The first one involved a hotel booking. After reading excellent reviews on TripAdvisor and skimming through a well made website, I decided to send them a mail. For 2 days I received no response. I noticed that they were on twitter, and send them an @ message. No response from there too, though they continued to update with promos and news shares. In the meanwhile, I also sent a mail to an alternative id given on the site. After more than a week, I got a response, by which time, I had already booked another place, which responded in less than 24 hours. A deal of about Rs.25000.

We bought a new television from a retail chain after seeing an offer in the newspaper. As the regular story goes, they delayed (from their committed time) by more than 48 hours and (uncharacteristically and quite reluctantly) I made a huge scene at their outlet. In the meanwhile, I also posted on their FB wall (as a response to the image of the ad which had lured me) and sent them an @message on Twitter. The FB response took more than 48 hours and asked me to send a mail to a certain id. The product had been delivered by then, and I told them that. The next day, a tweet response followed, asking me what the problem was. No deal lost, but no love lost either.

In ‘Who Cares?‘, Godin talks about exactly these kind of scenarios, and from there I quote, “Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.” The third scenario is an excellent example of this at work.

Much has been written about it already, so you can read the posts, linked to below, to understand what the Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm ‘controversy’ was all about. This isn’t the first time I have regarded Cleartrip’s approach with admiration, and for good reason. This time, not only did they thank @jackerhack who pointed them to a blog post that trashed the new initiative, they also responded to that post and wrote a post of their own clarifying what they were trying to do, not just on the post itself, but also in the comments section where many people raised questions. Cleartrip has set such high benchmarks in this regard that all of the above are now standard fare expected from them, and I probably wouldn’t have written a post. But once again, they went further. A week after this incident, a new post announced a redesigned feature that not only solved the problem the users had with it, but made it even better with more information. The result? An update on the very post that had complained in the first place. #win

Cleartrip was listening, but then so are a lot of other companies. The difference here is caring enough to respond (externally) and creating an organisational will (internally) that works on a user problem and solves it. Not one time, but as a process.

until next time, know response…

until next time, get social?

Consistency in branding has been a golden rule for a long time. But by now, brands would be used to seeing their messages layered with the contexts and perspectives added by users on social networks. Considering the transient nature of the feed and search capabilities, and despite their inherently ‘viral nature, brands could still console themselves a bit about reach.

After all, despite the march of the social networks, Google was (and is) still easily dominant when it comes to specific search, and brands could still play a few SEO/M games. But now, Google is accelerating its social fusion into search; the layering will happen here too, and the incumbent search gaming tools would start getting blunted.

In this context, I wondered if brands should probably move from consistency to cohesion. Consistency was a good tool in a mass media era when one way distribution and a linear flow of information ruled. In this era of collaborative media, cohesion factors in context  - time/place/person etc to the brand’s message. It lends flexibility to the brand’s voice, qualifies it, and helps empower internal and external customers. So, rather than getting an OCD over exact phrases, colours etc, the brand custodians could work on how best to package the brand’s core DNA in different settings. Then, even if consumers don’t share as-is, at least the brand’s perspective would be context relevant. Your thoughts?

until next time, consistently cohesive

PS: My guest post on afaqs last year lists some advantages of this approach under “What happened after the TVC ended?”

A few months back, a video on the Facebook page of the Bangalore Traffic Police made headlines. The cops asked for help in finding the errant car driver. (I’m not sure if they did nab him) Since then, I’ve seen increased participation on the page, with users adding photos of traffic violations, ad campaigns on safety and questions being answered by the cops themselves, though that’s occasional. In many cases, numbers of vehicles are clearly visible and I’ve seen one in which the cops have noted a violation by a fellow officer, uploaded by a user. This, and the brouhaha over the London cops naming and shaming those involved in the UK riots last year made me think about individual identities beyond virtual social and in to real social.

Though we are still at a stage where even a person’s social, let alone all online activities cannot be comprehensively tracked and measured, technology on that front is rapidly catching up. In the near future, real world tracking technologies will probably catch up too. We’re already seeing signs of the worlds colliding. It is then possible that the social identity of a person would include his real-life actions too and a ‘Klout’ would probably have a holistic ranking of an individual, one that includes traffic violations and philanthropy and so on.

