a new project working in this art practice. The show was titled Street Art Street Life, and Blank Noise was commissioned to create a video installation based on street interviews with men and women across 5 cities in India; Moments of a Long Pause.

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IndiaSocial Case Challenge Winner of Position #1, Long term initiative

Pratham Books Engaging the community to bring a book in every childs hand
Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Blog : Pratham Books : 1-50 : Not for Profit Institution : Long term : Maya Hemant, Content Manager : http://www.prathambooks.org : http://www.facebook.com/prathambooks : http://www.twitter.com/prathambooks : http://www.youtube.com/user/ prathambooks : http://blog.prathambooks.org/

Executive Summary
In its simplest, what we seek to do is create a social publishing strategy for Pratham Books. We began with content and context in the form of our published content and the cause which we used to initiate a conversation around the subject of reading and children. Over time, we have been able to establish some sort of authority, as it may be, in this space and with time, we hope to build trust within the little community we curate. And this, over time, translates to engagement and loyalty. Have we been successful? Its too soon to tell but wed like to think well get there because we have an awesome community.

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Pratham Books was established as a not-forprofit Public Charitable Trust to enable children whom the market ordinarily would not reach, and therefore to democratize the joy of reading. Pratham Books mission is to see a book in every childs hand.
Wed like to think that we spread the love, so to speak, but realistically, were going to have to build a platform sometime soon to engage our community to co-create and do so much more to contribute to the cause of a book in every childs hand

how we can improve. It has, we hope, been received well and even enthusiastically.

Approach
We followed a very unstructured approach to our social media efforts. It really did begin as an internal experiment to document the work we do and highlight work that others do in the same space. Its been far more successful than we imagined it would ever be. The initiative had its roots in an internal need to highlight work done within the organization and work being done in this space externally. It has not been driven by a strategy or any clearly defined goals and objectives. However, we now have these in place. Objective: The objective is to catalyse the creation of content for childrens reading and to find and fill gaps in the current market structure. Strategy: The strategy is simple its to be a clear, authentic and community voice for reading as a social good. Goal: The goal is ultimately to put a book in every childs hand. Duration: The duration is open ended well be doing this as long as we exist. Budget and resources: The resources and budgets are not formal we all contribute to the efforts internally and we have one person who anchors this effort both internally and externally.
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Background
The background to this was to find a way to share our work, internally at first, and then externally. The need was to document and discuss internal and external strategies and later on, to create a community around the cause. The reason to do this is because we cannot put a book in every childs hand alone - we needed help to locate, distribute and co-create content.

Stakeholders
The stakeholders, when we began, were all internal. Now that we have a community being built, we are always listening as to

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The technology resources are all free and as below:

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Blog: A resource which talks about publishing, reading, literacy, kidlit, learning, non-profits, events and more. Twitter: A space where we can engage with the community, share ideas, ask for help, get feedback, listen to complaints, participate and mobilize people to help us with our vision of a book in every childs hand. Scribd: Uploading our books frequently so that they can be read by more people. Also, for our Creative Commons licensed books to be remixed/ repurposed by the community in whatever way they wish to. Facebook: Updating information from the blog and information about the events we do and communicating with the community Flickr: Documentation of the work we do and also to upload our Creative Commons licensed illustrations so that they can be remixed/ reused. YouTube: Documentation of our work and to inform people about some of the initiatives we are participating in. Also to inform people about our books through book trailers.
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children and then moved onto having sessions with entire classes. On 20th March, 2009, we managed to hold a Skype storytelling session between kids from Akshara Foundations community library and a class from Central Manor. The purpose is to go beyond being just a publisher. Through these activities we are encouraging reading, learning and connecting children from different communities and backgrounds. Channels used: Twitter, Skype, Blog Inviting people to remix/repurpose our content: As a publisher, we have a lot of content available which we want people to access as easily as possible. In our attempt to do so, we have managed to license some of our books under Creative Commons licenses. Now, if we cant publish a book in Assamese, but a teacher in Assam wants to do so, she doesnt have to worry about copyright infringement. We have also put up some of the illustrations of our books so that people can remix or repurpose them. Channels used: Scribd, Blog, Flickr Facilitators/connecting organisations and people: @Anorakmagazine found us on Twitter and asked if they could send us some back issues of their magazines to share with kids in India. Once the books arrived, they were sent to the community libraries run by Akshara Foundation. We also helped coordinate a drawing project that Anorak Magazine wanted to involve the children with. Now, some of the kids have their work published in an international childrens magazine. Channels used: Twitter More access to our books: We frequently upload several of our books on Scribd so that they can be read and downloaded by people. Channels used: Scribd

Planning & Outreach

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Skype reading sessions: This project started after a few tweets were exchanged with a librarian from Central Manor, Pennsylvania. We started off by people from our organization having Skype reading sessions with a few

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Audio books for the National Association of Blind : This project started off because of another blog post (on the Helen Keller Talking Library project) that got automatically updated to our Twitter account. @owos then messaged us to tell us about a similar initiative Radio Mirchi had started. Then another tweep (@barkhad) told us that she had registered with Radio Mirchi but they didnt get back to her. So, we got in touch with Radio Mirchi to talk about a blog post and while we were talking, she asked if we would be interested in having our books recorded by Radio Mirchi for the National Association of the Blind. We also requested if @barkhad could record one of our books and they agreed. So, our Twitter friend went offline and recorded a book in their Delhi studio! Channels used: Blog, Twitter Passing it on the book edition: We read about a bunch of kids in Kolkata who went around with a van full of books to reach kids who didnt have access to books and even went on to teach the kids how to read. After reading about this initiative, one of our trustees volunteered to sponsor some Bengali books if we could find these kids. We mailed the news bureau which published the article, but were unable to get a response. So, we decided to see if the Twitter community could help us. Within half an hour of sending out a tweet, we had a volunteer who said he would get us the information and by the next day we had an address and contact number. Within a few days, Bengali books were sent by us to these kids. From this story, we decided to start an initiative which would allow our online community to participateto help these kids as well as other kids. Channels used: Twitter, Blog, Facebook

Participatory community: Through our social media efforts, more people are aware of our work and several authors, illustrators and translators have offered to work with us. Channels used: Blog, Twitter, Facebook

Impact Outcome
We measure our impact solely by points of serendipity catalysed.
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Skype Reading Sessions: Increased interest in reading. The Skype session held in the community library was even attended by some of the parents and they were very excited that their kids could chat with children in another continent. The project continues to evolve as we are now looking forward to more Skype sessions between the kids, creating learning projects which encourage creative thinking and writing amongst the children at an Akshara library and a group of children at Central Manor Inviting People to Remix/ Repurpose Our Content: It has taken some time for people to start experimenting with our content, but we are getting more queries about how people can help us translate/review books/create more content, etc. Microsoft approached us to repurpose our content into a DVD format. The project is currently being tested with two NGOs (Nanubhai Education Foundation and Akshara Foundation). OLPC (One Laptop per Child) has used our content in Nepal. An advertising agency in Brazil wanted to use one of our photographs and weve had another enquiry about using our photographs on a website. Weve also seen a creative interpretation of our illustrations and our

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Quick Tips:
Be patient, authentic and transparent to see the results of social media. It takes time for people to listen, trust and engage with your cause but once you manage to gain their trust, they are willing to be your spokesperson, recommend you to other people, help with initiatives you start, etc. Be frequent with communication and reply to positive as well as negative comments. Transparency is the key and people will always appreciate it.
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Facilitators/ Connecting Organizations and People: We are trying to see if there are more activities that can involve children and Anorak Magazine. Anorak Magazine also wants to send more books to be reviewed by the kids which can then be kept in their library thus adding to the reading culture we want to build More Access to Our Books : Measure impact through the number of reads and downloads registered for each book Audio Books for National Association of the Blind : Radio Mirchi has finished recording some of our CC books and have now offered to record more of our books (in multiple languages) for National Association of the Blind Passing it On The Book Edition: The initiative is in its initial stages and we are still getting opinions from people, but as we gather more information about people who have books and people who need books, we are slowly and steadily building a useful resource which will ensure that books reach more kids.

Credits Strategy
The awesome community we have, the writings of Gaurav Mishra, and Gautam John (from Pratham Books)

Credits Execution
illustrations were also used by an organization as part of a fun activity of creating stories from the images Manisha Chaudhry, Mala Kumar, Sandhya Taksale, Purvi Shah, Gautam John and Maya Hemant

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Testimonials
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http://www.boingboing.net Beth Kanter (SlideShare deck) http://globalvoicesonline.org http://beth.typepad.com http://www.desipundit.com http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2010/02/ social-media-and-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid. html
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What Next
Well keep at it do more, attempt greater transparency and create more touch points. Were also building a social publishing platform and hope to create more content to put a book in every childs hand.

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook : : : : : : : Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation 1-10 Not-for-profit institution Short term Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian, Chairman http://www.chdinfo.com http://www.facebook.com/ pages/DrMani-Children-HeartFoundation/113480708677410 http://twitter.com/drmani

Twitter

IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #2, Short term initiatives

Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation the Heart Kids Tweetathon and how Twitter helps save lives

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Executive Summary
In an innovative use of social networking site Twitter, Indian heart surgeon Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian does an annual event to raise awareness and funds for children born with congenital heart defects by staying awake for 24 hours non-stop in a day-and-night Twitter marathon the Heart Kids Tweet-a-thon. The 2008 event raised just under $9,000. And even in the midst of a deep recession, the 2010 event held on February 14th, brought in close to $5,000. As the Foundations cost to sponsor a childs operation is around $1,250 the Tweetathon alone will be responsible for healing more than 10 little hearts!
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Background
Starting out as a Heart Kids Blogathon, the blogging marathon for CHD awareness has been an annual event since 2003 and a mainstay in efforts that have helped raise over $130,000 for the Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation and already sponsored 63 heart surgeries for Indian children from under-privileged families.

The Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation is a non-profit trust that raises awareness about Congenital Heart Disease in children and funds expensive, yet life-saving heart operations for children born with heart defects.

Stakeholders
A large network of small business owners, entrepreneurs, social workers and generous, caring donors has supported Dr. Manis work for ten years, and rallies behind the fundraiser.

Approach
Each years event starts out with an ambitious target and the

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aim is to both build awareness about the deadly problem posed by heart birth defects, and to get concerned supporters to join a 47 Hearts Group and make a contribution to help fund a childs heart operation. Many donors continue to support the effort and remain as regular contributors, allowing the project to grow and scale steadily, even if slowly, over the years. The non-profit trust has been in existence for 7 years, and is growing in visibility and impact.

As word-of-mouth is the main vehicle of promotion, the costs to run the program are negligible, with over 97% of the funds raised, going directly to cover the expenses of a childs treatment

Planning and Outreach

Conducting the annual blogathon/ Tweetathon involves a sequence of activities that rope in influencers who have the attention of large audiences, as well as loyal supporters who have been active in helping spread word about the CHD awareness effort. Early notification of the event is spread to this core group through email messages. Other social media channels are used, like You Tube videos, Twitter itself, Facebook (through a fan page), blogs and networking with a community of bloggers and discussants on message boards. During the 24 hours of the event, Dr.Mani tweets (posts messages on Twitter) every half hour and engages in discussions with others on his Twitter list, all the while focusing the chat on the topic of congenital heart defects and what they can do to help.

Impact Outcome
The Heart Kids Tweetathon raised $9,000 in 2008 and $5,000 in 2010 in 24 hours (or shortly within that time frame). Each year the event reached around 500,000 people through Twitter networks, some of whom became supporters, sponsors and donors.
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Quick Tips:
Relationships with influencers is the key to Success - People are more likely to help and support those they know, like and respect so the focus must be on becoming that person before asking for help!
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Seth Godin, in 99 Purple Cows: http://www.bdifferent. com/purplecow.htm Squidoo: http://www.squidoo.com/dr-manisivasubramanian-is-a-linchpin http://www.niche2.com/testimonials.php

What Next
The Heart Kids Tweetathon is just one channel of awareness building that the Foundation is engaged in. Other aspects include getting corporate sponsorships, putting in place business with purpose initiatives where business owners commit to sharing a part of their revenues for funding a childs operation, getting larger organizations like the Rotary and Lions Club to sponsor some operations, and growing 47 Hearts Groups, each of which will be responsible for adopting and raising enough funds to cover the cost of one childs surgery. The short term target is to fund 47 heart operations in 2010. The longer term target is to do 47 operations every month!

For the Foundation, the bottom-line metric is the amount of funds raised, the number of operations sponsored, and the extent the message of CHD awareness spreads among the community we are trying to reach.

Testimonials
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Fast Company magazine: http://www.ezinemarketingcenter. com/DrMani-FC.pdf

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The impact also continues for much longer than the oneday event, as people who have heard about the effort and remember later on about it, do come back to make a donation or help spread word.

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Case submitted by Campaign Duration Website Facebook Orkut : : : : : : : : WWF India N/A Not-for-profit institution Prashant Deorah, Puretech Internet Private Limited Short term http://www.earthhour.org/ http://www.facebook.com/ OfficialEarthHourIndiaPage http://www.orkut.co.in/ Main#Community?cmm=60087030

IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #3, Short term initiatives

WWF Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour

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Executive Summary
Earth Hour is a global awareness programme by WWF to create awareness on climate change and fight global warming. People participating in the Earth Hour voluntarily choose to switch off their lights of their homes and offices for one hour to make their stand against climate change. For the first time in 2009, WWF India took the initiative to bring this campaign to India. The task was to spread awareness about this programme in India and encourage people to participate. An interactive and informative Earth Hour India site was created asking people to register themselves. Social media channels on Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr were created and these were used to engage with people and direct them to the site. Within 18 days, the Earth Hour site got 1,23,704 visitors; 28,484 people registered on the website to participate in the Earth Hour event; the Earth Hour Facebook Cause got 19,059 members; the Orkut Community got 4,547 members; the Flickr photostream received 1,700 views; the Twitter channel got followed by 321 followers. Earth Hour 2009 was a huge success and the programme is on its way to another successful year in India now.

Background
WWF India is one of the largest conservation organisation engaged in wildlife and nature conservation in the country.
Earth Hour is a global awareness program by WWF to create awareness on climate change and fight global warming. It was initiated in Sydney in the year 2007 when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. In 2009, the need was felt to promote the concept of Earth Hour in India and WWF India took up the responsibility.

Approach
The overall objective of the campaign was to create awareness about global warming and get people to participate in the Earth Hour initiative by switching off their lights on 28th March 2009. Our approach to achieve this goal was to create an India specific site for Earth Hour and get people to register themselves to support the campaign. In order to drive people to the site, various social media channels were created and a sponsored online ad campaign was undertaken.
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Stakeholders
Stakeholders we engaged were the general public who were online.

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Planning & Outreach

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Create an India site of the Earth Hour campaign where local content was added and made interactive to encourage participation and exchange of opinion. The site asked people to register themselves in support of the campaign. Interactive features like a quiz and a Share Your Idea were added to engage the users. To raise awareness about the site and the campaign, we undertook a paid online ad campaign on the Google site and its network sites. An Orkut group, Flickr photostream, Twitter account, and a YouTube channel were created to engage with people on these platforms and share interesting information and multimedia. A Facebook Cause page was created.

to 0.88%. The average CPC for the campaign (Rs. 6.25) was also much lesser compared to the average CPC paid by Indian advertiser (Rs. 16.20). The interactive elements like the quiz got 3,732 visits and Share you Ideas got 535 visits.

What Next
Earth Hour 2010 is coming up in March 2010 and WWF India is again gearing up to make Earth Hour a tremendous success in India.

