Of guns, love and social media

by rajarshi on May 11th, 2011 8

The most talked about words over the last week or so have been Obama, Osama and Social Media marketing. Well, the last one for quite some time now. As we read about more and more companies jumping on the social media bandwagon and adopting and customizing these ever-so-dynamic tools for business development and market penetration, it pays well to introspect where all this has come from and eventually going. Every consumer has a memory space in his brain, much like what a typical USB drive might have. This in business parlance is called mind-space. As a plethora of consumer goods companies started entering emerging markets like India, China and Brazil, it became imperative for them to tap the burgeoning thriving population in these countries.

Source: secondmilemarketing.com

Roadblock marketing and other conventional methods have always been at the service of these FMCG majors. But these have seemingly started to lose their charm and grip over the atypical consumer. While numerous corporate entities started vying and snatching away at this consumer mind-space, innovation in delivery of message became critical. The funny thing about consumers is that they might do well to recollect about 10-15 advertisements after being exposed to over 2000 in a day. This is practically not even 1% of the total exposure. Now while the quantum of exposure can be increased many folds, improvement in consumers’ retention of it is quite another story.

When I sit back and think about the ongoing social media marketing revolution, it rather feels unnerving to realize that it has taken us well-beyond a decade to acknowledge the true potential of this platform. Agreed, Internet penetration in India is still rather modest. But a careful introspection tells us that it has got to do more with inertia of consumer goods companies than anything else. Until the last three to four years, consumer goods majors have done themselves enough harm by turning their backs on this marketing tool/platform (I prefer to call it a platform since it is essentially an assimilation of tools). It was well after social networking companies like Google, Facebook and the likes started generating the big bucks that their larger, richer and the more lethargic “tangible goods” counterparts started to wake up from their slumber. Of course, the pace ever since has been fierce.

The telling advantages of the social media platform are two: It increases the exposure time to a product delivery message by several notches and it is qualitatively more adept at bringing consumers to the brick and mortar outlet of these companies. Thankfully, the whole online media marketing drive has not stopped at that. Corporates realized that while bringing consumers to their doorsteps was necessary, it was also essential that they engaged their potential customers sufficiently by stoking their lazy inertia. Believe it or not (and many marketing experts might beg to differ with me on this) marketing delivery is primarily driven by ‘perception’ and there can be no better platform than the virtual platform that enhances and improves product perception in the consumers’ eyes.

We are looking at fascinating times ahead. It is expected that large manufacturing houses will be embracing this platform like never before. White goods manufacturers have already started tweaking their delivery models. In a recent interview, Ratan Tata remarked that he wished he were 20 years younger so that he could be a part of this ongoing revolution in India. He could not have been more correct. While technology has been helping firms to create value, social media is also providing them with the launch pad to deliver this value to the consumer class.

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Comments

Anonymous

Dam marketing, and other traditional methods were consumer goods and other professional services. However, they apparently began to lose its charm and typical consumers have no influence.

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May 12, 20115:53 am

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May 14, 20117:27 am