This is probably one area where brands will then have a head start, because naming and shaming them is something many of us already do via social platforms. I wonder if we will be more lenient towards them after we get a dose of identity warfare.

until next time, coping with cops

Twice in the last few weeks, my hosting service took down my sites citing database problems. The second time, I decided to a slightly more detailed check, and figured out that the rogue database was one of my lifestreaming experiments. Thanks to memolane, I could delete it without fretting much. Coincidentally, that was also the day that I gained access to Facebook’s new Timeline feature, and was inspired enough to start filling it.

Though I have connected all my online presence, the blogs retain their individual identity. The only place where they really met was the lifestream. But like I mentioned in an earlier post, Google+ allows me to integrate identities even while allowing compartmentalisation. Increasingly, so does Facebook. Privacy is already a huge concern, and anonymity is not something our institutions can digest. Thankfully, in my case, I do end up behaving as per Darth Schmidt’s adage “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” At least I wouldn’t post it

What I do post however (across both the blogs) are a range of topics – personal perspectives, restaurant reviews, book reviews, my start up and technology columns, travel photos, job notes, and so on. All of these are part of my identity, and technology allows me to distribute it according to the audience. Considering that these parts are already getting integrated on social platforms, one of my ‘projects’ for 2012 is going to be how I can accommodate all of this on a single blog/site. Any ideas?

Meanwhile, memolane is already thinking of how brands can use ‘lifestreaming’. When Facebook opens the Timeline feature for Pages, it is going to be really interesting! But for now, I’d like Facebook to open up imports from other sites.

until next time, 1/2.0 done

Nick Bolton’s article “Disruptions: Wearing your computer on your sleeve” triggered a series of posts, and my favourite was the RWW version, because it brought out a variety of perspectives and potential use cases, ranging from glasses that act as guides for tourists to “consensual imaging among belief circles” and “to overlay a trusted source’s view of a given scene on mine”.

In an increasingly social world, the above would seem a very obvious choice. However, there’s an interesting statement in the post, attributed to Mike Kuniavsky is “I feel people already ignore the complexity of reality too much and tend to live on parallel planes that exclude ideas that challenge theirs.” I saw a related theme in JWT’s 10 trends for 2012 – “Reengineering Randomness” (#7), which acknowledges that as our world and consumption becomes more customised, there will be a greater emphasis on reintroducing randomness.

As we try to accommodate both randomness and customisation, the factor that will determine many facets of our interactions is privacy – the amount to which we allow services to tap into our social stream. And that would dictate whether I’ll see a brand giving me a customised offer, combining social information, augmented reality, NFC…

That brings me to my favourite trends deck this year, by Ross Dawson, which captures not just the above, but also more far reaching ones like “Institutions in question” (#4), and the fitting finale “Transformation not apocalypse” (#12) which sets the tone for an exciting 2012.

until next time, happy new yeAR

With Google+ launching for brands and thanks to circles, allowing a relatively easy (and measurable) flow of information within and outside the enterprise (I’ve begun experimenting with this @ Myntra), linking employees, consumers, partners etc through not just sharing but also through live video interaction, Facebook does need to go beyond its current offering for brands and organisations.

Though I’ve not seen it in action, Twitters new proposition for brands, with better profiles, a new twist to promoted tweets, self serving ads etc do sound interesting and should probably lead to more interesting brand activities on the platform.

The first generation of social media tools have focused on monitoring, engagement and some measuring. They will obviously have to evolve with the platforms’ own feature set advancements. (not to mention new platforms) Meanwhile, I’ve seen at least two forms of this evolution. Salesforce, which has, with the acquisition of Rypple, entered the talent management sphere, continues its march towards being a one stop shop (Chatter for enterprise collaboration, Radian 6 for social media monitoring, engagement and others). On another front, Percolate is aiming to solve an interesting problem area that I can identify with – sustained communication with consumers across platforms that balances interesting content with business objectives.

New platforms, new tools, decreasing attention spans, new hardware and technologies and a relentless pace of advancement – 2012 promises to be exciting.

until next time, horizon tally

One of the trends that many people seem to agree on is the role of brands as content creators and curators. As the posts on this blog would show, I have believed in branded content for quite a while now. But that again requires an understanding of the landscape, objectives, strategy, creating and executing a content calendar, finding ways to market the content, and most importantly, over a period of time, creating and maintaining a sense of trust with the community and understanding and meeting their expectations.