Impact Outcome
Within 18 days, the Earth Hour site got 1,23,704 visitors; 28,484 people registered to participate on the website; the Earth Hour Facebook Cause got 19,059 members; the Orkut Community got 4,547 members; the Flickr photostream received 1,700 views; the Twitter channel got followed by 321 followers. Earth Hour 2009 was a huge success and the programme is on its way to another successful year in India now. The paid advertising CTR beat the industry average of 0.55%
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Click here to visit HP

Social Media: Reinventing the rules for B2B players

Hari V Krishnan
Country Manager LinkedIn India

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To understand the way in which social media is fundamentally altering the way in which B2B marketers operate, we need to first examine the evolution of the internet from an essentially open world wide web to a connected but distinct group of walled gardens. While the open web provided an ideal platform for ubiquitous information access and proliferation, it also built up the need for closed forums where like-minded individuals could focus more on the quality dimension of content sharing and creation. Forums such as LinkedIn Groups have resulted in incredible value creation opportunities for marketers and in particular B2B marketers. Traditionally, B2B organizations have relied on trade publications and events to engage with stakeholders to drive business development and customer engagement efforts. The emphasis has always been on a controlled, quality experience with the implicit need for these platforms to help them scale of course. They have traditionally shied away from the large scale Above the line marketing channels and used them more for over-arching branding needs. For these B2B marketers, platforms which provide a controlled quality experience while still achieveing massive scale can be the perfect solution. It is therefore no surprise that social media has proven to be wildly popular in the more developed economies for B2B marketers. In India too, early signs are promising. According to a recent survey, 2 out of every 5 companies globally have successfully used professional social networks to find and acquire new customers. In India, 52% of the respondents claimed new customer acquisitions through social media. In addition to these findings, the importance of content is visible from the 64% of respondents, who have audio or visual animations on their companys profile. B2B marketing spending on social networking sites is predicted to rise

43.3% in 2010 with 39.2% of B2B marketers say they plan to boost their marketing budgets in 2010. As B2B marketers begin to increase online marketing spends, a full 60.3% plan increased spends on social media. The ability of social media platforms to reach out to and engage with stakeholders irrespective of geographic barriers can create a multitude of opportunities for the B2B industry. In an eMarketer article it was found that 45% of North American B2B companies have acquired a customer from LinkedIn after using it for marketing. In India too, social media platforms have enabled businessmen to find partners in international markets to source and sell products. Rajeev Gangal, a LinkedIn member wanted to know what professionals in the niche molecular discovery field, pay for an insilico physio-chemical property lead optimization service. An activity like this would have been near impossible for him using traditional channels and the cost would have been significant. Instead, he activated a poll on LinkedIn asking fellow professionals for their insights. This helped him decide the right price for his service for a nominal cost, while also providing him with an attractive list of warm leads. So how can B2B professionals benefit from social media platforms? For one, the core of social media platforms is about creating engagement opportunities for members, whether it is in a social or a professional setting. Whether it is LinkedIn , Twitter or B2B marketplace AliBaba. com, as a professional seeking to showcase market expertise, it is essential to engage with fellow users and showcase thought leadership where possible. As users post queries and seek advice, your response can be seen and valued as having knowledge about your industry. Engaging in forums and groups by asking and answering queries will fuel professional growth but also helps develop yoru sphere of influence. Some of the most valuable business insights can be gleaned through engaging in these forums.
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Apart from sharing insights, social media platforms can be used to drive business development efforts. This is evident from the fund raising activity conducted by Viedea Capital Advisors who first looked to LinkedIn when they needed to find investors for a Mumbai based digital media firm. With the help of LinkedIns network, they identified investors from Europe for the media firm while sitting in their office in Bangalore. Today they use LinkedIn to drive more than 50% of their business development efforts. As a B2B professional looking to establish your expertise on a social media platform, content can play a large role in driving your company image. High-impact and shareable content can help establish you as a leader among peers. The high impact of multimedia coupled with the

multiplier nature of social media, allows simple webinars and podcasts to take your message to a large audience in a cost-effective manner. Your content needs to be relevant since B2B professionals comprise of niche audiences. File sharing services like Box.net or Huddle-Space when integrated with your LinkedIn account enables you to share white papers and presentations highlighting your proficiency in a particular subject and showcase thought leadership. As social media usage in India increases, the potential of this platform will only grow. As B2B professionals continue to increase their presence and engagement levels, we believe the online channel will help create a phase of scalable, sustained growth for them in India.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website : : : : : : Evalueserve 1001-5000 B2B (For profit corporation) Long term Sandra Winkler, Global Head, Marketing Communications http://www.evalueserve.com/

Evalueserve Using LinkedIn for lead generation and brand building

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Evalueserve provides knowledge services to a global client base, including Investment, Commercial and Retail Banks; Insurance Companies; Private Equity Firms; Corporates; Consulting and Research Firms; Law Firms; and Intellectual Property Firms. Evalueserves expertise covers areas, such as Financial and Investment Research, Business Research, Market Research, Intellectual Property, Data Analytics and Knowledge Technology Services.

consumers realize that LinkedIn is their professional profile of record. The result is a notable increase of sales leads together with a better image of the Evalueserve brand and the individuals working at Evalueserve.

Background
Evalueserve has a global Sales and Marketing team. Client Engagement Managers in client locations are supported by the Sales Support teams in our India, China, Chile and Romania centres. Identifying the key contacts at organisations for the initial al contact and scheduling meetings with these contacts has been a challenge. Cold-calling without the right background information has not proven to be successful over the years. Reaching clients through traditional media (press releases, white papers, etc.) has been useful in general brand building, but to create greater impact for our present and prospective clients, and get them to recognise us as a large knowledge services firm we required a more direct approach, which LinkedIn provided. Evalueserve certainly is not the first company to use online networking for business development and marketing purposes. But as Evalueserve is a global company that works virtually

Executive Summary
The virtual nature of Evalueserves business model called for the use of web-based technologies to support our sales and marketing efforts across the globe. Using LinkedIn, a team member in India can initiate contact or create awareness about Evalueserve with prospective clients, adding comments to forums, asking or answering questions, etc. Clients also proactively approach us with queries, as they see our activities on the network. Viewing profiles of existing and potential clients helps in the client research process. LinkedIn helps the sales teams to identify key contacts and gauge their interests by viewing their forum posts or the events they attend. Most

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in many ways, it is a good case of how modern business is developed and large networks are built without face-to-face meetings.

Quick Tips:
Lead generation: An effective keyword search can be used to reach out to the right people. A useful tip for lead generation is to check the list of people who have viewed our profile. This lets us know who is interested in the company, and the prospects thereafter are more than cold calls. Confidentiality: A key challenge was to ensure the confidentiality of our clients and project. Therefore, a Social Media section was added to the global Media Communication manual, and an e-learning module was developed to create greater awareness on the subject.

Stakeholders
Sales team, Sales Support team and Marketing Communications team

Approach
Many of our Sales Support team members had started using LinkedIn in 2007 and many of Evalueserves Client Engagement Managers in Europe and the US had already been using LinkedIn
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For branding, the Marketing Communications (Marcom) team has been encouraging the controlled use of forums for the distribution of white papers, articles, etc. or for

answering questions asked by members, researching events and more

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New white papers are systematically posted (excerpts or links) in relevant groups or forums. Selected professionals of Evalueserve regularly browse LinkedIn forums to post advice on queries The Marcom team also regularly checks forums and questions, and arranges answers/forum posts to be
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published. Guidelines for Social Media have been included in the global Media Communication manual.

Planning & Outreach

The Sales team carries out classic research of profiles to identify key contacts within the client organisation or targeted organisations. Client information is also gathered from LinkedIn to prepare for meetings. InMails are sent or connections through groups or forums are established. For branding purposes, managers or subject-matter experts post or answer questions, or are active in LinkedIn groups. Groups and forums are used to post company links or excerpts of white papers/ articles

The table below shows the percentage breakup on Lead generation and Brand building for 5 key target verticals from an India perspective. Vertical Healthcare BFSI IT Telecom Automotive Logistics Energy/Chemicals Percentage Break Up 30 25 20 15 10

Impact Outcome
Lead generation: The Sales team gains direct access to C-Level people without having to go through numerous rounds of calls with secretaries. Using LinkedIn, one gets to know the focus of the profile being contacted and can customise the pitch accordingly to garner maximum interest. This helps us in reaching the right audience, saving a lot of time and improving our success rate. Brand building: By posting white papers on LinkedIn, we have received several requests from traditional media or blogs. Several Client Engagement Managers have also received messages through LinkedIn about their posts. We have also noticed the influx of external recommendations on LinkedIn. Using LinkedIn for marketing has helped us to improve our visibility and catch the attention of our target audience; traditional media is still used as a tool to reach out to a more general audience.
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Strategy and Execution

Self

What Next
LinkedIn is now an intrinsic part of Evalueserves sales and marketing strategy. In addition, we are also leveraging other social media networks in Germany/Europe like Xing. The Sales and Marketing teams use LinkedIn on a daily basis for business development and brand building. Our next step will be to increase the use of LinkedIn across the organisation and to add the use of online social and business networking tools to the tool kit of each employee and increase training and awareness (an update on the Media Communication manual and training is currently underway).

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website: http Facebook : : : : : : : NASSCOM 51-100 B2B (Not-for-profit institution) Long term Avinash Raghava, Regional Director //www.communities. nasscom.in/ http://www.facebook.com/ nasscomemerge

NASSCOM Acting as a catalyst for growth of emerging & start-up companies

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Executive Summary
NASSCOM is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 1200 members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOMs member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPO services, e-commerce & web services, engineering services offshoring and animation and gaming.
The NASSCOM EMERGE Community website is a private meeting place where NASSCOM members and non-members can interact and work together with each other. The purpose of the NASSCOM EMERGE Community is to help senior management/thought leaders of SME organizations with a forum to exchange ideas, learn from other decision and opinion makers and use the key takeaways to improve their businesses. We all gain when we all contribute.

Background
As NASSCOM, we have been very limited to connect with only members of NASSCOM. We were looking at how we can build a community for start-ups and non-members of NASSCOM. There was a need to create a community where we could leverage the strengths of some of the established players and contribute to the eco-system.

Stakeholders
Predominantly meant for the burgeoning SME community which is growing stronger by the day. Their exponential growth obviates the need to share insights and best practises. Of course, other stakeholders who do not fall under this category can also join the forum and participate. In a nutshell, it is a platform for management practitioners who feel the need to communicate with one another and be aware of whats going on. We have been able to reach out to our members, nonmembers, academicians, the VC community and the student community.

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site has become an indispensible meeting place for members to partner with each other and also share feedback on our initiatives. The community has helped us to put together 3 conferences (EMERGEOUT conclave) and initiatives like EMERGE 50, EMERGE Product Showcase and help us plan in our global delegations.

Credits Strategy
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Groupsites.com & Iridium Interactive

Earlier, NASSCOM was considered to be a big boys club and that we were not doing enough for our SME members. We started exploring ideas on how we could build a community for start-ups and non-members of NASSCOM. The members of this community would leverage on the strengths of some of the established players and contribute to the eco-system. This is how this initiative took shape and today we boast of a community of 3200 members who are just a click away.

Find your evangelisers - build a core group who believe in contributing and helping the ecosystem partners Organise off-line meets this helps companies to build a comfort factor with each other Take a buy-in from the senior management Use an off-the-shelf product rather than building a customised solution based on our requirements. Recognise key people from the community at regular intervals.

Impact Outcome
The community site has been live for almost 18 months now. We have been able to get participation from 3200 members, to be part of the community site. Presently, there are more than 780+ discussions running simultaneously. So wide a reach at a throwaway annual price of 25000 INR. The community

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Approach

Quick Tips:

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Credits Execution
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What Next
We are looking at getting the buyer community involved in our discussions. We are keenly looking at identifying some partner associations overseas who can help in enabling some partnerships. Building a consortium approach and making sure that we have enough mid-sized companies who come together and work with each other. Also, to have a deeper engagement with the student and the start-up community. Providing some essentials which are like a tool-kit for them. EMERGE Partner eXchange is a trusted collaboration network. It is a platform to collaborate and complement with like minded companies. Companies can partner with each other on technology, subcontracting of projects, post leads, seek help and outsource.

The Evangelisers team for EMERGE community

Testimonials
A story in Outlook business http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite. com/link/go/65155926 Another set of testimonials can be accessed at:
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http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/ show/110497 http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/ show/149405 http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/ show/166559 http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2009/07/the-nasscomemerge-50-listing-announced/ (Refer to the comments section)

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Jessie Paul
Managing Director Paul Writer

Padmaja Nagarur
B2B Marketing Evangelist Paul Writer

Communities will be the next big thing in Marketing

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the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself - Peter Drucker

Country Manager - India, LinkedIn says, We are big believers in communities being the source for the richest business insights. With over 7 million professionals in India alone, Hari believes that LinkedIn provides them with tools to engage in meaningful business development and brand building activities. Salesforce.com is tapping into its customers for new product ideas through IdeaExchange (it has already generated over 10,000 ideas as of Sep 2010). Why cant all enterprise software be like Facebook? asks Jeremy Cooper, RVPMarketing (APAC), Salesforce.com. Chatter is doing just that allowing users to form a community within their business for secure collaboration and knowledge-sharing. India offers commendable examples of early adopter B2C brands like Flipkart, Chings secret, MTV - India to name a few, who continue to leverage the power of social media. But B2B stories in India seem to be few and far between though there are significant references available globally - Dell, IBM, Cisco, and Salesforce.com. While the common belief is that B2B is about selling to an organization, one must remember that the end-buyer is always an individual. Therefore the fundamentals of community building are the same for B2B and B2C (Source: No Money Marketing, by Jessie Paul, Tata McGraw-Hill, 2009) Heres an easy-to-remember framework (CRISP) to help one get started. Coherence: Communities are held together by a common interest. It maybe something that the members are passionate about, a common goal, a common project, or merely the preference for a similar lifestyle or profession. Communities must address the common interest and maintain consistency in

In the past, marketers have had to invest time and research effort to gather information about what customers wanted. But the growth of community platforms has made it much more convenient for marketers to engage with customers directly and generate business insights. Marketers have always used paid and earned media, and there is now a third one, owned. Paid media comes as a privilege to marketers with generous budgets and earned media promises credibility. But todays successful marketers have realized that there is an opportunity to narrow down the space you want to own and own it creatively using sophisticated digital tools/social media. Communities belong to the category of owned media which comes at little or no cost. Firms such as LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, Groupsite and the likes have realized the emerging power of communities and are actively looking for ways to monetize them. Hari Krishnan,
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topics posted and discussed across platforms. Relevance: People join communities because they either have the urge to contribute or intend to learn from their peers of similar interests. So, its only fair for the members to expect that the content is kept as relevant as possible. Well orchestrated contributions and moderated discussions always helps.

Interactive: Communities tend to have their own life cycle (ref image below). And until the point that the community becomes self-sustaining, members will continue to rely on its founders to keep the dialogue on. Therefore, what matters is not just presence but the promptness and quality of the interaction. Simple: Information is cheap and abundantly available but insight is rare. So the focus of the communitys efforts must be on providing insights which are crisp and simple to comprehend. Pervasive: If you build it, they will come - is the biggest fallacy of community building. You have to make an effort much more than just building a community. Be present across platforms and communities where you think your audience could potentially be. Participate in a quality conversation to lure them into your community (follow the Hub-and-Spoke model). Some of the few active communities in India who are doing well on the CRISP guidelines include
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Source:How To: Manage a Sustainable Online Community by Rob Howard (www.mashable.com)

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Nasscom Emerge, CIO Association of India and Dell SMB. Nasscom Emerge, which started as a blog, has grown to be a 3000+member community with active presence across relevant social media platforms. The community was initiated and is driven by Avinash Raghava (Regional Director - NASSCOM North) who set out to build an ecosystem to fuel the SME growth. They have also introduced an annual conference, awards and a mentorship program to sustain the momentum of communitys engagement. (More about Nasscom Emerges success story is available here). CIO Association of India is another example which has managed to build Indias largest member-driven network of CIOs (over 1900 CIO members), offering a niche platform to address the career, technical and organizational needs of todays IT leaders. It isnt surprising that Cisco has tapped into this vibrant community to form the CIO Human Network Club.

Dell is one among the few corporates in India who understands, that businesses respect peer advice to help solve problems and learn new strategies for success. Early this year, Dell took the Take Your Own Path campaign to the next level and started a Business Trailblazers community, an online destination where entrepreneurs from all over the world can share their own stories, connect with other experts to get advice on how technology helps them grow their companies. Dell doesnt intend to actively sell but theyre the only ones who are currently addressing this community. If youre still wondering why we havent made a reference to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, its because we believe that the next big thing are not the social media tools but communities built using these tools. And organizations who fail to realize that, will be left friendless.

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Creating Raving Fans Through Social Media

Toby Bloomberg

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Toby Bloomberg is a widely recognized for her expertise in combining social media with traditional marketing values while maintaining the authenticity of digital conversations. Tobys blog Diva Marketing, launched in 2004, is listed on the Forbes list of the 20 Marketing and Social Media Blogs By Women.

daily lives who hold the credibility. The oxymoron is that many of those discussions are taking place online within social networking communities. The challenge for marketers is how to authentically become part of that trusted circle. Brand managers are beginning to discover the secret that entertainers have always known. The more an artist can provide a behind the curtain experience the more people will become loyal customers who attend movies, watch TV shows, see concerts, buy books and bring their friends. The same holds true for business. In fact, many customer loyalty programs use the term raving fans to identify heavy users. Social media initiatives can support your business and marketing goals in multiple ways from creating awareness to increasing the value of your brand. From a marketing perspective, it offers a unique way to build trust by connecting with customers and prospects in the social communities where they live. As important is how social platforms encourage peer-to-peer interaction where raving fans, on their own volition, help you extend your grass roots marketing efforts. Benefits include:
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It seems to me the more high tech we become, the more we long for high touch. Interestingly, that personalized interaction extends to how people are making purchase decisions. Findings from a July 2009, Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey indicate that 70% of consumers trust online peer recommendations more than advertising. http://ht.ly/2GF48 In a world where marketing messages are overwhelming and ubiquitous, its not a surprise that our customers are gravitating to finding information way they always have - - by asking people who have experience with the product or service. It is the people who bring your brand into the moments of their
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The brand telling its own stories, when it wants, how it wants without the filter of the media Developing authentic relationships without the guise of commercial hype Creating digital word of mouth buzz about issues important to your customers

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Building a broader digital foot print on search engines -making it easier for people to find the information about them that they want to share Providing avenues for your raving fans to tell their stories about your product/services and in doing so influence their networks

Experience has taught us that while a step into the social web may initially increase awareness the challenge of consistently extending and maintaining the goodwill of an organizations online reputation through digital conversations is based on how well the details are managed. This ten step overview will help guide you in the process.

Social media is often thought of as a young persons media. However, it is not just your teenagers world any longer. There are people from all age groups who are active in social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. According to Pew Research the fastest growing segment is Baby Boomers. On the surface, social media appears fairly simple to implement. Since it is frequently part of our daily lives managers, who have not studied its business impacts, often delegate the development to junior staff or even interns. Big Mistake. Leveraging social media, as a business strategy, goes beyond a simple status update or a series of tweets. To be successful social media demands the same respect that you would give any marketing initiative. It requires a sophisticated strategic approach that is integrated, monitored and flexible to respond to market opportunities. For the most part, this takes a combination of skills and experience in: strategy, marketing, customer care, your brand values/promise, an understanding of how social media impacts the brand and the enterprise on a long-range (and short-range) basis and excellent communication skills.
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10 Steps To Create Raving Fans With Social Media

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Identify which social networks your target audience is most engaged e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Live Journal, etc. Determine your target audiences expectations of how it wants to interact with your brand in the social web Understand the culture of each community where you intend to participate. Ensure social media tactics are integrated and supportive of business goals/objectives Set expectation including determining what is success. Keep in mind it will involve some nontraditional tracking. Ensure the entire enterprises social media direction is aligned and cross business unit internal communication processes are in place
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Approach all social media initiatives from the point of view of the Social Media Values Mantra: Ethics, Authenticity, Transparency and Passion Understand it is the people who work for your brand who should be telling brand stories Encourage your customers, and make it easy for them, to tell their stories Identify a social media champion who has experience in marketing, social media, with excellent communication skills who understands your brand value and promise

Social Media may be a new way of marketing which goes beyond traditional messaging to adding value to the customer. However, at its core, its simply one more way of bring a personal connection to how we have always conducted commerce. Done well it can create raving fans who lend their credibility and extend awareness of your brand to networks you may not have considered.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees : : : : : : : : : : : Fastrack 1001-5000 Lifestyle (Brand) Long term Anshul Nanda, Assistant Brand Manager www.fastrack.in http://www.facebook.com/ pages/rack/22353108376 http://www.twitter.com/ fastrack http://www.youtube.com/user/ fastrackworld http://www.flickr.com/ photos/20714224@N02/ http://www.smsgupshup.com/ communities/FT

IndiaSocial Case Challenge Winner of Position #2, Long term initiatives

Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Flickr Mobile

Fastrack: Capturing the imagination of youth online

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Fastrack, launched in 1998 is a brand of watches from the house of Titan Industries Ltd which is the market leader in the watches category in India. It was spun off as an independent brand of watches targeting the urban youth in 2005.

