Don’t Let Your Brand Rest In Peace

Reputation, Image and Perception are too precious. Let not your valuable brand rest in peace (RIP), as exponential opportunities and growth are pinging at the same time

 

Our world has changed!!! Man has always been a social animal, but the “socialness” has turned more intense. The basic tenets of business have changed. It’s a virtual world, where, love, esteem, status as well as economic value are measured by the number of likes and fans one scores in Facebook. Connections and impressions on the web have become a measure of how value is created.

By far, it’s a paradigm shift. Yet, one thing has not changed though. It’s all about people, innovation, and value powered by authentic connections and collaboration. This is all about relationships that are relevant, meaningful and provide value at personal, enterprise and global levels.

Language is the new identity, the central element of the web, creating impressions in the minds of men and machines. The words are getting more wired. And, it matters a lot as they mirror the sentiments, and psyche of the folks. This is where technology comes to our rescue, especially, in deciphering the value chain of human authored content, communities and commerce.

Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) technologies are powering precision marketing technologies. They are helping us drive actionable insights from processing millions of tweets and digging gold from Terabytes of data. And, they are telling us a lot about the unarticulated needs of the customers by analyzing the intrinsic traits, individual profiles, behavior and psychology. In short, what customers want, across enterprises, across industries?

While there is a lot of buzz about SMAC in the market, it isn’t hype. Interestingly, data has turned “humane” as people are sharing their experiences, positive or negative, influencing public opinion gesturing at 7 inch mobile screens. Gone are the silos. Technology has flattened the geographies and democratized work culture across the globe. It’s a transparent planet where people are empowered, then ever before. You can’t hide behind the masks anymore, as bureaucracy has given way to a transparent organization.

The good news is forward thinking businesses are unleashing the power of social to drive growth and create new sources of value. This is fundamentally changing the way businesses and governments operate—from how they interact with customers, citizens and suppliers, to how they manage their employees.

Social is all about creating new innovations from analyzing social sentiments, accessing knowledge from unstructured documents and enterprise data, and creating precision marketing communication strategies. It is all about driving engagements and integrating capabilities into business processes integrated into the DNA of the brand. It is the force that helps a brand connect, empower, innovate, create value and solve problems hitherto unsolved in real-time.

This is significant, when over 75 percent of the world population is constantly hooked to social conversation on the web. Indeed, even a single tweet can snowball into a social revolution that can make or kill a brand. 

So, how does a company create a single clear narrative when business is so complex, when information is shared within seconds and when a business model is so instantly replicable? The most reputable companies are hyper-conscious of not just performance, but they are opening up to their customers and employees to stay ahead of the competition.

More and more companies are listening, offering their customers a seat in the boardroom, and setting up reputation committees, to shape real-time reputation and outsmart the competition, in a connected world. For them, human data is the new business intelligence, and social business is the new production line powered by Big Data Analytics. They know the pulse of their audience, and co-create value with them as a strategic partner. This is the reason they are nearly impossible to duplicate.

They are building reputation beyond earned media, paid media and owned media to Live Media such as roundtables, conclaves, summits, forums - fast-growing their reputation. Besides, top executives are leading live events where they can effectively communicate their messages before receptive audiences and repurpose inspired content through video, blogs and other social media – stimulating a viral and winning outreach.

The outperformers have realized that satisfied employees are going to be the reputation amplifier. Just empower them socially, and watch them succeed as brand ambassadors, evangelizing their reputation, and acting as brand custodians.

The next wave of social revolution might just be your employees. And, the good thing is the more people get involved in social, the more value we create for ourselves, our clients, our society and the world.

Long live technology, as being agile, adaptive and continually innovative will make a brand thriving or “dead” in the new social marketplace. Reputation, Image and Perception are too precious an enterprise can have, driving tangible business outcomes, in a digital world.

Let not your valuable brand rest in peace (RIP), as exponential opportunities and growth are pinging at the same time.

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula. The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

The Story of Dog, God & Smart Marketing

This alludes to the biggest challenge the Chief Marketers face - whether the investment currently being spent on keeping these Dogs alive, could be spent on making something that would be more profitable as God?

Think about it. And think deep. What is the difference between GOD & DOG? Not just a mirror image, for sure - though my neighbor’s son tells me that Dog spelled backwards is God.

Pause. Before, you brand him as an atheist. It’s just an innocent expression, a child’s world view, with all humility and without any offence to hardened religious belief systems.

For, God’s sake, wear your’ thinking hat and semiotic lenses, to decode how meaning is produced and consumed, since we step on to the planet earth. How perfect and democratic the world looks. Isn’t it?

There is no reason to not to believe that principle of linguistic relativity which holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which we conceptualize our world, our world view, and this influences our cognitive processes. Taking a cue from the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, one can reiterate that language or content shapes our thoughts and determines our cognitive categories.

Indeed, perceptual categorization and conceptualization is learned and basically arbitrary, and the objects in the world can be categorized in multiple ways, giving rise to different ways of describing or understanding the same phenomena. Even, myths that are the glue of society are ones that we’ve created. Indeed, our every thought and experience is a sign; you are a sign; creation as a whole, and each thing which lies or could lie in it, is a sign that feeds our world view.

So, how does this relate to the science of the marketing? Take a leaf out of any Business School’s marketing class - a product, service or business model could be classified as “dogs" when it has a weak market share in a low growth market. These products are very likely making a loss or a very low profit at best, and can be a big drain on management time and resources.

