Harshil Karia's Diary

Thinking about the FoxyMoron Website. Your feedback?

Its been a while since we had the new FoxyMoron website up. I personally love it. It encapsulates everything that the company stands for visually. (you can access it on http://www.foxymoron.org)

The response however has been mixed (70% have like it 30% have not). People involved with creative fields have loved it and appreciated what it conveys. They’ve pointed out some minor usability flaws that have been taken into account and will be solved - for example we need a better way to showcase our porfolio for sure which is being done.

The website currently does not have a modular structure which a few people have found putting off. They want the website to clearly state everything just like a corporate website does. We are looking at listening to that and taking that into account too. So for things like social technology focussed solutions, we are looking to have a seperate site up altogether that runs on a seperate domain name but redirects from the main FoxyMoron website. That will make things clear for 1 business vertical. The other vertical which is focussed on design led services (for web and brand identity) will look to sell itself solely on the basis of its portfolio.

To encapsulate what we’d like to see ourselves doing: a) Consulting brands on holistic marketing strategy in the long run. For the same our approach would stem from a design focussed creativity and a focus on social/ collaborative technology - both of which are currently the strengths of the company. So in essense we are looking to be a company that is a creative house with a strong research/ technology outlook. It seems like that, at this point of time is achieveable. Time will tell as to how we ease into the following roles.

Would appreciate your feedback on our website! What do you think the website tells you? What is your impression of us? Are there any usability flaws? Thanks for your pointers in advance! :)

What brands will need to care about as Social Media grows!

As social media becomes a buzzword in the Indian Mainstream Media, more brand managers will be calling more Digital Agencies to craft more strategies that include social media. Some brands may get it right (Mitsubishi did & the Royal Challengersseem to be getting it right as well) and some brands may go horribly wrong - examples are Virgin Mobile who started but then stopped functioning and living in social media (example listed below where the brand hasn’t logged in for 5 months). Manu Prasad also has a good post on brands getting it right on social media.

Some other brands may get affiliated with the wrong kind of partners who do can go into practices such as spamming or engage in mere eye wash where the brand does not go beyond the personal network of the social media practitioner (in many cases a power social media user - a lot of the people initially attached to social media are guilty of the same, yours truly included. One really has to question people when they float group of 500 members for a mass brand and then boast about ‘engagement’ on it) - an example is one Titan Fast Track community i saw on Facebook managed by an agency who is spearheaded by a popular blogger.

The most important thing that brand managers need to be careful about is the handover process when the change social media agencies. I heard of a recent case in the handover of the Royal Challengers Bangalore account where the existing agency refused to hand over the Facebook Fan Page admin rights to the new agency. Maybe the handover process can be a part of paper work.

I also think that it will be increasingly important for brand managers to be a part of the admin process/ be the creators of the pages/social media accounts and thus the effective owners or else it leaves too much power in the hands of the social media agency who in India especially have been behaving in an extremely unprofessional manner.

Ofcourse the whole idea of gearing your organization for social media goes way beyond just creation of social media properties - that’s something that anyone can do. The real power of social strategy is leveraged when employee, partner, consumer, supplier are all connected socially to create fluidity and understanding and help accentuate the overall business process. In terms of a marketing perspective, idea led social media campaigns that have touchpoints of intake and promotion at multiple media outlets are likely to succeed. Having said that, there is some importance in social media properties and it seems like brand managers are not as aware/ not bothered about ownership issues at this point of time.

As social media agencies, closure consulting also becomes an important part of the process of activating companies on social mediums. Closure consulting would typically involve:

i) Handover procedures of social media properties built to another agency/ to the brand manager.

ii) Creating processes of automation of content generation if another agency has not been appointed.

iii) Deliberation on demolition of social media properties built if they are just going to be left aside.

Closure consulting should also include a brand audit in the online space.

For example Virgin Mobile India(smooth criminal) has 2 Twitter accounts. They don’t talk to each other. Both have been managed by different agencies and showcase a confused brand voice online.

As a final step, closure by social media agencies should include solidification and consolidation of all properties built on social media.

This largely includes binding activities together.

If the brand owns a website then the database transfer is another element. If the website is moving from a ‘social media’ led website to another form (simple brochure/ beyond Web 2.0) then also, the transition needs to be put in place in the right fashion.

This is something brand managers can consider and social media agencies can follow. Is there anything else one would add for the steps to be taken by agencies during the closure  of accounts?

Cross posted on BeFoxy

Do Indians Make Unplanned Purchases?