Executive Summary
Moving from outsourcing our social media initiative to an inhouse program has allowed us to engage and really connect with our audience in typical Fastrack fashion and style. Having college-interns run this Fastrack initiative has been a great step in being able to speak the language of our customers/fans. The essence of the brand being communicated in real-time and in a manner that is acceptable and easily understood by our customers is our constant thought as we go through daily customer queries, feedback, comments, suggestions & brand announcements. Our initiative is focused around the experience we deliver to the fans and both current and potential, driving them toward a better, and more personalized connection with the brand.

Background
Fastrack is essentially a youth brand, and what better way to get in touch with our target audience of 15-25 year-olds (SEC A,B) than having a presence on the very platforms that they use daily? Social networking is a big part of todays youth and we have made it a big part of us, extending all our online initiatives to incorporate our social networks and com munities. With this step forward we worked on tapping the pulse of the youth by answering queries, getting feedback about the brand and our collections and campaigns, engagement, resolving complaints & doubts and interacting with Fastrack Fans daily, 24/7. At the beginning we jumpstarted our initiative by linking all our existing properties to the new social media platforms we

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joined. Facebook, Flickr and Youtube were the first networks added to our consumer outreach. The great response we received pushed us to integrate even more and we created the URL re-direct http://www.fastrack.in/facebook to take fans directly to our fan page. Since its inception, this link has been used across our billboards, take-ones, contest forms, emailers and all offline forms. A major component of success for this fan page was the use of Facebook social ads to create awareness of the brands presence on Facebook. In the larger picture we have led all our campaigns, both offline and online with social media links on our microsite and landing page, previews on our communities & applications dedicated to display our latest collections. We

even create unique profile pictures and tabs on our Facebook fan page for every scheme and campaign. We then jumped right into Twitter allowing us to connect with fans on a more individual basis, answering queries directly, solving customer issues, giving out store addresses and the like. On the flip side, we have also taken offline activities and brought them into the world of social media with a fine example being our Twitter Contest where we asked fans tweet pictures of our billboard signs announcing the launch of our latest accessories segment.

Stakeholders
Our entire social media initiative is geared toward our existing and potential customers. As one of the 1st Indian brands to take on social media in a big way, we have endeavoured to stay ahead in terms of what we do for our fans and the experience we give them. They whole-heartedly embrace this as organic conversations burst onto our communities, fans upload pictures with our products, share our celebrations & store launches and a host of other social media activities.
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Approach
Fastrack was one of the first brands to use social media to engage with potential and existing consumers. We started with two communities on Facebook and a Twitter account in September 2007. We worked closely with Blogworks to create relevant content and monitor conversations. From April 2009, we started to get all the work done in-house and worked with college interns to create relevant, engaging and

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Quick Tips:
Speak in same voice as the customer Its essential that the person in charge of social media is in touch with both the brand and the people it is trying to communicate to. They need to be someone who understands the essence of the brand, yet speaks the language of the fans/followers Build a hub - it is good to have a hub from which most of your activities and updates are localised so as to have a better reach, focus and maximise participation. This is what we have with Facebook being our main platform and centering our communications with the fans on it. On the same Facebook note, it was a good idea to move from Facebook Groups to Facebook Pages where we have a lot more tools to analyse data about fan interactions and additions.
more importantly, unique content such as origins of the Fastrack logo, behind the scenes working of the brand coupled with innovative contests (myexbox) and campaign/collection updates. The presence of the brand on the digital sphere both in terms of reach and budgets has only been getting larger and given the relevance of this medium to our audience
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(15-25 year olds), we will continue on our way to engage with our audience in as fun, entertaining and rewarding way as we have done so far.

Planning & Outreach

What weve done best is turn the social media marketing on its head, so that instead of out-sourcing the work, we have shed that layer so that we can deal with our fans on a much more personal and real-time basis. To do this we have taken on college interns who walk in the shoes of our TG and talk their lingo. This allows for two things.
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One, the essence of the brand is better communicated from an in-house person Second, we are able to talk with our customers from the same level as them rather than as a big company. The sheer growth of our communities, the numbers of interactions with the brand and appreciation we have received for our timely responses to queries and updates/previews stands in testimony of this.

Another sizeable chunk of our time goes into gearing our campaigns around our social media communities, whether it be by releasing ads a few days in advance on YouTube/Facebook or putting up an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at our Bikers photo shoot, putting up sketches of our watches before they launch or linking back contests to our communities as done with myEXbox. Working our campaigns this way has allowed us to expose not only ourselves, but our current fans/followers to the other like-minded Fastrack-loving youth out there.

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Impact Outcome
Our main objective was to reach out to all the existing Fastrack customers/fans and allow them a closer interaction with the brand.
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In less than a year we have grown from approximately 2,100 fans on Facebook in April 09 to over 47,500 fans as of Feb 10 thats a 2262% growth in 10 months! Updated- In September, 2010 Fastrack are 5,97,659 fans Not only has our fan count increased but so have the interactions, going up from about 10-20 a week to almost 700-800. Comments on our posts have touched the 150 mark at times.

Most of our pre and post-analysis is measured through online tools such as the built-in Insights for Facebook pages, tweetreach.com and twitteranalyzer.com for our Twitter account. From Insights we can discern the numbers of fans we add per day, the interactions per week, the number of views for pictures (on Facebook & Flickr) and videos. For Twitter we get details such as number of followers online at a time so we can maximise how many people we reach with our messages, and the growth of our follower-base to coincide with campaigns/ collections.

Strategy and Execution

Blogworks Oct 2007 Apr 2009

What Next
One of the initiatives we need to quickly close is Ecommerce which would be a great avenue for us to delve into, working out linking direct customer queries to sales and closing the loop in terms of connecting online interactions with retail transactions. This would take the social media exposure of Fastrack to reach new levels once we introduce an online retail experience to our fans & followers Currently were on Facebook with 5,97,659 fans , Twitter with 2,200+ followers, Mobile community (via SMS GupShup) with 19803+ members and Youtube and Flickr. What we are aiming at is not just the numbers, but engaging better with our fans, be it through Ecommerce, more engaging, insightful content or even linking online interactions to an offline format.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Blog Facebook Twitterq YouTube : : : : : : : : : : Hard Rock Cafe N/A Lifestyle (For Profit Corporation) Long term Adhvith Dhuddu; Founder and CEO, AliveNow http://www.hardrock.com/ http://www.hardrockindiablog.com/ http://www.facebook.com/ HardRockDelhi http://twitter.com/HRCIndia http://www.youtube.com/ hardrockcafeindia

Hard Rock Caf India live in concert on social media

Click here to visit Blogworks

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Hard Rock Caf is a chain of theme restaurants in present globally and present in 5 locations in India. Its unparalleled memorabilia collection, which consists of more than 70,000 pieces that are rotated from restaurant to restaurant, provides the worlds most comprehensive visual history of rock n roll.

Executive Summary
This case submission is a brief overview of how AliveNow helped five Hard Rock Cafs across the country (Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi) leverage the social media space in the most optimal way to connect, communicate and engage with the avid audience and fans of Hard Rock caf.

connect and engage with Hard Rocks audience. Also, there were scattered and unorganized groups/pages on Facebook touting the Hard Rock brand and talking about events. Many of these were unofficial, unprofessional, inconsistent and not properly maintained. There was no centralized social media strategy for the five Hard Rock Cafs across the country, whether it was Facebook, twitter, a blog or any other social media space for that matter. Therefore, we put a plan together to help Hard Rock leverage the social media space in an organized, professional and consistent way but also make sure that the tone, voice and engagement was fun, interactive and conversational.

Stakeholders
The three primary stakeholders in this project were
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Background
Hard Rock India wanted to leverage the social media space in an optimal way to engage, communicate and converse with their ardent fan base. With five Hard Rocks in India, close to 40 events every month across the country and thousands of foot-falls every week, there was tremendous opportunity to
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Hard Rock Caf the organization-Hard Rock because it is their brand we were managing social media and our performance would be measured by how well we could leverage the social media space for Hard Rock. The fans/audience of Hard Rock-The fans and audience of Hard Rock because its their response to our initiatives that primarily determines how successful our strategies were both in envisaging them and executing them. The response from the fans has also been very supportive.

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AliveNow, the social media agency managing the Hard Rock account - as a social media firm, the best way to prove to anyone that we are good at what we do is to do the best we can for our clients.

Approach
Facebook: We started off by creating individual fan-pages on Facebook in the most professional manner, and each fan page now can boast of high following, a crisp look and active engagement. With a cumulative total of approximately 25,000 fans (or Likes) in less than a year, the Facebook presence is a success.
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The Facebook page started off as a portal for information dissemination about the regular events at Hard Rock, and after a substantial fan base was built, we started engaging the fans through contests, feedback, questions, etc. With the click of a mouse we had a reach of close to 30,000 Hard Rock fans in India via the different social sites.
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This was leveraged for many purposes, for example: to get feedback from fans about what international artists they would like to watch live at Hard Rock Cafe, what prices they would be willing to pay, what time of the year would be ideal for them, etc. Besides listening to them, about what bands they want to hear at their local Hard Rock, we also regularly conducted contests on Facebook and gave away food vouchers, free entries, etc both to engage with the fan and to help increase the fan base.

We also made it much more easier for Hard Rock patrons across the country to discover their social spaces by including the Facebook, twitter and blog URL information on all Hard Rock posters, Hard Rock menus, and many other off line ads and promos. This significantly helped in increasing the fan base Individuals who are most likely to become fans or followers of your brand online are the ones who visit your cafe and are familiar and accustomed to the brand. So translating cafe customers to online followers is crucial, which is why we made sure that information about these spaces is shared in the cafe via posters, menus, standee, etc.

Our overarching social media strategy on Facebook for Hard Rock India was to engage fans on a continuous basis, communicate to them about events every week, and to help increase foot-falls in the Caf during live band performances which are Hard Rocks signature events. These Facebook pages were built with many best practices. To name a few:
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They were URL optimized (i.e., Facebook.com/ HardRockYourCity) - For example, Hard Rock Mumbais Facebook page is located at www.facebook.com/ HardRockMumbai.

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We continue to add hundreds of fans (or Likes) every day as many migrate from unofficial groups/pages and as more individuals discover Hard Rocks active social media presence on Facebook

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They had regular and customized FBML tabs - With the use of these FBML tabs, we were able to communicate to fans about special events using posters, calendars and promos. The audience was kept up to date about event info and any other relevant info. Besides having an updated standard Events tab on Facebook, we also had an FBML tab called, July Events where we designed an awesome calendar with details of each event of that month. This calendar was image mapped and if a user clicked on any of the events, it would redirect them to the blog which had a detailed overview of the band and the event. Photos of all events were regularly updated on Facebook in a professional format. We also encouraged fans to tag themselves in those photos if they spotted themselves in the event. The audiences feedback/grievances/suggestions were all taken very seriously and communicated/passed on to the right person inside the organization at Hard Rock. The Facebook page was integrated with the twitter page, the blog, mailing list sign up page, and many other Hard Rock India social portals. We tried to actively communicate to the fans of existing groups/pages (which were all unofficial) to migrate to the official page for accurate info, etc. (This activity continues even today.) Custom left-hand sidebars with links to relevant events were created for the Facebook page. NOTE: As Facebook

discontinued support for Boxes the left hand sidebars are no longer displayed on the pages.
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Spam control: as the number of fans on different Hard Rock Facebook pages increased, they became targets for spammed posting and uninvited advertisements. Because these pages are actively managed, spam was usually removed within 2-3 days and many users have been deleted as weve noticed they just become fans to spam the wall and comment boxes. They adhered to certain high standards set by Hard Rock International. All Facebook pages (and even other social media sites) were search engine optimized. Fans were kept engaged: we regularly ran contests, asked interesting questions, conversed with fans, conducted surveys and feedbacks, and did much more.

Twitter: Alongside, we created a single twitter page for all the five Hard Rocks in India to make sure all updates on the blog and Facebook are mirrored on Twitter. With close to 1,300 followers on Twitter, and regular re-tweets, and @mentions, Hard Rock Indias presence on Twitter is very conversational. We regularly reply to all queries on Twitter, which is extremely important. There are also a large number of @HRCIndia mentions with exciting and optimistic messages about how a follower had an amazing time at a particular Hard Rock Cafe. As we regularly tweet about events, contests, surveys, etc, we follow best practices to tweet with hash tags so that followers

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A live twitter feed was integrated into the blog in the right hand sidebar. Fanboxes for all five Facebook pages were integrated with the blog in the right hand sidebar. We designed a custom wibya widget which appears are the bottom of the blog with a welcome message and links to many of Hard Rocks social media portals. Every post/article displayed was ShareThis enabled, so visitors could share the post/link on various social networking and social bookmarking sites. Every post/article also had the Facebook Like button integrated with it. This way anyone who visits the blog could Like the article and simultaneously share it on their profile. We definitely saw a good spike in traffic after we included Facebook like buttons for each article as fans were sharing these posts on their personal Facebook profiles. We also regularly emailed all the band managers about the coverage of their band in the blog so that they could share it with their fans too. Sidebar tabs with Facebook recommendations box and Facebook recent activity box was also incorporated. This helped visitors who have logged into Facebook get an idea of what type of content their friends were browsing on the Hard Rock India blog. There are tabs on top to city-specific events. So if anyone browsing the blog just wants to know whats happening in Hard Rock Mumbai, they could click on Mumbai on the top
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Blog: The Hard Rock India blog which is also designed, developed and maintained by us is located at www. hardrockindiablog.com. The blog was a critical part of the strategy because this was the only space with a high level of maneuverability in terms of content, design and placement. The blog served as a central source of information for everything happening at all the five Hard Rocks across the country. Because we expected significant traffic on the blog, we had to make sure this blog was integrated with and connected to all the other social media spaces. Here are a few things we did to enhance the blogs connectivity and appearance.
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The blog had icons with links to Facebook, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Mailing list and RSS feeds in the right hand sidebar.

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can use those hash tags when they tweet. For example, there are standard hash tags for all cafes, i.e., #HardRockPune for Hard Rock Pune and so on.

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tab and the list of events at Hard Rock Mumbai would show up.
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We focused quite a lot on the blog design and article design. Every post/ article has a custom header designed with details of the band playing, the Hard Rock location and the date. All posts/articles on the blog were very well tagged. So any visitor just looking coverage about just a particular band could easily find their coverage by clicking on the bands name under tags. Tagging of articles and optimizing them also helped tremendously to search engine optimize the blog. Our analytics also showed that we were receiving significant amounts of traffic from Google and other searches, and this is because of our continued efforts to search engine optimize the blog. Many links on the blog were also Apture enabled.

subscribe to the mailing list. This turned out to be a great success as we collected close to 700 unique email ids, and some amazing feedback right from the fans. For a brief period of one month, we also had a small contest going where every individual who joined the mailing list enjoyed a free beverage at Hard Rock! So, of all the email ids collected, close to 70 percent was through this promotion. Integrating social media with on-ground marketing/strategies: This was and continues to be one of the most critical parts of our Social Media strategy for Hard Rock. We realized very early on that running ads was an easy way out method to get fans to join Hard Rock Cafe. Not only was it another financial commitment for Hard Rock, but it would also be unwise on our part not to leverage the existing network of Hard Rocks five cafs and the hundreds of customers they touch each week. It was important for us to convert foot falls into followers on social media and convert those followers back in to footfalls every week and every month. Weve clearly achieved this because Hard Rocks social media presence is robust and continues to grow from strength to strength without a single Rupee spent on advertising. Just to repeat that, not a single Rupee has been spent in advertising for Hard Rocks social portals but weve got a healthy base of close to 25,000 fans (or likes) on Facebook, about 1,300 followers on twitter and close to 5,000 hits on the blog every month.

E-mail list/E-mail marketing: What started off as a small part of the online media strategy mushroomed into something significant and relevant. Hard Rock already had someone designing their mailers and another vendor handling the distribution to the database. But because we wanted to get fans on Facebook, followers on twitter and visitors to the blog on the mailing list, we created a simple form which served two purposes for the fans: For them to give feedback directly to Hard Rock managers about anything they wanted and to
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Comprehensive social media analytics: Easily, the most important part of the social media strategy was to measure the success of our initiatives. We preach to our clients that we cannot improve something that we cannot measure. So analytics for social media was tracked very closely and more details about the numbers, etc, are shared in the Impact/ Outcome question given below.

The average traffic on the blog is about 4,000-5,000 unique visits per month with about 8,000-9,000 page views per month, and these numbers are only going up On Twitter the HRC India account has close to 1,300 followers with many of our tweets being regularly retweeted.

