Re-branding? Here’s A Tip

Posted by Nikhil on Aug 15th, 2009 | no comments

We recently re-branded ourselves with a fresh, new look to the site, changing the logo, revisiting our values, our vision and our long-term goals, and we learnt a thing or two in this exercise that lasted almost two weeks, and thought I’d share something useful.

We did not put up a landing page while we were re-building the website.

So, if you had visited the site in the midst of a truly heavy overhaul, you might have noticed a strange assortment of logos and pages everywhere, with links that didn’t work and a completely disarrayed alignment. No, it’s not a bad thing. Let me explain why.

Too many times, we’ve visited a website just to find the “Site Under Construction” page glaring at us. Sometimes they redirect us to a sister-concern’s page or, as it happens more often, just remain static. You be the judge and tell me if this is a credible ploy on the company’s part or just leave the site as is, and start tweaking it. I suggest the latter route.

We’ve had people inquiring what was up with us, and we told them that the site’s being re-built, and this seemed to excite a lot of them. We’ve had a surge in the number of site visits during this past two weeks, astonishingly.

Don’t agree? Let’s hear your views in the comment form below. 

Stop Thinking, Start Acting!

Posted by Nikhil on Apr 28th, 2009 | 3 comments

This was a guest article that appeared in the Financial Express on April 21, 2009.

Social media is the in thing these days. The success of Obama and our very own Pink Chaddi campaign is fresh in our memories and spoken to death in social media conferences and seminars.

On the other side, every other day, witness a new venture or foray into the space. If one adds up all the hype, then social media should have already arrived from a brand communication and marketing perspective. Well, not really. Here is my take on what it will take to get social media, which I agree, is hot and presents profound new ways of touch, communication and engagement, can get there.

Yes, it is the most democratic medium or platform. Yes, the young are more comfortable with the Orkuts, Twitters and Facebooks than the old and yes there is no geographical constraint as internet is universal. But let us not forget that brands or the process of branding (except for a few categories) is not something special or separate for social media. Social media needs new ways of adoption and customization to suit its unique ecosystem and ways. But it is not that the branding process itself, is in for a radical change. This means that successful social media initiatives can be executed consistently over a period of time only with firms or players who have an understanding of how brands and the branding process works and then combine this understanding with social media expertise. While social media is powerful, combined offline and online campaigns will create higher impact.

I am not sure how many know this. Software or tools that are meant for listening in social media are growing in abundance and at last count had 18 such URLs or names in my database. I am talking only of players who are visible and this number by itself seems to be growing at a brisk pace. While it is useful, let us understand that it is only the first step in a formal process a brand needs to undergo in social media.

There is an urgent need to look beyond blogs, though blogs show a lot of promise. I am saying this more from the perspective that there are evolved tools such as Twitter, Maplib, social bookmarking sites, besides Facebook, that truly offer immense potential. For example, a friend of mine had done a campaign for a movie using twitter and Maplib that was both creative and engaging. I also saw a website, which is a wiki with the feeds on YouTube linked. A great idea, simply because these two tools have combined reach that is smartly being used. Heard someone recently tell me that Dell extensively uses Twitter for its global customer support.

Social media is not as techie or geekish or complex as many think or make it out to be. There are couple of thumb rules, which work fairly well for starters. For instance, just focus on starting a blog and then use all the social media tools available to promote it. Also social media is not about just getting in but using it smartly to be heard and be visible.

Let us be clear that all that is happening in social media is experiments and there are bound to be successful and bad experiments. The best is to learn from it and move on, as the space itself is exploding fast and learning is the most precious commodity around in the space. Much like a battle scarred veteran who wears his scars on his sleeve.

Not all brands and companies are suited for social media since it is a different world out there. While it is exciting and great for some, it will be out of bounds for many. A company and its entire organization needs to be ready and be prepared for what social media entails and can assure of a surefire disaster if one is not prepared and goes around thinking it is like advertising that one can control. Even firms who play in the space would be well advised to do the diligence as too many failures or bad starts is bound to speed derailing enthusiasm, to adopt the media.

There are many more need to do lists and hope what I have said and listed makes for a good start and gets us cracking into a cracker of a space called social media.

Xavier Prabhu
Director
PRHUB