Saturday, September 4, 2010

D Day - August 27th, 2010

What was born in early April as an aspiration of the students of the Marketing batch, culminated in “Coffee Conversations and Marketing” the Marketing seminar held at Symbiosis Institute of International Business on the 27th of August 2010, in association with IAMAI (Internet and mobile association of India).  Revolving around the concept of moving towards a stimulated, conversational, form of marketing from the traditional, broadcasting mediums, the day-long event aimed to understand the importance of new age mediums of Marketing communication and their implications on Marketing as we know it.

The day started with Mr Debashish Mitra, Director, Sales & Marketing, Mercedes-Benz India highlighting the importance of a 360 degree approach to marketing, especially in the luxury products segment. 

The favourite of the audience was Mr Kiruba Shankar, CEO Business Blogging, who won over the hearts of the audience with his exuberance and enthusiasm. His experiences about the importance of digital communication and social networking as tools of marketing  had the students alive with a will to do the same . Also, present on the occasion was Mr. Purnendu Kumar, Associate Vice President, Technopak who enlightened the students about challenges faced by organised retail. He gave rare insights on the ways in which unorganised retail can pose a threat to organised retail and the learnings to be derived from it.

The last speaker for the day was Mr. Rajiv Dingra, Founder & CEO, WATConsult. Aged just 25 years old, this CEO immediately struck a chord with the students with his light hearted but practical talk about niche blogging and the digital era of Marketing.

The lecture series was followed post lunch by a panel discussion on “The changing trends in marketing: Old tricks won’t work anymore”.  Vishal Sharma CEO, ithink Labs and Ratan K K, founder associate, Gutsgo e-marketing joined Mr. Dhingra and Mr. Shankar for the panel discussion moderated by Mr. Prithwiraj Ghorpade. A jam packed auditorium was witness to the witty and rich churning of ideas that followed. The panel threw light on the importance of accountability in Marketing, and the increasing reach of digital media for communication.

The event was organised by the students of Marketing, 09-11 batch under the able guidance of Ms. Adya Sharma, Faculty SIIB, who also proposed the vote of thanks. The attendees included students from Symbiosis Institute of International Business, SCMHRD and SCIT besides members of faculty and invited guests from across Pune.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Old Spice - Video case - Named the best Social Media campaign.. ( and yeah it also won the top prize at Cannes !! does it matter ?)




The Old Spice Case Study talks us through the insight around targeting men & women at the same time to generate conversation around body wash. When it was launched online for the super bowl weekend (and TV shortly after) the campaign managed to capture 75% of all conversations in the category (although I’m sure that was off a small base) before every man and his dog was talking about the Old Spice ads.

To continue that success Old Spice & WK needed to take the campaign to the next level, Mustafa was now a household hero, and they wanted to engage the fans directly. And so the response campaign was born.

Over 3 days, a team of creatives, digital strategists, developers and producers filmed 180 odd videos around the clock, creating videos and responding directly to fans and celebrities in near real time to create what is now known as the best social campaign ever to have been created.

So here are a few of the stats… hold your breath…

* On day 1 the campaign received almost 6 million views
(that’s more than Obama’s victory speech)
* On day 2 old spice had 8 of the 11 most popular videos online
* On day 3 the campaign had reached over 20 million views
* After the first week old spice had over 40 million views
* The old spice twitter following increased 2700% (probably off a lowish base)
* Facebook fan interaction was up 800%
* Oldspice.com website traffic was up 300%
* The old spice YouTube channel became the all time most viewed channel (amazing)
* Thecampain has generated 1.4 billion impressions since launching the ads 6 months ago
* The campaign increased sales by 27% over 6 months since launching (year on year)
* In the last 3 months sales were up 55%
* And in the last month sales were up 107% from the social responses campaign work
* Old spice is now the #1 body wash brand for men.

I don’t think I need to add much more to that. I just really want to see what old spice has in store for us next, in fact i’m itching for it.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Coffee, Conversations and Marketing - Trailer

Ikea creates buzz with simplest of features of Facebook - Tagging




Forsman & Bodenfors are known for some great creative work, and they recently devised a Facebook campaign for a new Ikea store in Malmo, Sweden. When small budgets and big briefs clash, the out come only ever heads in a single direction these days… to Facebook!

Some of the best campaign strategies are simple, and none simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition.
Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms.

People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!