Impact Outcome
As mentioned in the Approach/Strategy section, quantifying the social media initiatives is very important to analyze the success of a social media strategy. The first achievement was in terms of sheer numbers.
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With no ads and no separate marketing budget to promote Hard Rocks social media space, we were able to populate close to 25,000 fans on Facebook over 1 year period

Besides this, the impact and the outcome can be seen on the Facebook pages, the blog and twitter itself. With regular engagement, contests, information updates, we were able to achieve what we initially envisioned for the Hard Rock brand in India on social media.

Testimonials
Although we have all known that social media is and will be playing an important role for marketing, there has never been clarity on how to make it an organized effort. Until AliveNow approached us all our initiatives were on an ad hoc basis, now since we have outsourced this piece of to them we have a plan and a vision which is to increase our following and ensure we deliver the right content which is relevant to our brand and hence increase awareness which ultimately is the goal
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The second was our ability to successfully create a professional and well maintained presence on vital social media channels. Awareness in branding and marketing is very important and a huge majority of the Hard Rock fans are now aware of Hard Rock Indias active presence on social media. The numbers are sufficient to say that the audiences now visit these pages regularly for information and updates.

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Quick Tips:
Never make competitions or contest too complicated - Even if a complicated contest sounds very creative and interesting, people dont have all the time in the world for a social media contest. So keep it simple and make sure its fun and engaging. Dont just disseminate - Trying to use the social media channel purely to push events, push sales, spread information, etc will only make the platform boring and mundane. Its critical to engage, ask questions, listen to feedback, converse, etc.

What Next
In the first year of Hard Rock Cafes social media presence, we established the brand on the social space and have built a good fan base. Over the next 6 months weve planned a lot of new initiatives for the Hard Rock brand on social media in addition to improving their existing portals. Some planned initiatives include:
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Increase activity on twitter, with more engagement. Weve been having quite a few Facebook campaigns, so we plan to increase the number of twitter contests too. Integrating Hard Rocks social media presence with the social media presence of different rock bands in India. We have begun this activity but will be focusing more on this in the coming months. Activity on YouTube and some other video sites will begin. More co-ordination on integrating on-ground and online strategies. And lots more.

q q

when starting any marketing initiative. We know we have only hit the tip of the iceberg and over time we will innovate and with AliveNows experience, and hope to be leaders in our industry. - Amit, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, JSM Corp. (JSM Corp is the holding company for the Hard Rock brands across India)

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by : Axe : N/A : Liefstyle (For-profit Corporation) : Long term : Ekalavya Bhattacharya Sr. Manager Product / Social Media : http://www.axetwist. zapak.com/ : //www.axeplay.zapak.com/ : //axemusicstar.zapak.com/ : http://www.facebook.com/ axeangelsclub

Website http http Facebook

Axe Angels Club building virtual engagement via real personas

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AXE is a cool, iconic, youth brand available in more than 60 countries around the world. Launched in India in 1999, the brand has the dominant share in male deodorant market in India.

Executive Summary
Axe brand communicates through advertising, the various ways it helps men attract women. The task at hand was to create the same brand positioning for Axe on four key social networking platforms Facebook, Twitter, Orkut & Big Adda . One of the important steps in planning for the initiative was to identify the five angels for the Axe angels club (given the success of the initiative was driven to a great extend by the level of real-time representation of the club).
q

Approach/Strategy
q

At the outset, the objective was to create one of Indias largest and most well engaged fan pages on Facebook, which reaches out to more than a million users on a daily basis. We wanted to give the users, who played the AXE Inxtinct game a better and a more realistic brand experience Hence we activated the 5 Angels from the game across Social Networks. This gave us an opportunity to connect with users on a daily basis, rather than simply a one point interaction while playing a game or watching a TVC.

Based on certain parameters, we shot with 8 young models on various beautiful locations across the country. As the theme of the potentially 10 lakh strong community was to be based on these 8 ambassadors, each Angel was given a set of interests and a profession which gave us a large base to power content in the community. Drove engagement through user generated contest where we asked users to take a picture of them with a note saying: I love AXE. XYZ is my Music Star (For Axe Music Star promotion). We got 200+ people adding their photographs. Asking users to update their status messages and

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uploading user generated videos created a lot of buzz in the community.

q

This club is run by the Angels. Currently we have 5 moderately active angels and 3 super active angels.
E E E E E E E E

We launched highly engaging applications, games and virals on Facebook which directed the users and their network to the community

Alisha Fashionista, Film Critic Sophia The cute college chick Rhea The musical rockstar! Simran The hot Punjabi kudi Tanya The Gym Babe Lydia The corporate hottie Kelly The sexy bartender Natalie The bold Biker babe
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Planning & Outreach

q

We started off with 5 Axe angels who would drive the audience to join the official Axe community The Axe Angels Club. The challenge was to make the AXE Angels a part of the daily lives of thousands of users

Quick Tips:
Dont sell but engage - Rather than Selling the brand, we made these 8 angels the brand ambassadors which helped us attract fans towards the brand, not only in terms of awareness, but also in terms of trials, purchase, consumption and repeat purchases. Give a face to your brand to build better connect - It became far easier to connect to the audience with a face; especially when that face was that of a character and more and more consumers continue to interact with them daily, driving user generated content and virility to the community.

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Over the course of last 9 months the Facebook page has really grown. Apart from the girls living and showing off a sexy Axe life - they connect with the TG on what would be interesting to them. i.e. Cricket, Football, Music etc Topical conversations - Guys love women who know their Sport!
E

During the IPL, each Angel supported a different team. This allowed us to maximise conversations and we used the IPL to our benefit! Similarly during the Football World Cup, the Angels again supported different teams!

There are regular contests, product sampling and surveys; TVCs are released here before they hit the channels. Updates and posts revolved around the latest Axe fragrance, introducing fans to the product and educating them about it with content bringing out the Mischievous side of Axe Men We avoid pushing the brand on the page but once in a while the brand message is subtly put out and people appreciate that too. 2 cities, we are now recognised as one of the most active Youth brands in India on the digital medium.
q

Now at 4,50,000+ fans, Axe angels club is in the list of top 5 Facebook fan pages of India and reaches out to 1.2 million users on a daily basis. If you add up the total minutes spent on AXE Angels Club on Facebook in the month of August, 2010 it comes to 49,650,000 minutes! That is nearly 50 Million minutes!

Impact Outcome
q

The Axe angels club is now one of Indias largest and most well engaged fan pages on Facebook. Apart from Sales having increased in the Tier 1 and Tier

What Next
E E

To hit 1 million fans To be the largest and most engaged community by the end of the year.

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Why social media can be so unsocial

Anurag Batra
Chairman and Editor-in-Chief exchange4media group

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I am from the generation that grew up without ACs, mineral water or even toilet paper. It was a magical time, without internet (and obviously no social media), where relationships ran deep and interactions were full of quality. Instead of playing a virtual Farmville on Facebook, we played with marbles, gillydanda and cricket with real friends. The physical touch wasnt missing what mattered was the one-to-one contact, and it took time to connect with friends and acquaintances, and build relationships. Today, all of us suffer from the dual syndromes of paucity of time and partial attention disorder. We have a million simultaneous things to do, and prefer to do all these things in virtual space, which allows for multi-tasking. Let me ask you a real question if you have a thousand friends on your Facebook account, and are still alone at home on a Friday night hunched over a computer screen, how many friends do you really have? In the virtual space, if you are not updating your profile on Twitter, Facebook, and the dozen other social media sites, do you even exist? Its interesting to note that the internet, digital media and social media are forcing human beings and marketers to become publishers, and marketing and connecting is becoming more about the relationships and lesser about the medium of communication. I am reminded of what Seth Godin said - that Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell. Social media is no longer a small movement; it is a force, and for the average marketer, it is no longer about whether to use it or not, but how to effectively use it and thats the real trick! As Avinash Kaushik tweeted Social media is like teen sex. Everybody wants to do it.
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Nobody knows how. When its finally done there is surprise its not better. Internet is the great equaliser. It is the medium that allows everyone to post their comment in the cyberspace, regardless of creed, social position, or gender. Everyone is allowed an opinion, and the internet keeps a record of every opinion that has ever been shared on it. This, however, poses a problem, where all opinions posted are less-than-sterling; in fact, it has come to a point where the content of social media and its seriousness is under doubt. Exclusivity is the new mantra, and you are now known by the friends that you do not keep rather than the ones that you do. Let me put it this way there are plenty of people who try to market their wares to me under the grab of conversation, and that just dilutes efficacy of the media quite like sms marketing on the mobile phones. Also, I hate the fact that there is no depth in social media relationships there is no pain or effort involved in building lasting relationships, and breaking a relationship is as easy as blocking a person from your contact list. To me, social media is an untamed animal for those who know how to respect its limits, its a great tool for keeping in touch with the world around (even casual acquaintances). The problem comes for those who do not know the limits of social media. I think its interesting when a person wants to broadcast an opinion to the world, but I draw the line at people who keep updating their Facebook, Google Chat and Twitter status on a minute to minute basis. I know of too many people (and colleagues) whose productivity in their work has been severely hit due to their overindulgence with social media. I am reminded of a recent decision of a technology firm which

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banned the use of laptops and other social media devices in meetings. After all, imagine making a presentation to a room full of open laptops and active cell phones how many people do you think are actually paying attention to the presentation? From a purely marketing perspective, social media shouldnt be the destination, and while it can be a value-add and the icing on top, it shouldnt be the main point you want your customers to be. There is no relationship building in the social media world that can match the loyalty you get from physically interacting with customers and talking with them face-toface. Even when a store is virtual, you can still connect with your customers on a real human level. A phone call now and then to the customers telling them how appreciative you are for their business goes a long way. The point is, social media is great at keeping loose contact with customers, but its not the main driver of real customer relationships. I was reading that

the success of Apple is based in no small part on the ability of Steven Jobs and his chat with his friends at any Apple announcement and at the annual Apple convention. While it is true that Apple has done a brilliant job in creating a brand essence that is both authentic and desirable, people still feel that they know Steve Jobs and that Apple isnt just a cold, tech company. He has been able to connect on a real human level using technology to help reach the masses, and yet many still feel like Apple is interested in them. This brings us to an important point the real essence of the relationship is built on how you treat your customers in the real world rather than just the virtual world, how your employees interact with them on a one-to-one basis, and how authentic your brand is.
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Ultimately, social media is just a tool to stay in loose contact with the world around you, and those who live just by social media will die by social media.

Click here to visit NM Incite

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website : Katalist Viewspaper Private Limited : 51-100 : Media (For Profit corporation) : Long term : Shiv Bhaskar Dravid, Founder and CEO : http://theviewspaper.net

Viewspaper: Creating and strengthening the voice of the youth

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Launched in August 2007 - The Viewspaper is fast emerged to become Indias largest youth paper. Based on the citizen journalist format, the organization has grown to a network of 5 sites with a UK edition and verticals in ads, careers, health and pet care. The Viewspaper network is receives 150000 visitors a month and till now around 4000 people have contributed to it.

dont have enough writers we will run out content. Therefore this activity has been constant from the day we started. The more successful we are with our marketing efforts the more content we are able to generate which directly results in greater readership and revenues.

Stakeholders
Our target audience is any person less than 35 years of age. However, till now we have mainly focused at college and school students. Within this we have targeted the young and opinionated individuals.

Approach
The very objective why Viewspaper was started was to get more and more young people to share their views and therefore getting more and more people to express themselves has been one of major goals and we constantly work towards increasing these numbers. As we are a startup we have always had limited funds to market ourselves and therefore we have used various channels and have relied heavily on writer referrals. When we started we used extensive poster campaigns in colleges and schools. We also conducted presentations at various education institutions across the country. We also used voluntary recruitment groups who would go and talk to people, organize presentations and put up posters. We built a community of Viewspaper ambassadors who promoted The Viewspaper across various colleges in the country. These

Executive Summary
The Viewspaper is the voice of the youth and the more writers and contributors it gets the stronger the voice becomes. This is what defines Viewspaper. We have used both the physical and virtual medium to build a community of highly active individuals. The actions taken have not been for a one time campaign but to build a long term closely knit family.

Background
Since we dont have any staff writers, getting more and more people to write and contribute is core to our business. If we
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groups were responsible for geographies and would constantly get support and guidance from the main organization. When we launched on day 1 we had 0 writers and by using all these techniques we got 30 writers in our 1st month and touched a writer base of 700 people by the end of the first year. As we grew we started employing other marketing methods such as emailing and Facebook Advertising. In July 2009 which is when most college students have summer holidays we sent out 1,00,000 emails and had around 500 queries coming in, out of which we finally selected 150 people. We generally found that for every Rs 1000 that we spent on Facebook we would get around 50 people to write in who would be interested in writing for us. It is important to note

that there is an extremely strict application process to become a writer with The Viewspaper. So for a person to become a writer he has to fill in a query form after which he is provided with some information over email. He then has to fill out an extensive application form which includes writing 2 articles of 500 words each. After this the application is reviewed and the person is informed about his selection or rejection. What this means is that we have had 4000 writers who have been selected till date to write for The Viewspaper but the number of applications that we have received is substantially greater. To keep our writer base engaged, we have also held events and organized meetings and gathering from time to time. These efforts have resulted in greater referrals. To achieve these numbers we have not taken help of any agency and we have had a marketing budget of Rs 10,000 per month over the last 3 years.
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Planning and Outreach

We used Poster Campaigns
q q q q q

Presentations in Schools and Colleges Organising Workshops Organising Social Gatherings Emailing Facebook Advertising

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An online and offline engagement and recognition program Merchandising

This has resulted in the following:

q q q q q

5 sites 20000 articles contribute (approx) 6343 published articles 4000 contributors (approx) Contributors from 20 countries

Impact Outcome
It will be difficult for us to put number here as this would mean analysing the entire marketing effort of the last 3 years but the numbers below should give an idea of the outcome and impact.
q

Total marketing budget of the company over the last 3 years - Rs 7.2 lacs Marketing budget to recruit writers - Rs 3.6 lacs

Credits Strategy & Execution

We have used no external agency. All marketing effort has been done in-house.

Testimonials Quick Tips:

Dont be stuck in silos - SEO, Social media, design, email marketing writer support etc all influence our ability to get more writers. Efforts on Social media also had effects on SEO and design played a huge role on conversions
http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/04225924/This-mediaportal-presents-vie.html http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tv/brand-equity/ Showcase-The-Viewspaper---Voice-of-the-youth/ videoshow/5890907.cms http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Youths-in-the-Capitalfind-their-own-voice-create-niche-in-media/334078/ http://www.tubaah.com/details.php?video_id=114804 http://www.tedxyse.com/ http://bit.ly/c426gB
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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Ashoka-and-Staples-Announcebw-2423678322.html?x=0 http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6710082.cms

are now looking to build a writer base in the UK. There is also a possibility of us moving into regional languages which we believe will be an extremely challenging. We have built a community of intelligent and thoughtful young people on limited budgets. Our objective is not just to get another Facebook fan or a twitter or RSS follower. That in our opinion is a spur of the moment, one time action. We have always tried to bring in people who are committed and willing to put in their time and effort by committing a certain number of articles to us. It will be interesting to note here that the average number of contributions per person to the Viewspaper is 5 which means that a person is spending at least 10 hours of his time in writing articles with no guarantee of whether it will be accepted or not. That in our mind shows the kind of committed and loyal community we have been able to build.

What Next
In the recent months with the launch of our topic specific verticals we are now trying to target people who are interested in a certain topic such as advertising, health, careers, fashion etc. Therefore, our target audience is now expanding from college and school students to young professionals working in specific sectors. We have plans of launching 50 new verticals in the next year which means that we will be targeting 50 of such sectors in the coming months. Apart from this we are now looking to find people who will commit even greater amounts of their time to us by creating video and audio content for us. Our foray into the UK market means that we

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook : UTV Movies : N/A : Media (For profit corporation) : Short term : Imran Khan, Research Manager, The Nielsen Company : http://www.utvmovies.com/ : http://www.facebook.com/ utvmovies

Bollywood Buzz Assessing the effectiveness of

online advertising

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Launched in February 2008, UTV Movies is one of the 24-hour premium Hindi movie channels that is the brand extension of UTV Motion Pictures - one of the largest Hindi movie studios in India. The Nielsen Company is a global information and measurement company. Nielsens BuzzMetrics services deliver trusted brand metrics, meaningful consumer insights and real-time market intelligence to help clients apply the power of consumergenerated media (CGM) to their businesses.

Background
UTV Motion Pictures decided to engage with Nielsens Online division to understand how movie-goers react to the PR/official promotional activity leading up the release of the movies, along with how movie-related multimedia goes viral. In addition, we gauged the effectiveness of UTVs online advertising by measuring the reach and buzz worthiness of the paid ads and multimedia content of the upcoming releases (images, songs, video clips)

Stakeholders
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UTV Motion Pictures marketing and research division commissioned the study, under the stewardship of the CEO of the UTV group. The results of the study would be used to re-allocate the marketing spend across the various consumer touch points (print, radio, TV, online)

Executive Summary
The research was conducted for UTV Movies in Q1 2010, using proprietary Nielsen Online tools to measure the buzz for 6 movies that were released in the same time period. The study measured the impact of paid vs non-paid online advertising-- by comparing audience metrics on consumer generated media (CGM) and traditional online portals. The results were used by the client to take a closer look at whether the websites they were currently advertising on, provided the maximum buzz for their bucks

Approach
Project time frame: 6 months (Jan 2010 June 2010)

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-Nielsen used its AdRelevance application to determine the sites on which UTVs banner ads ran and the typical page impressions that the sites get -BuzzMetrics was used to analyze the conversations about the 6 upcoming UTV movies, and uncover whether the links from UTVs paid/promotional sites were being shared by consumers (to determine its viral effect)

Quick Tips:
Buzz via paid vs. non-paid - We determined that there is higher buzz being generated through non-paid advertising, compared to paid advertising. Where are you putting the money - The sites where the maximum ad spends were made, were not necessarily contributing to the buzz i.e. links which were being shared by consumer, and hence going viral
Our analysis furthers the cause of using social media to measure the impact of online promotional activities by checking what consumers are saying and how they are reacting, rather than just gauging them, based on clicks through and page impressions.