This alludes to the biggest challenge the Chief Marketers face - whether the investment currently being spent on keeping these Dogs alive, could be spent on making something that would be more profitable as God?

The answer to this question is usually yes, as forward thinking leaders embrace audience-activated enterprise approach that heavily dwells on open, collaboration with the consumer as trusted strategic partners in the board room, enabling the co-creation of services.

Significantly, whether it’s personal, product, company, nation, Dog or God…, it all comes down to “telling powerful stories”, those that marketers tell about their offerings and those that we all tell about ourselves, all the time. The only caveat is these stories have to be authentic. Even a slight judgmental lapse can make a powerful brand perish. This is vital since in today’s leveled, democratic marketplace empowered consumers demand transparency as the return on their emotional and economic investment in a brand.

By far, powered by access to near-real-time information, consumers have become more conscious of what they are buying. They are keen to contribute to the society and empathetic to a sustainable planet. In days to come, this will continue to transform business models and open up tremendous opportunity for enterprises to directly engage with the consumers.

To overcome the challenge of communicating the DNA of their business in a smart phone or tab screen CMOs must explain the values that underpin their decisions, and walk the talk to build authenticity to their narrative. These stories must be coupled solidly to green, responsible, products and eco-friendly services that sell profitably, and create communities of growth.

Certainly, among the trends that will reshape the perception dynamics of world in 2014 and beyond - from dog food to incense sticks is the common underlying thread of sustainability. Nurturing a sustainable brand rests on responsibly embedding differentiators in product and services to satiate the user aspirations, and amplifying affinity to infuse irresistible temptation, and build an addictive brand.

What will remain unchanged is: Integrity, and ethics, and continual innovation, will decide how we continue to scale the impact we have in the world in a responsible way. Perhaps, this is the only way we will add continual value to business, society and the planet.

The question is - are we ready to take the leap? We have run out of choice…

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

The Age of Self Love & New Rules of Marketing

We are living in an Age of Self fueled by a culture of narcissism and addiction to constant commentary, craving for an ounce of self-esteem to boost our identity.  How can marketers tap this paradigm shift to stay ahead of the curve and outsmart competition?

Did you know what’s the Word of the Year that just passed by, in 2013? 

For those who guessed it wrong, it is ‘selfie’ – snapping a photograph that one has taken of oneself, with a smartphone or tab, and posted on to a social media channel. The Oxford Dictionary Online has rated “selfie” as its Word of the Year owing to soaring popularity.

You may like to hate it, but we are increasingly drawn deeper into the age of self-love. And, you can’t just put the blame on the Gen Y for driving this. The signs of narcissism are all around, as the world gets flooded with the tsunami of social media. The narrative is simple, it’s all about me and myself, and how we derive pleasure by portray us as the best, oblivious to the world, except for the “likes’ of “fans” that one begets.

Certainly, this is the Age of Self fuelled by a culture of narcissism and addiction to constant commentary, craving for an ounce of self-esteem to boost our identity.  Eulogizing the self has become the currency of our time. It is all about us all of the time. And, it is the celebration of self. 

Weird it may appear, when we think about it: we're all a little desperate for Likes these days, knowingly or by default as we consume social media. The measure of self-esteem has a commodity and reduced to “ever young, ever smiling photos, status updates and number of like, page views or impressions one earns."

Significantly, social media has become a powerful tool of self-reflection and serves as the balm for the identity crisis one faces. The types of actions social media users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook walls and profiles are a reflection of their identities, their aspirations - their deep rooted desires is to look the best, and judged the best – even though virtually.

Interestingly, people with lower self-esteem tend to be much more concerned with what others post about them on Facebook, while users with higher self-esteem spend more effort on adding information to their personal profiles on the social network.

This pattern has reached critical mass in a society that worships celebrity and has handy tools to amplify everything, from the ordinary to the inane. It is all about self-advertisement. On Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and Twitter, we often shout: “Look at me! See how pretty I look? How great I am?”

What does this mean for marketers? Big Data and predictive analytics can offer a range of targeted advertising by the content one shares, the interest s/he shows, information one provides at registration or adds to the account or timeline,

Things that you share and do on social media platforms, such as what you like, and your interactions with advertisements, partners, or apps, keywords from your stories, and your usage patterns have become a powerful arsenal for forward thinking marketers.

Chief marketing officers can serve powerful persuasive ads by location, demographics, likes, keywords, categories, networks, and any other personal information inferred from the users of social media. In short, it’s like reading the hearts and minds of the users, analogical to doing an ECG Scan of heart or neuroimaging of brain to unearth a goldmine of actionable insights.

Indeed, this is a paradigm shift as new business models will emerge based on personalization tapping “earned data” from the consumers to a value network, luring same consumer to buy more things from the same brand. In times ahead, integration of physical products with digital services will be the key to success as marketing will be built in to the product and services itself.

Devices that collect data and share them through digital services will transform everyday life as well as the entire marketing industry. This will equip the marketers to become trusted partners to their consumers in everything from finance, to health, to clothes they wear, what make-up they should use.

The Big Data Insights thus captured will be increasingly used this to inform everything from new product development to one-to-one marketing approaches that deliver relevant, actionable messages to consumers, driving sustained growth for a smarter planet.

Are we ready to meet challenge, and tap the limitless opportunities?

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com