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There are 4 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" The Dangers Of Brand Redefinition Via Social MediaSocial media is a UGC (user generated content) driven media which influences and impacts peer groups online. What this also means that brands are significantly impacted by the word of mouth power through social media the world over. This brings us to a real possibility i.e. Brand redefinition via Social Meida. Brand redefinition is certainly a significant possibility, considering that marketers are no longer the only people capable of creating communication which reach the masses. The even more difficult question is that when can a marketer term it as dangerous. The way I see it, ultimately a brand exists in the mind of its consumers. Different segments take away different experiences from your brand and your brand could mean something unique to each of them. It could be positive or negative, but on the whole it is probably different from what you intended. Social media only amplifies this existing opinion & brings it to light, so in that sense it is free market research. With social media a crazy fan could end up portraying your brand in a different light. Similarly an angry consumer can really create havoc especially if his post appears on the first page of google. The key task of a brand manager is to understand when to interfere and when to let your consumers ride you. It is more than advisable to have a sense of humour as a brand at this stage, learn to laugh at yourself if the social media adventures of your consumers are not blatantly malilcious. “There is no such thing as bad PR” still applies in the above case. Of course, when consumers lash out online, you probably don’t have a choice but to step in and address the issue to the best of your ability. Resolving issues publicly is better if you are confident that you can actually resolve the issue, otherwise try to take the conversation offline. What do you think? Should you interfere in the social media adventures of your consumers or should you lie back and let them shout? Guest Post by Ishwar S Also Read -> 5 Dangers of Social Media Related PostsAlso Check Out: At India Gaming Summit - Marketing The Gaming IndustryWATGame was at the India Gaming Summit and Session 4 was on Marketing The Gaming Industry. Session Chairman – Arun Mehra, Zapak Panelists – The session was focused on marketing the games themselves and marketing done through the games. Shantanu started his session first. Being from an Interactive agency, he started off by saying that there are three things which are important for a game marketer to reach a consumer – contact, location and propagation. He further gave the examples of two case studies that he his company did. For Colgate Maxfresh and for Intel. With Intel, they integrated the brand well within a brand. The screenshots they he displayed clearly showed the brand telling the player how much energy is left and does he want Intel to boost the energy further? Madan's examples were also focused on examples of how consumer can now be reached through various games. What came as refreshing were, however, Saurabh's presentation. Actually, he did not had any presentation. He just started speaking about various trends that he saw along with the work that he had done. He spoke of Raghu Dixit and how with the power of collaboration, he is become important. Saurabh then went on to state how their research shows that kids don't have a problem with ads, given the ads are interesting. He then showed a clip of a video that his channel created titled the "Lola Game". They created a caller tune out of this and sold this off to Reliance Mobile. And it was s huge success. One interesting remark that he made and got a lot of laughs from the audience was – "They are Reliance . . . right . . . they screwed us". He further goes on to talk about a band called Nine Inch Nails. He explained how they employed a very unique way of marketing by putting in clues for a treasure hunt at various places. Both online and offline. And the 200 winners to the final clue were treated to an exclusive concert by the Nine Inch Nails. Saurabh's point was what Nine Inch Nails played was actually a game. The game had elements from online and offline world. And the consumer was engaged actively with the game. That's what needs to be done now. Games should guarantee engagement. He later showed a video where an entire building was used to play Tetris. The video made for an interesting watch. Another example of how simple games like Tetris can be made engaging. The session concluded with a Question & Answer session where someone asked a question about how do the media acknowledge achievers of the gaming community and make them stars. As an example he spoke of a friend of him sitting besides him who is a national champion in gaming, but still unknown. Saurabh said the first step is to acknowledge these people in forums like this (the Zapak Summit). So he invited the guy on the stage to sit with him. He said its important that a proper recognition be given to achievers like this. Everybody hoped that with time, this will happen and the kids like him will be known not just in their own college but the entire gaming community at large. (Via WATGame) Related PostsAlso Check Out: At India Gaming Summit - Gaming Platforms – Online / Mobile / PC / ConsoleWATGame was invited to the Zapak Gaming Summit 2008 I Mumbai. We reached late. Session 3 and 4 were what we were able to attend. In this two-part article, we give a rather detailed overview of what was discussed in the summit. Session 3 was on Gaming Platforms – Online / Mobile / PC / Console Moderator – Alok Kejriwal, Co-founder and CEO, Games2win.com Ajay described how the business model works. According to him, the whole idea is to create and invest in properties. Game properties. These are the brands within the games that we know. It might be a movies like Lord of The Ring, a person, like Tiger Woods or an independent IP developed by the gaming company, like Need For Speed. In each case, the idea is to build on this property. So, with time, we see more versions of the games based on a property. We identify a property by the series of games build around it. Thus starts the monetization of the property. The marketing is done through popular retail channels, where they keep the game on the shelf of thousand of stores. In here the purchase is driven mainly by impulse. Another sales channel is direct marketing, where a user might be allowed to download the game directly to her PC. This is a BIG HIT – BIG MISS game, made for the big players. Ninad started by giving a comparison saying that if EA was like a movie studio, Jump games was more like a TV producer. The scale is different and so is the consumption channel. So the business model is make a game, and then distribute it to the telcos. The revenues-sharing with the telcos over game downloads is what brings in the money. He also pointed out that the placemen of the game in the stack of the games is very important. A game, if places on the first page of the download lists, is sure to get decent downloads, than the one placed later on. Kapasi touched upon some pints in visual merchandising. He stressed the needs for creating different touch points for the consumer. These are the places where the consumer can be engaged and be potentially turned into a customer. Alok Kejriwal went on to explain how the VCs do not explain the online gaming business properly. That's one of the reasons for stagnant growth in this sector. Alok also put forward the point of Edugaming, that is, games for education. All the panelists agreed that Edugaming is something that ha s a lot of potential. Alok was also very confident on in-game advertising. His "front-of-envelope" calculation shows that in-game advertising will grow to be around $500-800 million. In-game item sale is also something that can fetch a good part of the revenues. A very interesting question that Alok asked was – Why not Moser-Baer effect on the games? Why not make them available for Rs.50? Ajay replied to this by saying that the cost of game development doesn't gives the freedom to cut prices to those levels. PC games cost around Rs.50 crore in production. Regarding the question about what has changed in the last few years, Ninad replied that iPhone has come now. According to a report, the iPhone is the single largest distribution channel for flash games now. Earlier, the consumers used to go to the games, now the games have to come to the consumers. A valid point of piracy was rasied in the discussion, to which Ajay replied by saying why not let the piracy flourish. He gave the example of Napster/MySpace. How unknown bands are now distributing their music on MySpace. Kapasi says, its theft. The circumstances are different. The unknown bands on MySpace are the ones which are not putting in considerable investment in producing their music. Whereas, the commercial music production costs money and it's important to get the returns on investment. Piracy, thus hits the music companies. A very good example that Ajay gave was of China. Once we was in China, in a street full of people selling pirated DVDs. One of the sellers put an offer in front of him. He said that if Ajay busy four DVDs from him, he will give him the membership to his club and he can buy the subsequent titles at a much lower price then. Just an eye opener on how far have the pirates gone. The Session concluded by everyone foreseeing more gadgets everywhere, capable of playing games. There will be games all around us. And causal gamers will only increase. (Via - WATGame) Related PostsAlso Check Out: WWW: WAT Weekly WrapupLast week was an exciting one! This is because we hosted our first WATBlog Wednesday which turned out to be a runaway success! We also uncovered the fact that google is working on an ad platform for orkut. Check out all the happenings and the coverage of WATblog Wednesday of last week below.. On WATBlog.com
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