Planning & Execution

Using proprietary online advertising measurement (AdRelevance) and social media measurement tools (BuzzMetrics), Nielsen Online (NOL) was able to:
q

Determine the sites where the maximum conversations about Bollwood movies took place Determine the reach of the online properties where UTV has advertised its upcoming films Determine what are the drivers of buzz surrounding the upcoming releases and how movie content is shared (how do they viral)

Credits Strategy and Execution

Self

Impact
q

What Next
The study has helped UTV take a second look at its allocation on offline/online promotional activity. And for online: the results bring forth the idea that consumer generated media (CGM) sites/discussion forums are vital properties on which to advertise, rather than just traditional online properties. Traditional non-CGM sites may provide the reach, but CGM sites provide maximum impact!

Nielsen Online was able to determine the leading social media forums on which Bollywood discussions take place and analyze what specific aspects of upcoming movies do users converse about By using audience measurement tools, Nielsen Online determined the reach of CGM sites compared to portals

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook Twitter : MTV India : N/A : Media : Long term : Sharda Mandal, Manager Digital, Viacom 18 Pvt. Ltd. : http://www.mtvindia.com/index.html : http://www.facebook.com/mtvindia : http://twitter.com/mtvIndia

MTV Using social media to narrowcast to the Indian youth

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MTV, launched in 1996 is one of the Indias leading multimedia youth platforms. It caters to the interests of 1534 year olds, offering them an exciting mix of music and nonmusic programming.

Executive Summary
MTV India has made its presence felt in the online world through the various social networking sites. We have an active account on Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and You Tube with a huge fan following & with this active online presence MTV has stood true to its new motto Beyond Music Beyond Television. This has been the best way to enhance engagement with our valued consumers and further extend community of followers.

Stakeholders
Dedicated online users between the age group of 13-30

Background
MTV is one of the most powerful youth brands globally, it was imperative to develop this brand in India beyond the TV channel. Social Media and Networking were important platforms and progressive to connect with the youth of India. It was imperative for MTV India to develop a science for consumers to connect with this brand via a media of their choice.
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Approach
q q

To capture the audience where they are most engaged To create online platforms to engage with different demographic groups To develop compelling online content

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To showcase MTV as an approachable medium ensuring that there is certain element of belongingness amongst the youth Use social networking platform to deliver information, to enrich the consumer experience and ensure that they become a valued and loyal consumer.

them closer to the BRAND, our SHOWS and our VJs

q

Running regular contests and giving away prizes. [FB Freak (Fan of the week), MTV-HITS, beat that tweet etc.] Sharing exclusive content/uncensored footages User generated content through these social networking sites are also used for on air shows.

q q

Generate wider online footprint through online marketing and Social networking media promotions (FB, Orkut ads) and strike relevant eyeballs through TV.
q

How has this initiative been received by them so far The number of fans is an answer to this question:
q q q q

Orkut 3,43,148 YouTube 2,724 Twitter-1,47,782 followers

Online Media and Social Media were the primary platforms and were used to drive engagement with the Digital Show. Ads on Facebook and Orkut. FB presence on MTV India website widget
q

Word of mouth and status updates.

Planning and Outreach

Youth centered activities that appealed our fans are stated below:
q q

One of the fastest growing communities on Facebook and Orkut. We have innovatively combined the aspects of social networking with personalization and in a process of building loyalty through compelling brand experience. We successfully track the conversations taking place within the framework of social networks. As an organization we are leveraging the power of these new social networks to create innovative & original brand experience.

Connect consumers to brand MTV Link to the sense of aspiration and bring

Impact Outcome
q

Orkut community numbers have increased to a growth of 3,43,148 members.

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Campaign used a mix of TV, online and in-channel promotions to popularize the initiative and urged interested fans to sign up, become members of the MTV community on Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Astons and in show promotions

Facebook 7,99,624

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Facebook fanpage now has a magnificent 7,99,624 fans.

q

Quick Tips:
Think about monetization as marketers move in, users move out! Also when the users submit inaccurate information on their profile, our marketing efforts might not be aimed at the right audiences. Develop long-lasting relationships - provide a customer-centric experience that combines community and social networking, consumer-generated content, viral and word-of-mouth marketing.

Twitter profile has 1,47,782 followers

q

You Tube channel started in Nov has 2,724 subscribers

q q E

Also, is

#25 Most Subscribed (All Time) India #12 Most Subscribed (All Time) Directors India
E

#74 Most Viewed (Today) India

E

#27 Most Viewed (Today) Directors India

E

#70 Most Viewed (This Week) India

E

What Next
Our purpose is to provide a unique destination for like-minded consumers and our brand to interact with each other and develop advocacy. This is an ongoing process and will continue as long as possible. We are due to create unique experiences on social media platforms, allowing consumers to relate with different attributes of their personality.

#25 Most Viewed (This Week) Directors India

E

#33 Most Viewed (This Month) India

E

#16 Most Viewed (This Month) Directors India

E
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Channel [V] Building buzz using Twitter and mobile social networking around the re-launch

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by : Channel [V] : N/A : Media : Short term : Sanjay Mehta, Co-Founder, Social Wavelength and Sameer Agarwal, Director Marketing, Rocketalk : http://www.channelv.in/index1.php : http://www.facebook.com/ channelvindia : http://twitter.com/channelvindia

Website Facebook Twitter

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Channel [V] is a music and entertainment channel, and part of the Star group, owned by News Corp.

Social Media platform as well, as the core TG for the brand was very active on the space. A decision was taken then, to utilize Social Media along with other marketing initiatives, for this re-launch. More specifically, the new platform of Twitter was identified for these two specific campaign activities, as being the perfect platform for the impulsive and viral run that could be obtained for these campaigns. Overall, during the launch phase of the channel in July and August, all the popular Social Media platforms, viz. Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and YouTube were used. However what we would like to highlight in this case study, are a specific couple of Twitter based initiatives that were employed.

Executive Summary
Channel [V] was in a unique position in terms of having a focused TG that was well aligned to the Social Media usage profile in India. With a clear objective of creating awareness about the new Bloody Cool Channel [V], the Social Media campaign identified and executed, especially via Twitter, worked quite well. Also in doing so, it got Channel [V] going into the active realm of Social Media, and engagement with its users.

Stakeholders
q

Primary stakeholders - consumers and potential consumers, of the television channel which comprised the urban and semi-urban, educated youth, largely in the sub-25 age group, in India Secondary stakeholders to be engaged included the senior management within Channel [V]

Background
Channel [v] was being re-launched in a new avatar, with significant changes in television programming, positioning, tag line, style, etc. Almost like a rebirth. This was in August 2009. The time was ripe then, to extend the engagement to the
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Approach/ Strategy
q

The most important communication that we needed to get out was that Channel [V] was changing. So change was one of the key buzzwords

Casebook1 q Beyond that it was important to

communicate WHAT this change was about. In a simple quick communication, a different logo after many years, for a well recognized brand, serves the purpose of communicating that some change was afoot. It was important then, to see how we could get the logo in front of maximum number of people
q Keeping these objectives in mind, the

However what we would like to highlight in this case study, are a specific couple of Twitter based initiatives that were employed. Activity 1 was called iSawTheChange. Use of Twitter
q

q The duration of this specific launch phase

campaign was going to be about 1 month, from late July, till the launch date of August 22, 2009
q The overall budget for this one month

phase, including the fees paid to Social Wavelength, was around Rs. 2 lakhs

Along with their answer, we asked for their Twitter credentials as well. And in doing so, we (after their permission) sent out a tweet on their behalf, that said, Hey @ChannelvIndia I saw the change on http:// iSawTheChange.com . 10 Daily Prizes and 10 iPod Nanos to be won! As this tweet reached the followers of the participant, more intrigue was created and others would click and reach the same URL and many of them participated too. This contest was played around a 1000 times, and the viral impact of the tweet stream enabled the brand to reach multi-fold number cumulatively.

Planning & Outreach

Overall, during the launch phase of the channel in July and August, all the popular Social Media platforms, viz. Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, YouTube etc. were used.

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goal was identified as being able to reach out to maximum number of people with the communication of change and the visibility of a new logo of Channel [V]

We created a web page where we put a collage of our various popular characters and icons, from over the years. Over a period of 15 days, we would make one small change on this graphic every day The challenge to the users was to track the image daily and identify that one change. And once they did so, they had to convey their answer to us, via a very small form on that same page.

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Activity 2 was called On Yours. In this case, an application was built, which allowed people to register, and then opt to swap their personal Twitter Display Pictures, with the new Channel [V] logo. The swap would work on a random basis for 50% of time. Or in other words, on a random basis, half the time, the users own personal DP was visible, and for the other half, the new Channel [V] logo was visible, as the users profile picture. The inducement for people to do this, was in terms of gratification. Any user who stayed registered for at least 5 days, was given a Channel [V] T-shirt (of course, with the messaging of the changed channel, and its new tag line, Bloody Cool). And for lucky few, there were bigger prizes involved. There was excellent adoption of this activity. We generated good participation.
q

campaign in the real world We did measure the growth of Twitter followers, Facebook fans (as an accompanying by product), the conversations generated, the RTs that we got, the stats on the two web pages, etc.

All in all, these numbers all represented results beyond our expectations. While we were trying to create communication that the TV channel, Channel [V] was changing for the better, we also achieved a great secondary objective.

Credits Strategy
q

Social Wavelength, Mumbai, represented by Sanjay Mehta. In fact, the strategy was completely thought out by them, and we simply sanctioned the same

Credits Execution
q

Social Wavelength, Mumbai, a team led by Mihir Karkare, handled the execution

Impact Outcome
There was a great participants in both activities, and through their participation, the message reached to a vast audience
q

Testimonials
q

While the activity of iSawTheChange would have been visible to more than 100,000 people, the changing logos at On Yours created a buzz equivalent to a large billboard

On Aug 13th, 14th and 22nd, 2009, respectively, @ChannelVIndia was rated as 2nd, 4th and then The Most Popular Twitter user from India. Details in presentation referred above. Medianamas coverage of the activity Manuscrypt / Manu Prasads coverage of this activity

q q

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Quick Tips:
The medium is all about viral factor. If we make the application fundamentally tuned to be viral, we are giving ourselves the best opportunity to spread the fire. Gratification is good. But it does not have to be very expensive. A simple T-shirt is enough to generate interest and excitement. A little debate does not hurt. There were some who questioned the logic on the On Yours activity. Why do people trade in their DPs, for example? And why were they seeing Channel [V] wherever they looked on Twitter. But while there was a sense of critical feedback here, it helped in keeping the interest and the buzz alive.
Channel Vs exhausted was a reality game show that required 6 finalists to stay awake for more than 48 hours, doing impossible tasks

Task
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Channel V was re-launching. V-Exhausted was to be their launch contest-reality show on TV They were seeking a low cost marketing solution that could penetrate Provincial India for high brand visibility at low cost and that enabled rich media creation, sharing and consumption

What Next
The launch phase itself, was a one-off effort. However it showed us the merits of interacting with our stakeholders on Social Media. Since that point in late August 2009, we have continued to engage our TG, and created several other specific efforts and many ongoing activities, on Social Media. We have used Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, to promote shows on air, call for entries to reality TV shows, and for completely independent Social Media specific activities as well.

Approach
q

RockeTalk replicated the same on its social mobile environment, using a programme called Wake-a-thon!

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A new build was developed for Channel [V]. Although the campaign was available on the basic RockeTalk environment too

8 RockeTalkers selected to play

E E

Tasks given every few minutes, videos posted live Inbox messages sent to all promoting the 8 finalists

Planning & Outreach

q

Launch activity: Wake-a-thon

E

Outcome
q q q q

Sample - You can win a Digital Camera; simply answer 48 questions in 12 hours. Think you can do it? Be part of 12 hour Channel [V] Exhausted Wake-a-thon from 21st Aug 11 pm to 22nd Aug 11 am. We will send you the details shortly in your inbox. Audio jingles promoting the contest auto-played when page rendered.

Channel V/Wake-a-thon Videos viewed - 2,54,431 Channel V contest questions attempted - 43,729 Channel V/Wake-a-thon banner impressions - 27,50,111 Unique users who saw Login message about Channel V 1,98,466 Impressions for System Buzz sent for show introduction and TUNE IN - 27,50,111

Qualifying stage: preliminary contest

E

Short-cut to fame inviting user-generated video content

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Click here to visit MediaNama

Click here to register

Doing the math on social media

Karthik Nagarajan
Director, Online Division The Nielsen Company

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Yesterday, I read a press report that said Asia has been declared Facebooks fastest growing theatre (apparently a term used internally by Facebook to denote different market regions). While the Indian user base at 13 Million is certainly not the largest, it definitely is among the fastest growing markets. The report goes on to say that when adjusted for the Indian internet-using population, this FB user base grew from being 11 of Indian internet population in Jan 2010, to over 18 percent in June 2010. In a recent survey that we did at Nielsen, among social media users, more than 57% of respondents claimed that they started using Twitter only in the last 12 months. That means that one out of every two Twitter users, signed up post August 2009. Now, think about this about 2.1 Million smart phones were sold in India in 2009. This number is expected to double over the next 2 years. This is likely to further fastrack social media adoption. These are amazing numbers! And the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that we are at the beginning of what seems to be a mini social media revolution in India. Call me a romantic, but I dont recall any other web trend that we as a country embraced so early and in so much volume, as we are doing with social media not even e-commerce. What does all this mean to you, if you are a brand? More people will interact with your brand online. Communities will be formed and captive audiences will be created. But most of all, you will get to Listen to uninhibited, unprompted and passionate conversations about brand experiences. And I think that is a luxury that marketers of today have the ability to tune in to the all important consumers mind and to do that in close to real time.
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So where are these conversations happening?

While social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and Ibibo have become a part of prime time folklore, the most underrated social segment are the discussion forums, message boards and review sites in India. Below is the list of top 10 forums in India, based on volume of conversations in the last year (as measured by Nielsens BuzzMetrics tool). Notable boards forum.santabanta.com india-forums.com in.answers.yahoo.com pagalguy.com apnicommunity.com Demographic/Site Description Bollywood celebrities and entertainment Hub for Indian TV and movie news and gossip General Q&A site MBA admission/Business school prep forum General interest forum with high volume of entertainment and humour posts Celebrity and entertainment forum Travel and tourism site popular with foreigners living in India Indian defence and military affairs-interest Bollywood interest forum Indian travel and auto enthusiast website

funonthenet.in indiamike.com forums.bharat-rakshak.com bollywoodhungama.com bcmtouring.com

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While it is clear that we as an online market are obsessed with our films (like most of the markets in the world), it is interesting to see generic sites like Yahoo! Answers and Pagalguy.com in the top ten. Innumerable brand-related reviews and conversations happen on these platforms everyday. Nothing brings out the importance of these forums more than the fact that 50% of consumers in India, use social media sites to help them make purchase decisions (Source: Nielsen consumer confidence survey, 2010). And online product reviews are the third biggest influencer of buying decisions (only after family and friends). This is especially true for consumer electronics and durables, where 3 out of 4 social media users have read an expert review in the last 12 months.

means a teen forum. In fact, 37 percent of heavy users of SN in India are between 20-30 years old and the age segment that is most likely to click on an ad in a SN site is the 31-40 year olds. Having said that, if you are a youth brand, you need not get disheartened by these numbers, as 3 out of 4 teens have become fans of at least one brand online and 60 percent of 1520 year olds spend at least 30 minutes a day on SN sites. With all this action happening on the social media market, the million dollar question for marketers is OK. So who is tapping into this today? And who are doing it well? And most importantly, what are the best practices? This is precisely where this initiative by India Social cannot be lauded enough, for this book is your one-stop-shop answer to all of these questions. As I conclude, the overwhelming feeling that I get is, that if I were asked to write this piece a year from now, the numbers would have grown exponentially. And I believe that voice is definitely not coming from the romantic, but the researcher in me.

This probably is among the most incorrect myths about the online market in India. While the average age of people on SN sites definitely does not begin with the number 3, it is by no

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What about the SN sites? Arent they all about teen talk?

Are you missing

revolution?

the digital

Ramanujam Sridhar Communication Consultant, Author,

Columnist, Teacher, Trainer, Cricket Enthusiast and a Passionate Social Activist

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In the eighties, some of my classmates went to the US to study further and I was a bit envious of them. The reason? The US was going through a sexual revolution or so one read and here I was sitting in India where even the green revolution was a flop. When they returned a few years later a little rounder if not much wiser, I asked them eagerly about their experiences and they said rather shamefacedly I missed it. It just passed me by. Now when I see the digital revolution taking over the marketing the world over, I am reminded of this incident. Is our generation, which has its fair share of industry leaders, missing the digital bus? Now why am I saying this? Consider this. What is the greatest challenge that Indian marketers are facing. To my mind it is simple Heads of marketing in companies are in their forties, Managing directors are in their fifties, while consumers are in their twenties! Enough and more has been said about the Indian youth market, its size, its complexities and its obvious potential as a market. What does the Indian youth particularly urban youth have similar in broad characteristics to youth the world over? They are a plugged-in community and are either on the mobile or on the net 24/7. They can bare their souls to complete strangers unlike us who are tighter than clams. They have the attention span of nano seconds and are bored easily. They are not satisfied with what they are born with and what to equip themselves with to meet the demands of the world. If that means preparing for IIT so be it. If that means taking a year off from school to compete in Indian idol, then that too is par for the course! So where is the problem?

