Branding Internal

Hi Friends,

Here are some marketing insights compilation of the brands in the market - via Social Media, Blogs, Videos, Micro site, emails.

STARBUCKS

Starbucks was an early adopter of social media, and today continues to use beautiful visuals to give customers the longing for a warm cup of coffee. But aside from their photography, Starbucks’ Facebook page includes a myriad of extra features including job postings, contests and even an international app. Can’t get the latte out of your head? Next time you’re on the go, test out the store locator embedded right in their Facebook page.

AMERICAN EXPRESS

The American Express OPEN Forum shows how a brand can expand beyond a traditional blog to create a larger community. OPEN Forum exist to help small business grow through original content and a personalized user experience. Upon subscription, the blog prompts the reader to choose the focus areas right for them, including productivity, leadership, growth opportunities, and much more. Within each post, platform makes it easy to follow the author, respond to the content, or dig deeper into related stories.

MICROSOFT

Who says B2B marketing has to be boring? Check our Microsoft stories and prepare to be impressed. The first thing you’ll notice is visual quality of the site. As opposed to following a blog template, each post is customized with parallax scrolling, animated graphics and tedious illustrations. Beyond the design, the writing is reminiscent of feature journalism, packed with empathetic characters and a personal touch. Despite the immense resources of a brand like Microsoft, this blog nevertheless sets a high bar for product storytelling.

TESCO

Based in the UK, Tesco is an international grocery store with a keen understanding of the helpful nature of inbound marketing. On its blog, Tesco Living, Shoppers can find ideas and inspiration on topics ranging from how to save money when you go grocery shopping to holiday craft ideas for your pre-schooler. The navigability of the blog is an among its best features, with a card user interface organized into six main categories. Click on a post to find a how-to article complete with ample pictures and easy-to-follow instructions.

HOOTSUITE

Successful B2B marketers know the power of the case study. And especially for brands in the SaaS space, these success stories are often necessary to share the customizable nature of the product for the user. Hootsuite, creator of a social media management dashboard, uses video to highlight their customer’s personality in each case study. Check out the series on their YouTube channel to see an impressive example of each part of the video process: Interviewing, production, editing etc.

PRUDENTIAL

Prudential shows that marketers of any company can excel with an exciting multimedia approach – even if you main objective is to teach people about retirement. In “The Challenge Lab ,” Prudential uses videos, quizzes, and other interactive elements to debunk every excuse a millennial might come up with to avoid thinking about retirement. As you explore microsite, don’t be surprised if you too are reawakened to the significance of your 401(k).

NETFLIX

Netflix has partnered with the Wall Street Journal Custom Studios to create a game-changing piece of native advertising. In Cocainenomics, a combination of breath-taking graphics, professional reporting and multimedia features tell the gritty tory of the cocaine business. In addition to being an impressive piece of journalism, Cocainenomics arrived just in time to promote “Narcos”, a Netflix original series.

INTUIT

In the realm of B2B marketing, a solid grasp of data visualization can be a make-it or break-it attribute. For an impressive example of an infographic that not only displays data, but animates it, check ouf “Death of the Office?” In this infographic, the UK division of financial software company Intuit explores the growing trend of working from home and how that has affected workplace culture.

SPOTIFY

Spotify’s emails the master the challenge of personalization. The music streaming platform only sends emails when the content will be helpful to the reader. By leveraging the user’s music interests, Spotify crafts emails that make the recipient fell like they’re being rewarded for listening to what they love. Plus, there are few better ways to start your morning than to receive a personalized email from Spotify saying one of your favourite bands has released a new album.

AIRBNB

Airbnb’s email personalisation strategy is based around anticipating customer needs. The vacation accommodation site tracks your search history and lets you know when additional rentals become available that you might be interested in. As show above, you’ll also receive perfectly timed emails suggesting you take the time to relax and recharge. Each email fits into their overall marketing campaign, #BelongAnywhere – helping customer feel at home anywhere they might explore.

Do let me know your thoughts around branding.

Passive recruitment with Branding

                        Passive recruitment with Branding 

Driving branding efforts and doing passive recruitment goes hand in hand. For branding efforts one creates groups, communities, etc. on social media. One needs to take utmost care while creating communities that the right segment is getting added. Just going behind the numbers will not make sense. Let me try to give you an example. Suppose you are a company who manufactures chocolates, you want a feedback from the customers. Here you would not like your target segment more than 50 % people who have diabetes. Target segment will play a critical role while creating such communities else getting ROI will be a challenge. Important thing is not to go behind numbers in creating groups, communities.

Also don’t forget to engage the group, community while building your target segment. Keep them engaged with periodic updates. Acknowledge a new member joining in. If the group is in hibernate mode, try and rejuvenate the group with odd polls, reviews, on the latest trends.

Here is a short list of free sites: SurveyMonkey,PollCode, PollMaker, Easy Polls

Join meetups on meetup.com. There are many professional groups where one can join the communities and be a part of a physical meet up. Here you actually get opportunity to meet the target segment. Not to forget you also get a chance to host a meetup and get visibility to attract the target segment.

