The Unforeseen Ticket to Paris

Imagine a silent theatre-like classroom; not a single sign of participation from the participants and the most active participants are our Androids, iPhones and laptops. If you are in a phase of life where the number of group chats in your Whatsapp might just outnumber the number of individual chats, then that phase of your life can undoubtedly be called – MBA (or PGDM). Starting from one such Whatsapp group to Paris (via Kolkata and Mumbai), this post was definitely a long overdue.
I have had the chance to participate in many competitions but none of them were like L’Oreal Brandstorm. If I had to name a competition where there was the least planning, it would definitely be Brandstorm. It was always the last 48-72 hrs when measurable progress actually happened even for the International round at Paris. Our way of working was completely unstructured so much so that we boarded the flight to Paris even without a single complete round of mock presentation. What were we thinking in our minds? No idea!

The problem with participating in a big (in terms of work to be done) competition is that a b-school life somehow gives you the perception of keeping you busy even when you are not doing anything productive. Though this was not the case with us, we were indeed very slow in getting started for the first round of L’Oreal Brandstorm. When we finally got started, it was just 2 days (if I remember correctly) before the campus round that we got the presentation first draft ready and we had miles to travel before getting the final version of the PPT. Getting the presentation finalized with just 30 minutes left for the campus round to get started, we did make it a point that we would definitely have a presentation rehearsal before going for the actual presentation. Making it through the campus round, we wanted to make sure that the preparations for the Regional round were done on time. But once again, we failed to capitalize on the time we had and it turned out to be another last-minute preparation. At this point, I have to thank Ramanathan for having patience in all those situations where Ninad and I were busy with our Placement Committee work. The regional round saw us being adjudged the Winners of the East Zone of the Regional Round and simultaneously getting tips for better performance including how L’Oreal Brandstorm encourages everyone to have their own preferential attire (in sync with the ‘performance’) rather than wearing a professional suit attire.

Come April 1st week and even the hostel security guard couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the three of us sitting in a room for over a week after the trimester was over, and it was not just the end of a trimester, it was the end of the first year in PGDM. My first year hostel room was invariably the room where we worked and everyone would definitely come to know when we got together as a team considering the fact that my room was right at the entrance of the hostel. We couldn’t believe ourselves that we were being given the opportunity to be in the National Finals of such a coveted competition and only in the last 7 days we were finding time to sit together. Those trips to the office of Mr. Anurag Dugar (our Marketing Prof.), the endless idea-generation and idea-rejection sessions, those long telephonic discussions on trivial design details with Sibya and those random rumbling on how the other 3 teams would have gotten help from their seniors who would have participated in this in their erstwhile years were all a part of our so-called preparation to the National Round.

With the submission successfully done (with a delay of 4 hours), we headed to Mumbai with a span of 2 days to make our mock presentations and get the ‘act’ in place. Well, call it procrastination or being lazy, we did manage to get the first rehearsal only outside Blue Frog, the venue for the National Finale. We had received little words of appreciation in Blue Frog on our progress in Brandstorm from the L’Oreal HR team and it got our adrenaline pumping. I guess that was the moment where we (as a team) had truly felt we had had it within us to give our best; leaving the judges to decide which the best presentation for the day was. While our presentation was going on, we did see the audience humored. What we were not sure was whether they were laughing at us on how lame it was or the ‘act’ was indeed humorous. I guess when certain things our done with pure passion and immense dedication, it is okay to go wrong in gauging the audience pulse. Even before we went onto the stage, we were completely of the belief that our target was to save an embarrassment for the institute. The only real sign of how wrong our prediction was post the presentation when all the other teams came up to us and were congratulating us on our presentation asking us ‘Is Marketing taught so well at IIM Shillong?’. Ah!..the mentioning of IIM Shillong while congratulating us gave us such a satisfaction that can never be measured.

While we couldn’t recreate a similar magic in the International Stage, the trip to Paris was an experience that would remain in our memories forever.