After going through rigorous processes – from choosing platforms to content planning processes to back end infrastructure to team structure and all the other steps outlined earlier and more, we finally have a fashion blog for Myntra. Though I don’t plan to contribute further to the blog in terms of actual writing, (yes, the fashion world lives to fight another day ) I did write the introductory post for the blog. Do check that out here.

The blog has been active for just a fortnight now. I’ll be glad if you could take a look and give me your feedback, either here or Myntra’s Twitter account or on the blog itself. It’s a first step of a long journey, and it promises to be a fun ride.

until next time, in fashion

It offers fantastic perspectives on creation and consumption patterns of culture, and digital’s weighty role in the changes being wrought. The limited ‘spotlight’ options of an earlier era (mainstream media) now have to co-exist with platforms and mechanisms that are open to most. ’Scale is no longer a guarantee of stability.‘ Consequently, attention is the more coveted prize. Another related phenomenon is that ’Change no longer happens all at once for everyone‘. I remembered ‘IsItOld‘ when I read this.  I sense quite a few concepts agglomerating here. Small ideas, which I haven’t written about for a while now, and transmedia storytelling, for starters, and a reversal of polarity. (the last via Neil Perkins post, linked to earlier)

Brands have always been using popular culture. One brand that I can immediately think of is Amul, and yet, I almost missed their Kolaveri ad. (via) Yes, not the greatest, but decent. The point here is that while they got the creation right, the distribution is still iffy. And that’s another challenge. Popular culture is more complex than ever before. With the abundance of content and platforms, keeping a watch on the long tail of culture, prioritising according to the audience-fit and then distributing it is not going to be an easy task.

I have always liked (and hence, borrowed with credit in presentations) the analogy of bonfires and fireworks to social media and advertising. (respectively) The implications of this are not just in standard brand advertising but also in branded content. Brands now have to think of how the long-term story and the spikes can work together and ideally, complement each other, even while figuring out what role advertising and branded content play in each. Despite the seeming fit of social media to spikes, I wonder whether we will, in the medium term, see a role reversal – ‘mass’ media providing spikes and the internet dealing with the long term story, before settling into shared roles.

until next time, get a spike mike

Then came Facebook and Twitter, and RSS died several times if we go by the blog posts. Facebook for me has been and is a social graph. The only way my interest graph has crept in (in terms of content discovery and consumption) is in the form of pop culture. Can that change? I wouldn’t write it off. Twitter started out as an interest graph, but when it scaled, it began flirting with social graphs. For me, it’s now both, and I find that difficult to work with. It’s probably a bit of my laziness too – curating who I follow, making corresponding lists etc erm, not done. Anyway, my discovery and sharing on that network is minimal now. So, in that respect, the curation I expect on these platforms is minimal too.

Purely by activity, it would seem that I am more active on my interest graph networks now. I wonder if I am alone in not being sure of mixing my interest and social graphs -Delicious, Foursquare, GoodReads., and until recently, (generically) Reader. The curation is by a set of people I trust in that domain, and any ‘social’ that happens remains ‘by the way’.

Google didn’t even see the social boat IMO, and when they did, it was too far out. Wave, Buzz: crash, silenced. But while writing the WT5 column late last week, I found that Google+ has been creeping in everywhere – search results, news, Reader (I haven’t forgiven you, Google) and building in features like Mutual Circle Chat and search options.  I was thinking about this when I received one of my best sources of curation these days – the weekly Only Dead Fish newsletter (email, how ironic ), and that’s where I saw this excellent post titled ‘From destination social to distributed social : why Google+ is the Trojan horse of the social web‘

That’s exactly what Google seems to be doing. Unlike Facebook, which built THE social network and then tried to link consumption on other sites in an ‘oh, okay, fine’ way, Google is playing a balance act, and to its strengths. By giving me the tools to build a social network on Google+, and simultaneously being present at my points of consumption, Google is making me play curator to both social and interest graphs. If all goes well, I think Google will not only collect data, but also build several social networks based on interest graphs. Google’s cash cow still doesn’t have much to do with all this, but once the networks are built, Google will have better contexts for AdSense, based on a really smart social algorithm.

I have always believed that Android is the next Google. Still do, but now I think that Google+ is a contender too. Or maybe the social OS will be built by them together.

until next time, evil graphs

Bonus: A Google Ventures backed app on iPhone named Stamped – very relevant in this context.