It is all in the attitude honey

Belonging to generation X, I believe we are different. We are unable to accept generation Y as our equals and peers, as my second son says quite succinctly Dad, the problem with you is that you are a dangerous combination. You are both a teacher and a parent. Teachers lecture and parents advise. You do both! So maybe it is time for us to do more introspection if we are to understand youth and their medium better. Are we still in the world of print and television while they are online? The other challenge is technology. Some, not all, of our generation are technologically challenged. I wonder how many of you have seen this commercial for R world, a value added services provided by Reliance communications. As it is a few years old, let me jog your memory. There is a class of young school children who are being taught. A parent of one of the children is standing outside the class, desperately trying to get his young kids attention. The kid desperately looks the other side. His friends draw his attention to the fact that his dad is outside and he comes out reluctantly from the class, only to be asked by his dad how he can see the score on his mobile. The kid looks at his father disdainfully says Bus button dhabao and gets him the score in a flash. As luck would have it, Dhoni hits a six and the father does a gig in the corridor, to the disapproving glares of two nuns who pass by. It is a brilliant commercial which addresses the consumer insight of how children take to technology like ducks to water while their parents struggle to come to terms with it.

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Opportunity beckons
I was at a seminar recently where one of the speakers asked an interesting question to a group of Managing directors of PR agencies How many of you have Facebook or LinkedIn accounts I am not going into the answers here. But my question is simple. If the next generation is in a different medium, should we not try to understand and harness it, for our own good? How long can we keep talking about being technophobes and take pride in being pencil and paper types? The same challenge is with advertising agencies. Todays agency heads have been reared on the picture tube.

To them life is one long thirty second commercial. They do not understand the online medium, much less create for it. Clients too are experimenting with the medium much like radio in the nineties, without going the whole hog. I believe that while there are changes around us that we can all feel good about, I do not wish us to have the Indian mentality- Look how much we have achieved in sixty years. Yes, but there is so much more to be done. I think, perhaps the best expression that comes to my mind when we talk of India and the online medium is that we have miles to go before we sleep. And if we do not traverse those miles now, we will end up having sleepless nights.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Orkut : Tata DOCOMO (Tata Teleservices Ltd) : 501-1000 : Telecom (Brand) : Long term : Shitij Jain, Brand Manager : http://www.tatadocomo.com/ : http://www.facebook.com/ tatadocomo : http://twitter.com/tatadocomo : http://youtube.com/tatadocomo : http://orkut.com/tatadocomo

TATA DOCOMO Fighting the telecom incumbents on social media front

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Tata DOCOMO is a leading Telecom service provider. The brand stands for doing the new and its spirit of innovation.

Background
Why Social Media? When Tata DOCOMO was planning to enter the Indian market as the 9th GSM operator, it faced entrenched incumbents and strong brand communication barriers from other telecom operators. However Tata DOCOMO was determined to change the game and cut through the clutter through pure innovation and doing the New. At the very core of the Social Media strategy was the idea of humanizing a telecom brand and make it warm, friendly and conversational. The strategy was simple yet engaging. Reach out to every corner of the web and to every possible TG not as a corporate brand but as a friend willing to engage the consumer in a one-on-one dialogue on anything and everything pertaining to the brand, its offers, its deficiencies as well as anything to do with telecom per say. The desired outcome was clear in everyones mind to build the most loyal set of beta customers who will champion the brand in their microcommunities at every moment. Social Media became the first opportunity which had not been picked up by most Indian brands in June

Executive Summary
Many independent observers refer to Tata DOCOMO as a child of Social Media. In effect that is quite close to being the strategy for Tata DOCOMO even before the time the brand was officially unveiled. Social media has helped Tata DOCOMO connect with the youth of India like few brands have managed. Even after every telecom brand launched per second tariff the brand continues to be the fastest growing telecom brand. Our fans are passionate; they love the open, honest and approachable brand ethos. Social media is the focal point of making this happens. Many brands have been on social media but few have probably been a friend to each of their fans individually. A friend who chats with them, solves their problems, engages them to design products and services and even hear and act on criticism. It takes a lot of effort to achieve this, and the fact that we do is testimony to the impact of social media to our business
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2009 leave alone the telecom operators. It was unchartered waters but we knew that Social Media connects us with the exact TG that the brand wanted to associate with. It further had the wow element and was clearly doing the New. The perfect reason for Tata DOCOMO to draw up an extensive strategy to harness the power of Social Media and build the brand with its consumers.

Stakeholders
The stakeholders were the youth of India specifically 15-24 urban. The entire execution is highlighted in the next point. The response has been phenomenal. Today Tata DOCOMO has direct fan/follower base of more than 3 lakh and a secondary reach of over 6 million. Today there are more than 1.5 million views of Facebook Status updates alone with a very high engagement percentage.

Tata DOCOMO has constantly launched consumer engagement programs with a heavy social media angle. This has helped us build repeat engagement points with a large number of our fans. Be it dietsms which was rolled out exclusively through social media, Ageekthing which involved Orkut and Facebook applications, gadgets and automated Twitter tools or Happy DO Year which could be played through Facebook, Twitter or Orkut.
q

Approach
The Tata DOCOMO social media strategy has been carefully built on five pillars.
q q

Address and resolve complaints Even before the launch of social media engagements, a dedicated customer response mechanism was laid out for priority resolution of all social media grievances / enquiries. Top management at Tata DOCOMO has taken great pains to make sure that literally the buck stops when an issue is raised through social media channels. From activation problems, network issues, handset settings or billing related matters, every single issue has been promptly addressed and resolved. Comes as no wonder therefore that initially the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account was nicknamed the unofficial helpline. Crowd sourcing Very early in the social lifecycle of the brand, Tata DOCOMO realised it had hundreds of well wishers who were all brimming with ideas on new productservice offerings that could be a real differentiator for the company. The social team has repeatedly engaged with its beta consumers, collecting feedback about usage, preferences, bounced off product ideas and pretested concepts to help the product team develop compelling product service offerings. The icing on the cake was when we involved our

Build consumer engagement Build engagement beyond the day to day and one-on-one interactions with our fans and followers,

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technology savvy Twitter followers to hack into a social game launched by Tata DOCOMO as part of the geekthing contest and suggest ways to prevent others from doing so. Many of the recent product service launches like GPRS packs and parts of the buddyNet program have been built on crowd sourcing inputs.
q

Twitter Twitter typically has a more evolved and techy audience than that of the other Social Media platforms. Tata DOCOMO acknowledged the importance of these thought leaders and made sure they got their worth by following the brand. All products, offers and schemes were first announced to our Twitter followers before they were allowed on any other media. On many occasions Twitter followers were given teasers and prelaunch feelers much before the product was even in a state of launch readiness. Today Tata DOCOMO has more than 8850 followers and we know most of them by name. We have solved their telecom problems, passed on their messages to relevant people in the company and brought about resolutions or simply just said a hello when someone was missing in action for an extended period of time.

Build brand advocacy Continuous engagement and proactive problem resolution has helped Tata DOCOMO build extremely loyal fans on social media. Innovative ways of recognizing such efforts through fan of the week on Facebook and Twitter has further enhanced the cause. Micro communication With close to 100,000 direct followers and over 6 million secondary reach, all communication from Tata DOCOMO enjoys a sizeable instant audience. However, our social team remembers the names, occupations and past communications with thousands and thousands of our fans. This helps us micro communicate with each individual building a personal touch and therefore a high impact to our messaging.

Quick Tips:
Social media engagement is not about shouting promotions and offers - The key is to be able to have a two way dialogue with consumers. Paying lip service get one nowhere, it is important to define specific strategies that are relevant to the brand and implement them with rigor.

Planning & Outreach

A dedicated Social Media team at Interface was built to execute the plan. Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, YouTube accounts were opened up and optimized even before the brand launch took place. The website itself actively solicited visitors to sign up to the Tata DOCOMO communities months before it became a fad for others. The Social Media team set about targeting each of the Social Media platforms differently.

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Facebook Facebook clearly has a large influential community that was identified right at the start as being a major influencer of brand advocacy. Tata DOCOMO set about creating conversations among its fans on Facebook. Like Twitter a one-on-one communication was maintained with all its fans helping resolve problems, providing information and escalating issues. The community was kept engaged through a variety of status updated including discussions on TV commercials, jingles, product service launches and fun and games. Orkut Orkut has a mass user base and was identified as an important element in managing mass sentiment around the brand. The forum has been used both as a community feedback tool as well as a platform where free discussions were enabled on specific topics (either product-service related or band related). The platform has also extensively been used for contests to keep community members engaged. Today, there are more than 58,500 fans on Orkut. YouTube YouTube has been a central repository for all brand commercials and videos. Tata DOCOMO has made a departure from the traditional way of only uploading videos created by the brand to also showcasing user generated content, specifically animation videos submitted by users at the create.tatadocomo. com platform. Hi5, MySpace, BharatStudent, Rediff MyPages. In continuation of its strategy to be omnipresent in Social

Media, Tata DOCOMO has reached out to less popular social networking and community portals in India. It carries through the same brand promise of being everywhere that out potential consumers could be however small the reach of the portal might be. Third Party blogs and forum The Tata DOCOMO strategy with respect to third party blogs and forums were both proactive and reactive. Everyday 100s and 1000s of blogs and forums were scanned or any mention of Tata DOCOMO and whenever a user had posted a question, comment and complaint, the Social Media team made it a point to go and respond to resolve (wherever necessary) every post or comment. Tata DOCOMO has gone ahead and created official accounts on hundreds of blogs and forums and have always responded through its official id.

Impact Outcome
q

Each media of the social media strategy has helped Tata DOCOMO build a strong and loyal fan base amongst the youth and has unmistakably taken ownership of the innovator platform this firmly establishing the brand essence of do the New The brand values of honesty, transparency and sincerity have been well established in the minds of consumers. Tata DOCOMO social presence is not seen to be a marketing gimmick but a genuine effort to connect and engage with every fan and follower with sincerity and with the authority to solve their problems
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Tata DOCOMO has significant Klout on Twitter even when compared against global heavyweights. Today Tata Docomo Twitter Klout is equal to that of AT&T, though it has been achieved in a very short period as is evident by the meteoric rise displayed in the graph.

mention parameters like strength and passion outscore competition by a good distance
q

Grade of 87 means the Tata DOCOMO Facebook account ranks higher 87% of all Facebook accounts.

The social mention parameters like strength and passion outscore competition by a good distance Grade of 99.8 means the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account ranks higher than 99.6% of all Twitter accounts. The social

Credits Strategy & Execution

Interface Business Solutions (interface.co.in) is our Social Media Strategy and implementation agency and the success of Tata DOCOMO on social media would largely be attributed to the team at Interface.

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Testimonials
There are many independent reviews of Tata DOCOMOs social initiatives, a few are listed below: http://microreviews.org/social-media-presence-indian-telecommajors-1-Facebook/ http://microreviews.org/social-media-presence-of-indiantelecom-majors-part-2-Twitter/ http://microreviews.org/social-media-presence-of-indiantelecom-majors-part-3-website-and-blog/

http://www.prasanthp.com/2009/12/docomo-and-social-mediamarketing/ http://2020social.com/social-media-in-india-tata-review/

What Next
Social Media remains the cornerstone of Tata DOCOMOs consumer engagement strategy. Having established the social base, we are now looking to change gears and take social media to the next level leverage our social reach to impact the brand in real terms be it acquisitions or revenue.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook Twitter : Samsung Mobile : 5000+ : Telecom (Brand) : Short term : Ankur Sharma, Digital Manager : www.in.samsungmobile.com : : http://twitter.com/samsung_ mobiles

Samsung Corby Color Wars on Twitter Generating Buzz

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At Samsung, we see every challenge as an opportunity and believe we are perfectly positioned as one of the worlds recognized leaders in the digital technology industry. Our commitment to being the worlds best has won us the No.1 global market share for 13 of our products, including semiconductors, TFT-LCDs, monitors and CDMA mobile phones.

Brandtology, earlier this year (shared in detail below) derives that there has been an exponential (123% ) increase in the number of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions) over the previous quarter, taking Samsung to #4 in the Index (against #7 in the previous quarter). The Samsung Corby Colour Wars on Twitter as part of our Social Media campaign is likely to have contributed to this jump (given that the index also showcases Twitter as the buzziest social channel). Our own post-activity analyses show over 3000 mentions of Samsung Corby, amounting to nearly 6,15,000 exposures. From a total of 3284 tweets with brand mentions in the 12 days, 2853 tweets were from the teams and other fans, leading to an overall exposure of around 6,15,750 exposures at the rate of 0.09 INR per exposure, our expense on the activity being a total of 58,000 INR.

Executive Summary
Samsung Corby Colour Wars was an initiative by Samsung Mobile India during the launch of its touch-phone, Samsung Corby an affordable and stylish touch phone, the first of its kind, for the Indian youth. In India, the Corby brief was to connect the dots around three key words Youth, social networking and colour. Samsung Corby Colour Wars brought all aspects of the brief together. We chose Twitter as the main platform for connecting stakeholders (supported by Facebook, Slideshare, and blogs as other touch points); chose a viral format to make it attractive to youth and brought out Corby colours at, literally, every little step of the activity. The Digital Brand Index 2.0, jointly brought out by Edelman and

Background
Samsung Mobile is the market leader globally for full-screen touch phones and has been focused on its touch phone strategy to grow its market share in India. In Sept 2009, the company launched Corby S3653, its first mobile handset designed to support the highly connected lifestyle of todays younger mobile users, complimenting the Companys existing touch screen strategy touch for every lifestyle. The Corby was a crucial launch for the brand given that it was the entry point for the company in the youth segment. The task at hand was to position Corby on three key planks colour, social networking & youth. As an important element of
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the product itself, social media had a significant role since the task was to create a unique experience for the customers on social networking platforms that would create awareness for Corby and build association in the product category.

Stakeholders
Taking Youth and Social Networking as the foci for the initiative, it was aimed at socially networked, online savvy youth both influencers and potential customers for Corby. The choice of medium for the initiative Twitter allowed engaging with the stakeholders extensively given its viral nature.

Top three Corby team leaders, who reached a certain set target of followers over the activity duration of 12 days, could win a Corby. Team members / followers of all 5 teams combined also stood to win a minimum of two Samsung Corby handsets, selected through a lucky draw The Team Lead with the maximum number of members/ follower in the team would also win Rs. 10,000 in cash Ensure that experience is the reward and everyone feels like a winner at end of the activity

Duration
q q q

Approach
Objective
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Planning: 20th Oct 30 Oct Execution: 02 November 13 November, 2009 Evaluation: 14th November 18th November

Create buzz and generate conversations around Samsung Corby in the launch phase to help the brand take a strong position in the youth and touch phone segment. Choose a viral format that connects Youth, social networking and colour as three key concepts associated with Samsung Corby

Resources allocated
q q

Five Corby phones for winners Rs 10,000 cash prize for the final winner

Concept
q

Budget
q

Five active, vocal Indian users were invited to form a Corby Colour team each (based on the 5 colour options for Corby available in the Indian market) Corby Colour Wars team leaders approached friends and asked them to follow the team colour. To join / follow a team, all participants had to tweet the teams hash-tag ONCE (vote would be counted only once)

Rs 58,000 (MRP of a Corby phone = Rs 9,600)

Planning & Outreach The internal discussion by the team was to make Corby Colour Wars like Big Boss with twists, turns, and soft controversies to generate talk and excite participants.

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Identifying the five Corby team leaders:

One of the important steps in planning for the initiative was to identify the five leaders for the Corby Colour Wars (given the success of the initiative was driven to a great extend by S.No. 1. Name @Praval - (Praval Singh)

the level of participation by the leaders). Based on certain parameters young (target group for Corby), highly vocal (to ensure enthusiasm) and having a strong network (to ensure reach), the team identified 12 target team leaders and reached out to them for participation. The following five team leaders were finally selected after securing their approval Bio Head - Strategic Solutions at Media Redefined A social technologies firm 18 yr old blogger, student, geek, content broadcaster and (EVIL) Tweeter. CEO of @Limespace Networks. Netrepreneur by Day, Super Hero by Night Knowledge Management Professional, Social Media Enthusiast, Amateur Filmmaker No. of followers on Twitter 1,279

3.

@Dhempe - (Hrish Thota)

2,809

4.

@baxiabhishek - (Abhishek Baxi)

5.

@monnikinom - (Monik Pamecha)

Geek / new media guy / photowalker / microsoftie / windows7 PC / blank noise guy / critical movies fan / windows mobile 14 - Blogger, Web Developer, Online Marketing Enthusiast, G33k, Watches lots of Movies, Loves Soccer, his comp and twitter

2,278

17,675

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2.

@Sensonize - (Mohnish Nagpal)

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Introducing interesting twists to drive conversations and build engagement:

q

Twist in the tale # 1 proposed team leads allow change of vote once lots of back-forth-tweets emerged. Team leads didnt agree Twist in the tale #2 brought down the number of followers to win, to 200 per team renewed interest in the game at end of week 1 Offered continuous back-end suggestions & support to the teams on how to build supporter base

Actively engaging to ensure the fun quotient was high:

q

Predictions and prophecies periodically shared the tally of the team leads always preceded by fun videos, songs, riddles Undertaking exit polls to drive interest among participants and push supporters Amplifying the natural twists in the game E.g. A team leader wanting to quit teasing, challenging and successfully getting him to jump back with renewed energy

q q

Sensonize came back with a vengeance into the game and went on to win the 2nd place
q

Taking a strong stand against spam and engaging with participants having identified the bots Facilitating the competitive build-up among players in a spirited manner Team leaders luring supporters by offering prizes at own behalf ranging from movie tickets, lockerz invites and even declaration of contributing 10% to charity

Team leader Sensonize wanting to quit the game This is how Samsung Mobile pepped him!
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Building hype for the grand final Periodic polls to evaluate the participants sentiment Great excitement among the participants

Exposure the total exposures received from the activity were 6,15,750*

Touch points and channels used Brand Samsung Mobile also utilized the thriving Corby community on Facebook as a channel of getting more participants over Twitter by sharing periodic updates, content. The real highlight were the touch points and channels set-up by the participants that helped build greater visibility * Exposures sum of all the tweets mentioning the relevant keyword, each multiplied by the number of followers of the person tweeting
q IndiaSocial
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q q q

Blog posts by team leaders & supporters Facebook event page set up by leaders & supporters Give-aways offered by team leaders on their own behalf to win supporters! Tracking mechanisms being put in place by the participants themselves

Engagement with stakeholders From a total of 3284 tweets with Samsung Corby mentions, 87% came from the participants.