I came across an interesting article the other day. It basically dealt with a study related to impulse purchases. A study undertaken by a Wharton Professor and his colleagues found that there was one key difference between American shoppers and Dutch shoppers with respect to impulse purchases. It was noted that because Americans drive to stores (which are fragmented/ and also Americans are lazy) they tend to make more impulse purchases as compared to their Dutch counterparts who tend to walk to their supermarkets.

This is interesting especially in the scope of India. There are a couple of points to note here:

a) A lot of Indians don’t have cars.

b) Majority of Indians don’t have extra money to spend on unplanned impulse purchases.

c) For Indians shopping is a like a picnic - a day out. Something noted by Kishore Biyani, the mastermind behind Big Bazaar.

This brings forth an interesting mix.

On one hand, Indians SHOULD shop more because of the ‘picnic’/ carnival association where the likelihood of getting attracted to newer things is higher.

On the other hand, there is no personal transport/ SUV to lug unplanned purchases back home. It is also important to note that Indians are not still comfortable with the new retail shopping formats. I for one get extremely confused when i enter a Wal Mart store. I entered one a couple of months back and i left without purchasing anything - i just did not know what to do. I would label myself as an evolved Indian consumer (not in retail albeit). I can only imagine the problems associated with the same for Indian consumers who are just exploring these formats. 

A seeming ‘auto - pilot’ nature thus kicks in because consumers will also be a little intimidated in these new formats and stick to things/ brands they feel comfortable dealing with. Products and brands that give them a feeling of security in a completely new environment.

The lack of comfort should not be mixed with a tendency towards planning purchases.

Cross posted on BeFoxy.

Walk When You Talk

I saw this awesome innovation by a group of students from the College of Engineering Pune - its a charger that charges itself when you walk. It charges your phone for an entire day when you walk for 20 minutes. Its basically energy generated due to stretching which is intelligently captured.

If i was Idea Mobile, i would snap up this invention, scale it and spread it across the masses. It fits in with their walk when you talk campaign. Charge when you walk, and walk when you talk - keep walking. Johny Walker, anyone?

Emotional Intelligence - More Complex than Rational Intelliegence

Understanding jokes, responding to them, figuring out the hidden nuances of life, exploring art. These are some of the most complex decisions we make as humans. Neuroscientists have found that in patients that suffer brain damage, the front part or ‘thinking’ part of the brain cannot communicate with the ‘inside’ of the brain which governs emotions. These people are mostly paralyzed by indecision - they can’t evaluate what’s important to them, what’s not.

This means that instinct is extremely important. It also hints to me that advertising as a profession - the part of it that deals with emotional response to messages and ideas is here to thrive. Maybe the banal part of it, the part that deals with service and buying and evaluating media for a cost will be replaced by machines at a distant date in the future. Maybe some element (or a large element) of the creativity will be outsourced to machines (it is already being crowdsourced to humans) - the core idea will probably remain.

This post isn’t about advertising however, its about the importance of emotional intelligence. It re - affirms my faith in the fact that emotionally guided decisions can probably have a greater impact in the surroundings that we function as opposed to solely rational decisions. Its a mixture of the rational and emotional that sets the human brain apart. Something we should learn to respect and capitalize upon.

The Super Interesting Sony AIBO

I just chanced upon the Sony AIBO. It is super interesting (was rather - production has been discontinued since 2006).

Its a marvel in the sphere of artificial intelligence in that it can understand 100 voice commands and perform functions. Its essentially a sophisticated toy. While Sony discontinued it to make the company profitable, i find it interesting that the AIBO could have further programs added to it via the means of code and a software development kit. In a sense that is as good as ‘training’ your dog. It probably gave rise to a small section of AIBO ‘groomers’ as well. This essentially is not too different from what happens now. The inclusion of technology obviously means that the level of customization is much greater.

What i also find intriguing is the fact that the World, as we grow older will become so much easier in one sense and so much more difficult in another. The AIBO automatically follows 100 commands and thus it signifies greater control in the hands of a human being - something we have been increasingly getting accustomed to (information and our friends at our finger tips). With this ease, there comes a wave of difficulty. These technologies level the playing field and thus it will take genius to rise above it. We will have to move away from discovering science to mastering science.

Technological understanding, a broad-based know how of science, and calculative intelligence will differentiate people from one another. Essential skills that probably will be needed unless you are born into a family with excess capital. Distribution will be democratized, sales will be competitive because technology has an optimum measure of performance which will become a metric. Science based individuals who can rise above already existing artificial intelligence will be prized 50 years from now. I maybe wrong. I hope i am.