I believe all of the above are important aspect for passive recruitment with branding matters.

Caveat – All the thoughts, actions are personal.

Does one loses to creative thoughts when one has to work in stringent processes?

Process are defined to ease out work or let’s say lot of work. When there are huge teams working around to solve a common goal. I think processes do play a pivotal role when there are overlaps among varied functions in an organization. Processes do play critical role when there is a new entrant on floor where in the newbie can refer to the standard operating processes.

Amid all the back and forth communication among various stake holders are we forgetting to be innovative, creative in the journey or are we really blind folded following the processes.

If innovation stops then maybe we would have still used pigeons to send messages across. Or are we really afraid to be receptive to new, innovative, creative ideas or thoughts around.

This brings me to closer to my function – People say think out of the box, where as I say don’t “Don’t have any box.

                                                                                                                                          ….. TBC

Continuous employer / talent branding?

Continuous employer / talent branding?

Branding is the buzz word!

It’s a continuous process for talent acquisition team to acquire talent 365 days in a year. It’s a continuous and an ongoing process where teams have to leverage their networking skills and build avenues, build relations and engage the professionals.

How to do that?

·         Hackathons – It helps in continuously building relation with the target segment. Good way to build a brand and a good way to hire. By this it is pretty evident who has hands on skill to do the job or otherwise.

·         Internships – Well, I think it is the most important form of branding at the grassroots level. Cost effective, win-win and continuous engagement form of framework.

·         Social media – Just being on social media, liking and sharing post will not yield result. Form groups, communities – engage them with relevant materials, run meetups if possible. It will not straight away give you results but as mentioned earlier it will take its own time to reap the benefits of this framework.

·         Blogging platform for the organization – I think the name itself says it all!  This will give a platform to the people inside the organization to share, learn new technologies, best practice across the domains. This platform should also have access to the outside target segment and this way the outside talent can interact without being part of the organization.

Very effective way to communicate with professionals externally and build a good relation which may yield result at a later stage.

How do we achieve or measure while one leads such kinds of efforts? This is something I aim to learn.

Caveat – My thoughts, my opinion.

Analogy between Cricket captains and Managers

Analogy between Cricket captains and Managers

Well no gyan baji here. Just observation as I am a cricket enthusiast.

I have been following cricket and especially Indian cricket and their captains since 1996. I was in awe of Sachin Tendulkar smashing SriLanka and Australia in our very own India. I thought here is another batsman and making of a captain. But the time proved me wrong. Good batsman = Good captain.

When Indian cricket came under the scanner of match fixing, here was a new and young Indian captain who was expected to do well in crises. Similarly there is a manager category wherein they perform only under pressure. Some managers are born to back a sinking boat. Some managers a born to turnaround situations like Sourav Ganguly. Here was the manager who built team from scratch where the fear of match fixing was looming over India cricket. Identified talent and nurtured them, gave opportunities and time to blossom. Sourav Ganguly is one captain who shaped careers of Yuvi, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Sehwag to name a few.

Captainship is a baton that you forward one era to another.

Post Ganguly era, there came a shy person from Karnataka leading the ranks of the Captain India-Rahul Dravid-The wall. When he came the team was pretty much settled. You had Gambhir, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer, Harbhajan, VVS Laxman, Tendulkar which formed the core DNA of the team. He was not supposed to do tweaks here with the matured team. He was supposed continue the legacy what Sourav left. So here is the manager category who does not have to hire new people and form a team but just have to maintain the camaraderie. No cost cutting, no new rules to the game, no tweaking of policies, just have to maintain the discipline. Completely different skill set is required here compared to the earlier situation which Sourav Ganguly faced. Under him he showed perseverance by beating West Indies in West Indies, Australia in Australia, England in England. Though there were lows of early exit in 2007 world cup.

So here is an analogy between Cricket Captains and Managers in different situations of the phase.

 

Next blog is on MS Dhoni as a captain-Stay tuned.

Sourcing From Twitter

How to source from Twitter?

Login to followerwonk.com with your twitter login id & pwd (https://followerwonk.com/)

Click on Search bios

Click on “more options”, put your search: skill, location then hit  “ Do it”

Happy sourcing

Review: The Mahabharata Secret by Chris Doyle

Review: The Mahabharata Secret by Chris Doyle

This is a very gripping read written deftly by the writer Chris Doyle. It’s about a scientist being part of the unknown secret community of 9, killed by the non-state actors of our neighboring country. This group (who carries illicit activities) hungers the secret of Mahabharata badly for their personal motives.

It talks about the secret saved and stored 2300 years ago by Asoka and Surasen courtier of Asoka the great. There have been many parvas written about Mahabharata and there is one which is not documented anywhere in the world. It is believed that this secret was used by the King of Magdha to kill Pandavas but the war ended before this secret was used.

Well back to the core story- Vijay cousin of Vikram Singh( Scientist killed who had the secret) leaves a trail of emails. Vijay deciphers these emails and that leads him to the secret and to his love during the journey.

Hope I have not revealed the secret and would urge to read this.