Impact Outcome
As elaborated earlier, Samsung Corby Colour Wars did successfully bring all aspects the brief together. In doing so, not only did we generate huge buzz across the platform and other Samsung Mobile touch points for Samsung Corby, but also seeded Samsung Corby as the youth phone in the touchscreen segment.

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Three of Samsung Corby Colour Wars hashtags among the top 25 most trending topics in India*

Samsung ranked #4 among the top 10 buzziest brands in India, jumping 3 positions from the previous quarter July-Sept 123% increase in the no. of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions). It is noteworthy that the number of tweets (with Samsung Corbys mention) were 2853 contributing 56% of overall brand mentions Twitter was the top channel of buzz with 76 per cent of all mentions (118,150) found on the micro-blog platform

The activity was able to connect the brief with strategic objective of positing the Samsung Corby as a youth touch phone.

Credits Strategy
Blogworks strategic social media solutions
q

On Slideshare.com, the Corby Colour Wars Terms & Conditions document came into the Hot on Twitter section 8 times in the duration of the contest The findings of Digital Brand Index, an independent survey conducted by Edelman in association with Brandtology for the period Oct-Dec 2009 validated the impact of the Samsung Corby Colour Wars on Samsungs overall presence online

Credits Execution
Blogworks, Starcom (Buying)

Testimonials
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At the outset, thanks much for an opportunity to get involved in the fun Fun, yes, coz for me the idea of engagement was fun. And the way the tweets from @ Samsung_Mobiles motivated/teased/commented, everything

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came out as an entertaining and involving (very important) initiative rather than a hard lined marketing effort. Kudos to the team (and the individual managing the Twitter account)! It clearly showed the hard work put into the effort. Abhishek Baxi, Team Leader, Corby Colour Wars
q

Shimauli the Chief Buzz Officer of Buzallong highlights the Social Media Marketing campaign by Samsung Corby in a Blog post by Sorav Jain that compiles the Social Media Highlights of 2009

SamsungCorbyWars was fun! No matter who wins but it was a feeling which I could compare with the tug-of-war we did in high school. Praval Singh, Team Leader, Corby Colour Wars

What Next
Samsung has created Social Footprints and the engagement is growing. The Social Media journey for Samsung Mobiles has been received with great acceptance and initial excitement, and well be building on that in the future.

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook : Nokia : N/A : Telecom (Brand) : Long term : Songita Verma; Founder and CEO, Bloggers Mind : http://www.nokia.co.in/ : http://www.facebook.com/nokiae72

Nokia- email with ease campaign

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Nokia started its India operations in 1995. Nokia has established itself as one of the market and brand leader in the mobile devices market in India. The company has built a diverse product portfolio to meet the needs of different consumer segments and therefore offers devices across five categories ie. Entry, Live, Connect, Explore and Achieve.

Background
Nokia was primarily associated with mobile devices and attracting users towards email solutions was a challenge. At the same time, there was a compelling need for people to access email on the move as it helped people work smarter. An in-depth consumer behavior study was conducted online that helped derive that the major bottleneck was its complexity to set up. The common user was perplexed with the way email needed to be configured and relied on their organization IT heads for help.

Stakeholders
The stakeholders engaged with were:
q q

Executive Summary
Email with ease campaign was launched in April 2009. The KRAs were to:
q

Business executives Entrepreneurs and SMEs

Help handhold mobile users in setting up their emails in 3 simple steps Educate them about the fact that mobile emails are easy to set up and they can do it themselves Clear perceptions around email configuration and the myth that it can only be handled by IT heads/geeks, increase adoption. A holistic consumer education and advocacy program was launched that reached out to over 10,09,822 active online consumers and helped increase adoption significantly.
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Senior/top management executives.

q q

E75 as a preferred option Tap into a wide segment of mobile users across the various Social Media touch points

Approach
q

Build thought leadership for Nokia in the mobile email segment Drive wider adoption amongst both advanced and aspiring users Increase awareness on Mobile Email and its benefits Establish the fact that its easy to set up mobile email Establish thought leadership for Nokia in mobile email

Duration: April 2009 till date. The campaign was initiated in April with the launch of E75 (Nokias business device) and was later merged into Nokia E72, the latest business device from Nokia, thus ensuring a long term approach and optimization. Resources: An expert panel with 8 specialists on email, 4 buzz specialists and campaign lead.

q q q

Build a community
q q q

Planning and outreach

The initiative was very well received amongst professionals from different walks of life, individual entrepreneurs and business professionals.
q

Step 1: Create a pull for early adopters (awareness) Step 2: Build advocates (credibility) Step 3: Trigger adoption (conversion)

Counter negative perceptions around mobile email, change consumer mindsets

q q q

Launch an education program Create awareness features and benefits Develop a platform which can be used to address email related queries
q

Capture the audience and build a communication channel: Capture a large audience via an interactive online widget that allows consumers to submit their queries and get expert tips. Influence and engage through an interesting two way dialogue: Launched a dedicated community for Eseries and other S60 users to interact and generate conversations around email on mobile Build a panel of experts to generate credibility: Created a panel of experts aimed at addressing and resolving consumer queries established trust amongst consumers looking for a solution.

Build conviction around the ease of use in setting up mobile email

q q
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Trigger conversations Ease of use, benefits

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Spread WOM through influencer relations: Seeded the E75 amongst influential bloggers to experience and demonstrate the benefits of email on the go, how to use NMS and set up corporate emails.

Quick Tips:
Adopt long-term strategies and build campaigns that are sustainable. Reach out to consumers and provide them a platform to speak up and share their problems Shape opinions via specialist guidance and build consumer confidence Understand the pain points of consumers at multiple levels and help them graduate to the next level.

Impact Outcome
q

Generated over 26,709 conversations, 12,987 comments and impacted over 8,72,8000 consumers over a period of 3 months Facebook and Twitter pages attracted over 3,000 fans and generated over 10,098 conversations, averaging 4092 + conversations per month 16,098 direct conversations triggered around Nokia Messaging and setting up corporate emails Developed an Indian mobile email community with over 13,000+ members, generating over 2500+ conversations The online help widget generated over 3000+ queries, over 2000 tips have been shared with consumers helping them resolve their issues Over 3000 profiles captured, close to 1000 consumers have acknowledged that the tips shared have allowed them to resolve their issues

What Next
Take the campaign to the next level and leverage on the current user base.
q

Use the power of influence and awareness to build advocacy and spread the word across a larger audience. Drive higher adoption and activations for Nokia Messaging (email solutions). Broad base the campaign to younger generations and middle management/students

Credits Strategy & Execution

Self

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Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook : Nokia : N/A : Telecom (Brand) : Long Term : Songita Verma, Founder and CEO, Bloggers Mind : http://www.nokia.co.in/ : http://www.facebook. com/pages/NokiaN97/112286308784600?ref=ts : https://twitter.com/_NokiaN97

Twitter

Nokia Reaching out to the influencers in Search for N

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Nokia started its India operations in 1995. Nokia has established itself as one of the market and brand leader in the mobile devices market in India. The company has built a diverse product portfolio to meet the needs of different consumer segments and therefore offers devices across five categories ie. Entry, Live, Connect, Explore and Achieve.
q

Executive Summary
The Nokia N97 was the first touch device in the high end Nseries segment. It was positioned to make ones internet experience personal through its customizable home screen that allowed one to select widgets of their own choice and create short cuts on the home screen itself for instant access. The KRAs were to:
q

Communicate the seamless experience via Nokias Ovi Store on the N97. A high decibel Social Media campaign was kick started with a virtual treasure hunt called Search for N. The hunt was to find clues that were centered on various aspects of the N97 such as the personal home screen, widgets, QWERTY keypad, etc which allowed us to familiarize the consumers with the device.

Establish the category personal internet and create excitement around widgets (since most people were not aware of what widgets are) Reach out to the technology leaders and explorers and highlight benefits of N97

Considering that the N97 was the flagship touch device in the Nseries category, it had its own learning curve, as it was a completely new interface for consumers. Also, the experience of Ovi store was an important consumer experience and the idea was to cultivate new habits of accessing widgets and apps, on the move. In the pre-launch phase alone, over 9,000 conversations were generated, that helped build huge excitement around N97 and the personal Internet experience.
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Stakeholders
Technology leaders are those who stay ahead of the technology curve and like to stay connected all the time. These are essentially the super geeks and young explorers who like to have the best of multimedia and productivity.

Build engagement
q

Engaged with consumers through Nokia Nseries and N97 community pages on Facebook and Twitter Drove conversations around N97, seek first impressions and discussions around key product attributes

Approach
Campaign objectives/goals
q

Duration: May 2009 (5 Day activity)

Create a WOW around N97 as a high end internet device and build excitement around widgets Drive activations for Nokias Ovi Store. Build excitement: in the pre-launch stage

Quick Tips
Use networks that are influential and command a high reach

After the end of the contest, all participants were reached out to and were converted into long-term advocates, as part of our communities. Resources A team of 5 Social Media specialists, 4 from the digital activation team.

Planning & Outreach

q

Launched Search for N, a virtual treasure hunt in association with popular technology bloggers and portals rope them in as web editors to drive the contest. Build buzz around the upcoming N97. Capitalized on the reach and popularity of the web editors and reach out to the tech and geeky community.

Identify the right web partners: Partner with sites and blogs having huge popularity and credibility amongst technology/ mobile followers. Create interesting content: Develop the hunt clues and questions in an innovative format that makes it a worthwhile experience for the consumers Deliver it through an interactive format: Design an interactive hunt for people to follow the clue and discover

q q

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the answer, yet make it simple and interactive maximize participation. Participate through Search for N Widget. Make it compelling for consumers through 360 buzz: Reach out to consumers across social media touch points, create hype and excitement around Search for N, inform and invite a large number of people.
q

Impact Outcome
q q q q q q q q

A whooping number of entries achieved over 5 days Total entries: 32240 Correct Entries: 21790 An incremental jump by 34.84% on the 4th day and 25.26% on the 5th day Crossed 4691 entries on the 1st day, adding an average of 5000+ entries on each day from 2nd till 5th More than 1000 participants waited anxiously every morning for the question of the day
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Triggered over 6000+ conversations, 4000+ comments, 30000 views Over 32000 consumer profiles were captured

The web editors: Thinkdigit.com, Techtree.com, Fonearena. com, Digital Inspiration and Brajeshwar.com The working mechanics:
q q q q

Credits Strategy & Execution

Self

Participate in Search for N Choose your web editor The contest was on for 5 days Each day, the web editors posted about a compelling feature of the device and the task for the participants to find the clue, guess the answer and submit it on the contest widget embedded on the sites.

What Next
q

Sustain the engagement and continue to drive adoption for Nokias Ovi Store. Leverage on the captured user base to build positive WOM around the upcoming Nseries internet enabled devices and apps. Use this as a platform to launch new products.

Dear Brands, Lets Get Social

Faisal Farooqui
Founder and Chief Executive Officer MouthShut.com

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On September 15, Financial Times carried a feature intriguingly titled: Diligent shoppers offer opportunity to manufacturers. Wasnt it supposed to be the other way round when manufacturers were supposed to provide opportunity to shoppers? Thats how it has had always been. The article states that today, two decades after the Indian market opened up its doors, Indian consumers are amongst the most demanding. And the Internet has definitely changed the way things used to happen in the good old past. Before buying a product, the average, city-bred Indian consumer does the rounds of various websites including MouthShut.com to scour for reviews. No more is it a case of a product being doled out to the hungry-for-choice consumer and he happily lapping up whatever is being dished out to him. It would be presumptuous to say that the good old way of doing business manufacturing a product and using general advertising methods is over. However, it would not be erroneous to point out that the focus points have definitely changed. At the risk of sounding too generic, let me just say that with the advent of Social Media, the consumers have gotten aware of their right to speak their minds and brands are now aware of this right. If the consumer is not happy with the deal he has got, he gets grouchy and lets the whole world know about it. Pradeep Chopra, a prolific blogger, once had a problem with ICIC Bank. When three visits to the branch did not help matters, he tweeted about it and the problem got resolved in the next two days. In December of 2007, his Apple Macbook started giving him problems. Plastic was chipping off near the keyboard and the battery would suddenly stop functioning. He gave it to an

Apple service center in Delhi. They promised to resolve the issue in three to four days but couldnt, or rather didnt even after fifteen days. Finally, a review on MouthShut.com was what caught the attention of the Head of Apple India. Pradeep was promptly given a new machine and even when that started posing problems he was given a refund. We have to understand that Social Media is 24X7X365 phenomenon. If the Internet revolutionized communication, Social Media has completely changed the way people use the Internet. Blogging, micro-blogging, product blogging, making and consolidating relationships is just the initial phase of Social Media. Internet history has not seen something like this boil in the browsers. Social Media is the harbinger of a revolution which has started redefining opinions and breaking stereotypes. Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from an editor-wall-reader model to an open system deep rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers. Social Media uses the wisdom of crowds to connect information in a collaborative manner. Companies are aware that their customers are talking about them and most are involved in adopting ways and means to adapt to this new reality. An increasing number of brands are now aware that there is something known as Social Media which is extremely viral and can make or mar their equity. Hence, agencies are being hired, Social Media cells are being set up within organizations to see what is being written on the Internet and understand what can be done. The buzz is
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extremely volatile; there is excitement in the air and all efforts are made towards listening to what the customer has to say. Worldwide companies are increasingly participating on Social Media platforms. In India, too, the trends have been very encouraging. I know for a fact that big brands like Eureka Forbes, Club Mahindra, Ezeego1, Kaya, Cox & Kings, Makemytrip.com amongst many others have jumped on to the Social Media platform. On MouthShut.com we have seen some of the biggest brands talking to their customers and resolving their issues using the Corporate Blog platform. Going beyond resolving issues, presence on Social Media platform is an affirmation of such brands commitment to their customers. Its importance lies in the fact that your customer knows you are there to listen to him. That according to me is the biggest plus. Since Social Media is at an evolving stage, some companies do falter in trying to come to terms with the rabble against them. The chatter of the consumer does get to them. Some still believe that by thundering SILENCE like a primary school teacher, the noise that consumers are making will die down. Those who try arm twisting techniques do not understand the might of the internet savvy consumer. Nothing is going to silence him. He is going to go hammer and tongs at a brand if he is not provided the desired service and quality. But most

brands are sensible to realize the growing power of the online consumer and try to engage him rather than antagonize him. A few misconceptions also need to be addressed. There is this notion that if you want to engage your target group, then you must bombard them with marketing strategies and initiatives. Today by merely being in touch with your audience you can engage them and keep them hooked on to your brand. More than a marketing strategy work out a communication strategy for them. Keep in touch with them and youre sure to have touched them. My suggestion to brands looking to engage their customers is: Do not perceive Social Media platform as a quick fix solution. Patience is the key. Float around with your ears and eyes open and your customers will float with you. Everybody is a winner in the Social Media space, no doubt about it. Remember Brand Managers, your average consumer is far more vocal today. He does not need a Letter to the Editor to voice his opinion. His voice is far stronger than what it is today. All he needs to do is sneeze which will create a viral effect. One blog on any platform can make or mar your image. So just dont sit there and bombard him with marketing initiatives. Listen to him and talk to him. Thats how he likes it.

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IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #3, Long term initiative

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Case submitted by : Cleartrip Travel Services Pvt. Ltd. : 101-500 : Travel (Internet Online Travel Agency) : Hrush Bhatt, Founder and Director, Product and Strategy : http://www.cleartrip.com/forums : http://blog.cleartrip.com/ : http://www.facebook.com/ cleartripfanpage : http://twitter.com/cleartrip

Cleartrip How the brand travels through social media

Website Blog Facebook Twitter

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Launched in July 2006, Cleartrip is one of the leading online travel companies in India. It is based on a straight forward premise of making travel simple for its customers.

Stakeholders
We believe that for any social media strategy, the customers (or the end users of the product) are really the most relevant stakeholder to engage. Our social media strategy has been built around this belief. Weve used our various social media touch points to gather feedback and improve products, provide troubleshooting, offer customer service.

Executive Summary
Cleartrip has upheld integrity and transparency as foundational values of our brand. Embracing these values has made it easy for the brand and the organization to have an active social media presencetapping every viable social media touch point we can to engage customers in dialogue and share with the online world.

Background
Cleartrips web marketing strategy is still evolving and it sees the web as just one part of the overall marketing strategy. Cleartrips initial marketing strategy relied heavily on print and television advertising to build brand awareness and search advertising to drive traffic. After establishing a threshold of brand awareness using traditional media, Cleartrip now uses online display ads for brand building and product launches, something we were not previously investing in.
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We have multiple cases where extremely irate customers (the Cleartrip episode by Kiruba Shankar, post 1 and 2) have been vocal on their blogs or Twitter and weve successfully reached out to them, taken care of their problems and turned them from complainers to evangelists. Our openness and willingness to admit our mistakes (the Kiruba incident, post 1 and 2) has established a high level of trust and preference among savvy users of social media (1). The proof of this lies in the level of chatter around the Cleartrip brand as compared to other brands:

q q

Twitter Facebook

Quick Tips:
Assess strengths and weaknesses of tools align your budget with your goals and use the most appropriate tool to meet that goal. If the goal is brand-building, display ads, viral and social media are good tools; whereas, if the goal is traffic-building, nothing beats search advertising Measuring and tweaking - lay out the metrics for a campaign in advance of its launch and constantly look at the data for patterns. Simple things like words and colours should constantly be tweaked, tested and measured to see which creative execution is best at meeting goals Choose where to focus - Being present on all outlets at all times can actually be very confusing because all web marketing is highly measurable and marketers often find themselves drowning in a glut of data and unable to measure cause and effect.
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Approach
Weve always been early adopters of social media tools. Social media marketing is easy if you avoid the cardinal sin of using the platform to deliver a sales pitch. Its counter-intuitive, because marketers want to sell; but the key to success here is not to be selling, but to be building relationships and encouraging conversations around the brand.