Lessons learnt: 
1. Keep pushing yourself so hard that at no point you get complacent on your level of preparation
2. Start rejecting your own ideas to zero in on ideas that really matter
3. Whatever be the stage in life, essential things as mock presentations/rehearsals are always necessary
4. Most importantly, irrespective of the stage we had progressed to, we had learnt to enjoy the experience thus making the performance relatively easier even under pressure

What Social Media Marketing is about?

In Milan Kundera’s words, Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation. Social Media has evolved to become a domain that involves both these functions. The growth of Social Media in the last decade has been beyond imagination. It has almost become a case where the adoption of Social Media will not give the firm/organization a competitive advantage but rather not using it would put the firm at a competitive disadvantage. Another domain what we can refer to as the sister concern of Social Media and that has seen gain rapid prominence at almost the same rate would be analytics.

Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc give us data that is -

1. Huge
2. Representative of the sentiments of the user

3. If analyzed can give insights which can be leveraged by marketers for different purposes

What are the points of purpose for marketers?

Digital media has been used for marketing for quite some time now. Television Advertisements are becoming popular more on Digital Media than on TVs as such. It is a time where the phrase ‘going viral’ is more heard of than people looking at the television and saying ‘the ad is good’. Marketers have identified this new entrant called Social Media into Marketing and are effectively trying to utilize the digital platform for their marketing purposes and hence the classification –

1.     Conventional marketing

2.     Digital marketing/Social Media Marketing/Online marketing

The few reasons why marketers are now turning to Social Media for their marketing efforts would be–

1.     Social Media marketing is less expensive

-          Designing a Social Media campaign for your product/service may more likely be less expensive (unless you are just using Social Media for uploading your ad and hence trying to propagate)

2.     Social Media marketing has ripple effects

-          A comment on a positive/negative experience from a consumer by using a product has good chances of reaching more people via social media than via word of mouth.

3.     Social Media marketing gives directional insights on conventional marketing

-          Analytics and Social Media combining together can give valuable insights to marketers such as answering the questions (say) while launching a product such as,

o   Who are the people who are likely to buy your product? – This can be answered by analyzing the profile of the top users who engage the most on Social Media

o   Would it be necessary to make any changes to the product specifications before launching the product? – This can be done by identifying top users on Social Media who are engaging the most about the product (like users Tweeting @AppStore the most are most likely to buy the next Apple product) à Giving away sample products to them before the launch of the product àGetting their feedback on the product à Making changes to the product before its launch  

Are spends on Social Media Marketing justified?

Today, marketing managers of various firms face a tough dilemma – Is spending on Social Media Marketing justified? If yes, what are its returns?

As a matter of fact, measuring the ROI of Social Media Marketing is by far very difficult. The reason is simple – It is difficult to attribute the sale of a product to a specific Social Media Marketing effort. The returns on any conventional marketing effort are measurable. You come up with a new ad campaign for your product and the change in sales over the time the ad is aired on television will be the returns on the marketing effort. But an online marketing campaign is one where the users engaging may/may not end up being the consumers of the product. Let’s take the very famous Social Media marketing effort by Dell for its Dell Streak phone. Dell wanted to break the clutter with a dramatic and an innovative idea – Creating Virtual Experience of the phone on MSN home page. There were around 30 lac users who had taken a virtual tour of the phone on the page and Dell was able to interact with more than 2.5 lac users via this campaign.

Going by metrics that govern engagement on Social Media, the campaign was a runaway hit. But the conversion rate (conversion to actual sales) of this marketing effort was again unmeasurable. There are several such examples on how Social Media marketing efforts have resulted in increasing the Social Media footprint of the brand/product but the conversion rate of such marketing efforts to sales is still questionable. Going by forecast values, $11 billion are expected to be spent on social media advertising in the United States by 2017 (BIA/Kelsey) and it is sure to grow along similar lines in the rest of the world as well. One can only expect the availability of powerful analytical tools in the future that enable marketers to measure the return on investment from Social Media Marketing.