The Google Plus move to have Shah Rukh Khan chat with fans on Thursday at 3 p.m., a few days before the actor's superhero flick Ra.One hits the screens, shows how intuitively marketers do business.
Such strategies paying attention to timeliness, purpose and human disposition are all over social media now, said Mr Jayan Narayanan, Associate Vice-President, Corporate Marketing and Communications, CSS Corp, an ICT services firm.
Speaking to MBA students at St. Mary's School of Management Studies, in a joint initiative of the Business Line Club and Central Bank of India, the presenting sponsor, Mr Narayanan said: “If you are on a Web page showing information on
Elaborating on social behaviour online, he said statistics show Google Plus achieved in 16 days what took Facebook took 780 days: Garner 10 million users. “It's attributable to the public trait of diving at something without purpose, not Google Plus' efficiency.”
He recounted the story of South Korean firm Tesco Home Plus replacing E-Mart as the top online retailer. Banking on people's mindset to consider grocery-shopping twice a week a waste of time, Tesco installed virtual products taped with QR codes in railway stations. People used their smartphones to scan product details from the code and order instantly. The goods are delivered; in some cases, even before the person reached home. After the drive, 10,287 consumers visited the firm's Web site and online registrations grew by 76 per cent.
Swinging both ways
Mr Narayanan said people “trust other humans, but don't trust the advertisers.” By the same token, if a product fails to satisfy, there's no stopping the outpouring of discontent. Comment on a product or a national happening can switch shades with the subject having no say in it. “When was Facebook used massively in recent times in India? The Anna Hazare episode. There was a lot of support but criticism of the Gandhian's ways also found space and audience.”
Moment of truth
Moving on to how the principle of “moment of truth” manifests in social media, Mr Narayanan illustrated through a schematic diagram how the advent of social media had brought the marketing concept to a halt. The moment of truth for a product happens when the customer chooses to give it a shot (moment one) and when the customer first reacts to its performance (moment two). With most buyers using social media to gain an insight before buying a product, the moment of truth occurs even before purchase.
Smartphone users use the QR-coded products to know about its sales and how well it was received in the market. This, he explained, has turned around the marketing strategies of corporates in developed nations.
He produced examples of Dell's Go Green blog, a public forum for exchange of ideas on environment-friendly products, and Mahindra XUV 500's pre-release Facebook marketing to show how companies rev up hype for products.