Planning & Outreach

We have used the following channels/touch-points to announce product launches, share interesting information/statistics related to the travel industry, educate the customer about this segment, and share our opinions on happenings in the online travel segment and the online world at large.
q q

Cleartrip Blog Cleartrip Customer Support Forum

IndiaSocial

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Impact Outcome
Social media is too new, but the key measure here should be how much chatter is being created about the brand. On Twitter, for instance, Cleartrip far outstrips its competitors as the most referenced and recommended online travel brand. This chatter demonstrates that we have a high degree of engagement with our customers. There are three key ingredients to executing a successful online marketing strategy

Strategy and Execution

Team Cleartrip.com

What Next
Were fairly happy with how all our social media initiatives are faring. The next challenge for us here is to scale the initiatives up and get a little more organized with respect to how we use these media as a company. Until now, all of the effort has been unstructured with ad-hoc support from various team members as necessary. Moving forward, we need to get more structured and involve more people from within the company in connecting with customers via social media.

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engaging travelers and enabling owners

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website : Mahindra Homestay : 11-50 : Travel (For Profit Corporation) : Long term : Japa Ghosh-Head of Marketing : http://www.mahindrahomestays.com/ Blog: http://blog.mahindrahomestays. com/ : http://www.facebook.com/ MahindraHomestays : https://twitter.com/indianhomestays : http://www.youtube.com/user/ MahindraHomestays

Mahindra Homestays

Facebook Twitter YouTube

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Mahindra Homestays is a unique Indian accommodation network. Launched in 2008, and initially targeting the UK and Indian tourist markets, it brings together a large number of premium family homes that have quality guest rooms.
They want to talk with brands, discover information and explore a relationship. For brands, this is a powerful opportunity. The obvious benefit of being involved in social media is exposure: directly, its a chance to market and create sales, sometimes immediate, sometimes years later a way of capturing and developing an audience; indirectly, its a way of improving and building on search engine rankings. For a new brand launching in India and in the UK we wanted to explore the exciting opportunities available to us through social media marketing.

Executive Summary
Mahindra Homestays has quickly established itself as a digitally-literate, self-assured and colourful brand that relishes dialogue and collaboration with its audience. Through innovative blog content and social media initiatives we have built the necessary foundations for any travel brand looking for success in the modern online marketing environment.

Background
Once it was an exception to find a brand involved in social media. Now it is an expectation. People want to find products and services using the familiar tools of their online travels: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to name a few.
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Stakeholders
The stakeholders we engaged through the initiative were our homestay owners who are delighted that we have provided this platform to engage with their visitors and prospective customers.

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Video has provided a great opportunity for the homestay owners to engage with the initiative, through a profile their property, giving viewers the opportunity to get a real insight into the homestay experience and get a taste of the hosts personality and the sort of hospitality they might receive.

The India Travel Blog: We created a branded blog on the website, designed to draw traffic and ultimately send it to the main site. We developed content strategically to appeal to different target audiences and niches, from yoga lovers to dog owners interested in pet-friendly accommodation. We used keyword techniques to capture search traffic on certain useful terms particularly longtail keywords where we saw an opportunity to get plenty of success. And we used lively editorial to communicate the brand in an interesting way and encourage dialogue. Our output over six months has included: 30 highly popular things-to-do articles covering key locations; features on Indian culture, history and traditions; stunning Indian photography collections; video tours of properties; original

Approach
Although, the time and resources across different social media has varied throughout the initiative we have chosen to work under six guiding principles and we feel these values have aided our success.
q

Be interesting we ensure we communicate worthwhile, engaging messages that people enjoy Be open we communicate in an open, collaborative and sharing way with the people who engage with us Be dynamic we strive to demonstrate innovation, originality, enthusiasm and a clear sense of purpose in communications Be committed we are dedicated to keeping our activity regular, timely and relevant Be strategic we plan and execute communications intelligently for maximum results

Weve applied these principles across all the Mahindra Homestays social networks.
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Be honest we act responsibly and truthfully when representing our brand in social media

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competitions and offers; and we have recently started podcasting. The blog receives 6,000 visitors a month.
q

Facebook: Strong social media assets create confidence among customers, especially in an unfamiliar brand and new product. We created an attractive Facebook page with intelligent use of apps and features and we set about finding our audience. With conversation and user-centric initiatives such as our Photo of the Month contest we have grown to 4,500 active fans. We use the Facebook page to seed our blog content, answer customer enquiries and push fans to the main site at any relevant opportunity. Twitter: For us, being on Twitter was not simply a matter of following the trend. Early on we saw an opportunity to use Twitter in a powerful way to find our audience as they are making accommodation decisions. We developed a Twitter page which we use in much the same way as Facebook, to seed links to the Mahindra Homestays website and respond to discussion. But we also use it to build relationships with travel journalists, bloggers and travellers across the world. Our approach is proactive; time is spent, for example, searching for current conversations about hotels in India or flights to India. When appropriate we step into discussions with useful and timely contributions. YouTube: Our 26 videos including host-led tours of accommodation as well as a short Kerala travelogue from some well-regarded UK travel writers have brought over 21,586 views on YouTube. Mahindra Homestays videos dominate the search results on the leading keyword term India homestays.

Having created publically accessible channels for communication they are able to participate directly via Twitter and Facebook. We are in regular contact with homestay owners via email and telephone to provide regular updates about the initiative and how they can get involved.

Impact Outcome
q

Blog: Traffic to our blog has been increasing steadily since launch and currently with over 6,000 visits per month. Almost half of this traffic has come via natural search engine rankings. With a new brand and targeting a new market (UK) we have been able to build brand awareness early on in the travel research process. For example, those searching for things to do amongst Indian destinations have a strong change of being exposed to the

Quick Tips:
Weigh results- Time spent on social media must be weighed up with results achieved and we strive to balance our resources across the different networks depending on which generate the best results.

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Mahindra Homestays brand. By offering useful destination content within a friendly community such as the blog enables us to reach our audience. We use analytics on the blog which is fully customised to help us measure the effectiveness of the blog. Although all blog visitors are being exposed to the brand (we avoid selling on the blog) a key aim is for visitors to then explore the main Mahindra Homestays website. Currently 10-20% of all blog visitors navigate to the main site and are more engaged that other types of referrals. For example, a blog visitor spends 50% more time on the site and visits 35% more pages. Were also delighted that blog visits lead directly to online bookings.
q

Facebook: Each month we review the Insights stats that Facebook provides along with information provided through Google Analytics. One year on weve had 30,000 visits to our fan page.

A year after the launch we asked our fans whether they were more likely to choose a Mahindra Homestay while travelling in India compared to 12 months ago and all responses were positive.

Testimonials
Mahindra Homestays was recently announced winner of Wanderlust magazines Eureka Travel Innovation award. We feel that the social media marketing initiatives have been a key factor in building awareness of the brand. Our initiative was profiled in The Hindu Business Line September 2009.

Twitter: It is harder to measure direct results with Twitter. We limit our time on Twitter to four to six hours each month. Our links to new blog content have been re-tweeted by a number of high profile followers (such as Times Travel in the UK) that provides peaks in traffic.

What Next
We will continue to build our social media activity around the blog and look to integrate this activity more closely onto the main site when it is re-launched. Our aim is to continue to build the blog as a resource for travelers and to strengthen the community.

PR coverage: We do use Twitter to communicate with the travel trade. One follower had a request for accommodation coverage in Delhi and we were able to act upon this.

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Company Details:

Jiyo Life Movement using content as the honey

Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by

: Club Mahindra : N/A : Travel (For Profit Corporation) : Long term : Arun Nair, Senior Manager Marketing and Head - Web Initiatives : www.jiyolife.com : http://www.facebook.com/jiyolife : http://www.twitter.com/jiyolife

Website Facebook Twitter

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Executive Summary
Club Mahindra, Indias No. 1 Holiday brand launched a new brand campaign that aimed to re-position the brand. Jiyo Life is the new tag line for the brand and this will bring the brand closer to people, by encouraging them to commit to spending time on, participating in, creating and sharing - moments that allow them to live life fully. One of the largest and most active fan pages among Indian brands on Facebook is Jiyo Life. Our brand charter - A call to live life to the fullest and finest - Jiyo Life is a movement for users to break free from stress and relive the smaller joys of daily life. Its also sharing ones blissful moments with like minded people of the page.

Background
The community page idea was an extension to the Club Mahindra - Jiyo Life TVC which highlights the finer nuances of life. Social Media was identified as an integral part of the brand campaign and we wanted to create a momentum in tandem with the TVC. We decided to focus on Facebook as our primary channel for its prolific reach and the captivity of the medium. It also helps that Facebook is one of most popular website in India and 2nd most visited site with over 13 million registered Indian users!

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Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd. Is a part of the USD 6.7 billion Mahindra Group, one of Indias leading Industrial Houses. Started in 1996, the companys flagship brand Club Mahindra Holidays, today has a fast growing customer base of over 79,000 members and 23 beautiful Resorts at some of the most exotic spots in India and abroad.

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Approach
Below, are the highlights of the fan page activities q

High quality admin posts for increased and consistent interaction by users Posts had to be interesting as we wanted users to share our posts with their friends A detailed content strategy for Facebook page was thus, planned for admin posts to match user sentiments Regular features consisted of polls, contests, fan photo of the week and others We created custom tabs and landing pages on our fan page

Objective
q

To let the user experience the brand in interactive and innovative formats thus making the brand more memorable Build a large community base on Facebook of active users (to reach 50,000 fans in 4 months). Aim for a large number of posts/uploads from users Drive traffic to the Jiyo Life website through Social Media activities, Facebook being primary. 4. Infuse the term Jiyo Life in the users posts and conversations, as a generic term (Eg Google it)

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Optimal use of Facebook advertising which was a good source to build fans through branding Constant monitoring of ad performance and accurate targeting led to low cost of fan acquisition Aligning of offline events to the Jiyo Life page for higher engagement with users

Quick Tips:
Customise content basis user interest Jiyo Life page is a classic example of how an initial laid strategy had to be amended after user interaction. Isnt Social Media all about that, users and their interaction? We were quite pleased to transform our strategy with new plans based on user significance.
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Results
In conjunction to the 5 brand objectives, we achieved them all q

Received over 40,000 interactions from users on admin posts.

q

We aspired to create 50,000 members on the page by 31st July which we comfortably reached by 15th July. The page also had over 150,000 wall posts by users (including over 2000+ images uploaded by them) We received over 65,000 visits on the Jiyo Life website through our Social Media activities Literally, every 3rd post/comment on the Jiyo Life page by a user has the term Jiyo Life coined in the phrase

The Facebook fan page visit ratio is 1:3 viz. one user has visited the Jiyo Life fan page at least 3 times on an average! The Jiyo Life Facebook page made it to the Top 5 organic search results within a couple of days of launch In terms of engagement, we have observed a large number of friendships blossomed amongst the users of the page. There is a strong bond created amongst them. On an average, every admin post receives over 100 interactions within a single day Optimal use of Facebook ads has given Jiyo Life ads more than 100 million impressions! Close to equal Male:Female distribution at 46:54 (Facebook India M:F 68:32)

Apart from achieving our objectives, we crossed a number of milestones

q

Impact
q

Within the first 15 days, we crossed 10,000 fans on the Facebook page

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Every admin post also receives over 75,000+ impressions (which is much higher than our fan base, clearly stating that users are sharing our posts with their friends) On attaining 50,000 fans, we introduced offline events to offer more engaging activities to the users called the Jiyo Life Zone. The Jiyo Life Zone was a fun zone held on weekends across major cities of India. We got a tremendous response with large number of footfalls across all the cities. Jiyo Life Zone received over 10,000 visits to our website + over 1.5 million impressions on the Facebook posts

What Next
Our focus remains on building the user base to greater numbers but at the same time maintain quality interactions and posts by admin and users. We want to make the Jiyo Life movement one of the biggest online communities. We want Jiyo Life to be infused as a conversational term for the users to a great extent!

Testimonials
User testimonials from the fan page: Rakesh Mathur: Thanks to the team Jiyo Life to have started a platform like this where all positive thinking and live for today kinda people could meet....!!! Renu Sehgal: I have just joined Jiyo Life but have found it to be an amazing platform for positive thoughts. The team members and the people who are a part of it are also amazing. Thank you Jiyo for being a part of my life.....:) Monika Sharma: Thanx jiyo life!!...4 providing me the stress relieving tips article bcoz...really my stress is reduced...actually it was topic of my presentation..!!!:)thanx a lot!!...waiting 4 the second part of this article!!!

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IndiaSocial Case Challenge Winner of Position #1, Short term initiatives

Mitsubishi Cedia Sports the Great Driving Challenge

Company Details:
Name Number of Employees Category Campaign Duration Case submitted by Website Facebook Twitter : Mitsubishi Cedia (Hindustan Motors Limited) : N/A : Auto (Brand) : Short term : Nidhi Makhija, Digital Marketing, Experience Commerce : http://www.greatdrivingchallenge.com : http://www.facebook.com/ greatdrivingchallenge : http://twitter.com/cediatgdc

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Hindustan Motors Limited (HML) is one of the Indias pioneering automobile manufacturing company and Flagship Company of the C.K. Birla Group.

Stakeholders
Though the campaign was digital-led, it included on-ground events and was not going to be a success without team work. The brand campaign was supported by Contract Advertising and the on-ground event was wholly managed by Encompass. It was important that the finalists derived the same experience off-line as they had experienced on-line and all agencies did a terrific job. The brand Mitsubishi remained supportive of every request made by the contestants, agreeing to last minute giveaways.

Executive Summary
Hindustan Motors (HML) well understood the sentiments of a Cedia owner. Consumer research reiterated that a loyal Cedia owner loved to get behind its wheels and just drive. So when it was time to launch the new Mitsubishi Cedia sports, HML wanted to reach out to their target audience and engage the travel fanatics in conversations around a long drive. This vision led to the creation of (one of ) Indias largest and most buzzed digital-led campaign, aptly titled Great Driving Challenge.

Approach
Our vision was to engage a community of travel fanatics around the idea of a long-drive a getaway. Each applicant couple was provided their personal blogging space on the site to share past travelogues, travel pictures, videos, and their travel plans. By making the event open for couples only, we ensured the entire family & friend network was rallying behind contestants. The central idea of the campaign was powerful and appealed to the workaholics to take a break from their daily grind and escape on an all-expenses paid 10 day Trip in a brand new Mitsubishi.

Background
We wanted travel aficionados from all over the country to come together, driven by a mutual passion for enjoying a long drive. The Web was a natural medium for engagement, as it provided multiple social platforms, diverse communities, and tools to encourage participation, conversation, and consumption of content.
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Once the core audience was engaged with the campaign idea, we supported the launch with an Internet ad campaign. However, we received more quality audience from Facebook, Blogs and organic search than paid Internet advertisements, thus making TGDC a truly social media powered campaign. The campaign extended for two months during summer 2009. TGDC saw 2,000 sign-ups in the first few hours itself; over 50% had already started meaningful applications by Hour 3. By end of Day 1 over 300 people had completed meaningful applications, uploaded photos, mashed up their flickr streams, annotated their Google maps, and were ready to reach out on their social graph for testimonials and votes. The average stay time for people creating application was over an hour. Our jaws dropped! We were prepared for a long haul to entice applicants to fill up their forms (blogs), but the core of the community had formed faster than we dreamed possible.

Quick Tips:
Social media content is only created by youth is a myth - Married couples with families and kids to look after, and jobs that take over most of their days make time for their passions on the internet too. The average age of applicants ranged from 25-60years, with a median around 31. One couple in their sixties defended their age in the application, arguing they were the best couple because 29 states, 13 countries, 15000 KM per year drive and 35 years of experience. Beat that!

Results
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Unique Visitors in a month: 6,50,000 + Page views in a month: 69,00,000 + Max page views for a day: 7,50,000 + Blog Citings: 120 + Total Votes Cast: 3,20,000 Sign ups: 18,000 +

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Total Testimonials Cast: 13,000 + Alexa India Rank: 551

It was important for us as a Digital Agency in India, to measure the ROI on print. The traffic volume was in line with our expectations, and our gut feeling came through as we saw very high quality of traffic a super-low bounce rate of <6%, and conversion ratio of >25%. This far exceeded benchmarks for brand supported destinations that we had seen in our past projects
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Credits Strategy
Experience Commerce

Credits Execution
Contract Advertising and Encompass

Testimonials
The Great Driving Challenge is not only a path breaker in automobile marketing but also a lodestar in the convergence of new media with traditional media. It represents how seamlessly we can integrate digital media with traditional media and maximize reach, frequency and impact. Pritam Saikia, Head of Marketing, Hindustan Motors

Ive been watching the GDC unfold from day one and gotta say: This was BRILLIANT marketing by HM-Mitsubishi. Not once in the past 5 years had so many people visited an HMMitsubishi website, or had their brands created such a buzz in the market. I know for a fact that other brands are watching closely and will be coming out with their own in-house versions of the GDC soon. Coming from a manufacturer which has effectively over-slept (while the competition walked all over) was most unexpected. I hope some of this new found vigour rubs off on HMs product planning division (new Lancer, EVO X anyone?). Read on Team-BHP Forum (Indias hottest destination for Auto Fanatics)

What Next
Wait and see

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