Part-II, Marketing in Digital Age

Continuing from where we left...

3. To be innovative, in today’s parlance means being simple and straight.

Today’s consumers are younger but much smarter, and they do not want sugar coated message, if one can deliver it straight, one will be able to involve them. If you observe Google: it is not the most aesthetically designed site in the world, it does not have any content of it’s own, it does not have any flashy banner ads, or videos on the homepage. You can rarely see any ads/kiosks/hoardings promoting Google products but still, perhaps it is the largest traffic attracter in the internet space! Why?

Simple yet aesthetic design, fast & responsive service and relevant results. So keeping Google’s case in context, what would have Yahoo done in 1998. They would have tried to make better email systems, and better websites which would be feature rich and attractive.But Google saw two trends very clearly and early:

1. There was a catalytic growth in content on the net and this meant that in future people will need to try harder to get a specific information, since the information would then be spread across millions of ever-expanding worldwide network of websites. Hence a need for a good search mechanism.

2. With the design revolution, most sites will sport flash, video and multimedia content, that will make sites heavier and sites will take more time to load, hence a need for a site/search engine that’s light and loads fast.

(This means there still is an unfilled gap of a search engine that can index and search images, flash and other types of information that are still not indexed properly by Google)

That’s what Google did. Another important observation, which you may appreciate, : The major search sites of that era, ‘Excite', 'Alta Vista' and 'Lycos', also missed this point. They tried to expand into becoming horizontal portals (started to present news, and other information on the search site), and look where they are now!

Again, this also links back to observing the trends of peripheral products/categories (not necessarily customer trend only) and carve an opportunity out of it.

4. Marketing through Blogs:

I am sure you know, people across the world tuned themselves to the blogs, when USA invaded Iraq, to know the latest and real story. It was not the CNN or BBC, which held the attention of millions of concerned viewers across the world, but it were the blogs written by journalists who were on- ground during that time. Blogs are considered to be an honest and personal medium of expression, hence the trust and involvement is more.

Blogs are going to change the face of communication on earth! It’s upto us as to when and how do we want to leverage this. GM, Disney, Sony and various other organisations are leveraging Blogs to their advantage. In India, we have not seen much on this front, but this is what for instance, Maruti SX4 could have done:

1. Launch an extensive online campaign calling bloggers to empanel for test driving SX4.(Promote this offline, to build aspiration and involvement)
2. Select 50 bloggers across different platforms, and ask them to keep an SX4 for 1 week, and write about the experiences.
3. Capture videos, and photographs of bloggers using SX4 and spread them in different media as PR and ads as also post them on corporate site, youtube and community sites.
4. The bloggers eventually post their experience.
5. Integrate those blogs and promote them through online and offline mechanism and ask people to comment, ask questions and register for test drive.This could have given low cost high impact advantage to SX4.

Marketing through Blogs is an extremely interesting topic, and if an opportunity comes I shall be glad to share more on this in future.

I am sure you all have tried similar innovations in various aspects of your corporate life.
It will be great to hear and learn from your experience. Please do convey how you liked this article and share your thoughts.

I conclude by quoting Albert Einstein:
Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.