Binary Perspectives and Media Bytes – Jacobv.com
India on Social
Any relatively smaller brand seeking brand recognition, in one of the largest emerging economies, can learn from Finnair. At the time of writing this post, the video of a Bollywood dance performance from the Finnair cabin crew is at more than 4 million hits.
You can color me skeptical on the implied cabin crew grassroot initiative. Nonetheless, this video now viral on social media, has probably earned Finnair more publicity and goodwill in India, than any billion dollar commercial ever could.
With Facebook touting India as one of their largest markets in the near future, there are obvious benefits to hitching on to the Indian social media marketing bandwagon. However, it is not clear that businesses in India are ready (like many businesses elsewhere).
Most social media efforts I noticed, during my recent visit to India, were heavily influenced by traditional outbound marketing methods, rather than relationship building strategies.
Companies seem to be using social media as uni-directional promotional tools with little thought to other opportunities. An example was my experience with cleartrip.com and Jet Airways.
Social vs. ‘Policy’
I admit, it wasn’t my shining moment when I booked a round trip from Chennai to Mumbai, instead of the other way around. However, I did phone cleartrip.com within 10 minutes of the erroneous booking.
Rather than rectifying the issue, I was told that the only way around the problem was to cancel. I had to pay a penalty too – half the fare of the round-trip!
Reason? Airline (Jet Airways) ‘policy’! The ‘policy manual’ was apparently, pretty much carved in reinforced concrete.
My tweet pleas to @cleartrip and @jetairways were met with similar responses. On the forums too, cleartrip.com staff were clearly playing by the dreaded ‘policy manual’. Emails to Jet airways were apparently forwarded to the ‘concerned’ department (thanks Web Manager, Mr Chandra Swamy, a glimmer of hope…you deserve a raise).
Ultimately someone, somewhere, decided to play fair. My protests across these channels seemed to have the desired effect. I received a refund (minus nominal penalties) from cleartrip.com, after about 3 days. The cleartrip.com team deserved praise (duly tweeted) for finally tearing down that ‘policy’ wall.
However, the damage was done. Multiple opportunities to retain my business, by phone and via social media, were squandered. I re-booked my trip via makemytrip.com, careful to avoid Jet Airways.
Social media marketing myopia
There is no rule that prohibits a twitter team from assisting a customer. If anything, the real-time benefits of social media allow departments to work together and react quicker to customer service and brand perception issues. A pass the buck to the other department game is dangerous when negative sentiment in a tweet, video, facebook update or blog post can go as viral as any Bollywood dance performance.
Social in a marketing only approach is pretty much doomed. The speed and transparency inherent in social media has made it ever more important for interdepartmental cooperation. This fact is still lost on many businesses.
Businesses have to be able to look beyond the ‘Like my page and do my contest’ approach to social media. There seems to be room for leadership, and rewards, for those who can turn things around.
Anyways, my opinions have probably been biased by my singular negative experience. Any examples of Indian businesses that are using social media effectively, across multiple customer touch points?
Friends in Heaven
Have you ever wondered what you want done with your social media account when you are no more? We now live our lives communicating, sharing and ‘being’, on one or more social media platforms. A digital presence is often an integral part of our identity. So when some one close passes on, what is the right way to deal with their social profile? Continue reading
Narcissism vs. things that really matter
With technology a pervasive and often intrusive part of our lives, many of us struggle for balance. Sometimes responding to a notification or online conversation seems more tempting than attending to my son’s request, to find time to go cycling together.
There seems to be two sets of human instincts competing with each other. The instinct to nurture and cement close personal relationships on one hand; and the need to be understood by, understand, and connect with a broader set of people, even strangers, on the other.
While some may argue that the balance sought, is actually between narcissism vs. things that really matter, I’m not so sure it is quite that simple. Social connections do have a time-tested role in human evolution.
Technology has been the great enabler of the ability to harvest broader connections, by projecting our presence virtually. The fact that we can now use technology to cement and forge bonds, only adds another facet to our social relations. This is as true today for online social networks as it was for the telephone.
At this point in our history, all of us are trying to figure out how it all fits together. There are bound to be mistakes, as we experiment.
Will our predispositions compel future tech entrepreneurs to innovate around, and augment our closely held values? Or do you think we will allow technology to forever alter/update our value systems?
What is your incentive to be on social media today? Do you think you are able to use it in a positive way or do you have negativity attached to the experience?
Most of my posts this month are part of the Halloween-Hollywood inspired series. You may republish the above parodic art-work online as long as you link back to this post.
Based in Montreal, I'm a Digital media strategist, with almost 20 years of accumulated experience in SEO, SEM, Social Media, Email Marketing, web design and development (CMS), project management (including offshore-teams), animation (2d/3d- including 8 years at Softimage), video/T.V, and Design (Print). More>>
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