CONSTANT BETA » Marketing/ Advertising

2010 Social Media Trends: From Enagement to ECommerce

Jinal Shah — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:53:59 +0000

Social media is evolving from an engagement platform to an ecommerce platform.

With the year ending, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I was and what I was doing around this time last year. In December 2008, I was presenting to all my clients a Twitter 101 deck and giving them a practical, logical reasoning of why they should consider jumping on Twitter. Fastforward 12 months and my agency is not only running and growing over 10 Twitter feeds for our clients, but we’ve gathered a rich historical database of our results.

I want to try and imagine now, how the next 12 months are going to surprise me and knock the breath out of me. Social media and it’s evolution excites me. And for 2010, I’m putting my stake in the ground for E-commerce.

We are going to witness a major shift in how we approach social media. 2010 is going to demand stronger measuring tactics and more importantly, tangible results. Brand building, awareness, buzz and fan activation are important goals but clients and agencies alike will now push for more tangible goals: sales. A direct increase in revenue.

Dell just announced today that it credits about $6.5 million of its revenues to Twitter. Dell’s aggregate presence on social media (Facebook & Twitter) and its own community sites (Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm) has 3.5 Million + fans and followers that have collectively contributed to the $6.5 Mil rev. achieved.

What’s important to consider is the astounding growth (more than double!) in just three months following Dell’s announcement in June at having reached a 3 Mil revenue mark. Will the numbers reach 12 Million+ by 2010 ?

Granted $6.5 Million is a tiny piece of Dell’s $60 Billion revenues – but the unparalleled (100%+) growth in just three months alone is worth noting.

We are just beginning to see the potential of driving sales through social media.

Another point to consider:

As financial and human-resources investment in social media continues to grow, it will only get more time-intensive and expensive for a brand to push their audiences to three different web-based destinations: 1) It’s own website 2) It’s Facebook profile and 3) It’s Twitter page.

I think by late 2010, it will be fair to expect brands to start prioritizing their investment and efforts, and arguably giving first preference to its social media destinations. I know it sounds far-fetched. The idea that a brand’s website can be completely cannibalized by its social media presences seems preposterous, but it just makes sense to me logically.

If I can grow the impact of my brand and my revenues ten times faster on the social web than via my website – why wouldn’t I just put more resources into my Facebook page?

Also, it is a LOT to ask a customer to fan you, follow you and also sign up for your email newsletter. Ecommerce needs to get streamlined – content needs to get streamlined.

Signs are already pointting in this direction. Earlier this year, 1800-Flowers quietly opened an E-commerce store on its Facebook fan page.

On it Facebook page, 1800 Flowers accepts payments with all major credit cards and will soon implement Facebook’s proprietary payment platform. (Although the company only has about 8000 fans on its page (and not much fan activity – but that you can attribute to the fact that 1800 Flowers it not exactly what you’d call a passion brand.)

A friend of mine who works at a luxury fashion brand informed me that her company is “definitely” selling products on Facebook starting 2010. Facebook is one of their strongest focus for next year.

These are just my top level thoughts on a topic that is going to become very important and talked about next year. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you are a brand, I want to know more about how you are looking at measuring success in social media. Let’s keep this discussion going!

Clever newsletter marketing

Jinal Shah — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:36:44 +0000

I’ve been closely following newsletter marketing these days – while it’s tough to find out exact response rates and gauge effectiveness, I try to judge each newsletter from my own lens, or its uniqueness.

I found LifeBooker via a Facebook Ad and signed up for their deals and newsletter. Just today I recieved this email in mail promoting their free $12 gift certificate code.

What’s interesting to me is that LifeBooker shared information on how other customers used to code, thereby, booking massively discounted spa and haircut deals.

While the newsletter could use design more powerfully to convey this information, I thought it was really smart that they shared some ‘voyeristic’ data. That certainly got my attention.

What do you think? Have you seen other clever and unique newsletter marketing techniques?

How do you decide whether an MBA is for you?

Jinal Shah — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:30:26 +0000

The last few months were torturous in terms of the internal conflict I battled regarding the next eveutal question people my age consider: grad school/ MBA. The best advice I recieved was that I should consider MBA only if: 1) I wanted to change industries 2) If I felt that I had reached a glass ceiling in terms of promotion/ pay raise.

In my case it is niether. I love the digital domain and thankfully, the last few years of agency/ consulting experience has given me the ability to transfer the skill-set to any other industry. Regarding promotion/ pay raise, I don’t beleive that I have reached a glass ceiling in terms of that and from my understanding of the digial industry, I don’t think I will be there anytime soon.

So based on that filter, I should have easily been able to weed out MBA. But the other benefits of an MBA niggled me. Most important, the high-worth business network that I’d have an opportunity to cultivate (considering I got into a top B-school) On the other hand, a $120K debt + 2 years of no money coming in is a huge set-back. Back to square one.

I spoke to a dozen incredibly smart and successful MBA’s and non-MBA friends and the feedback was always mixed. MBA’s highly valued the network and the credibility the label lent them. Most of them however maintained that their learning was limited. But almost all of them considered that their MBA was a good decision. The non-MBA’s I spoke to were not faring far behind in terms of jobs, salaries or credibility.

My mentor (mid to late 30s) offered me an interesting insight as well. He said that most likely people his age or just a little bit older is the generation that is going to move up to becoming my generation’s boss’s. And his generation, doesn’t care about an MBA. The way they evaluate a candidate is very different. They still respect and look for a mix of creative and analytical skills, but what they value more is the ability to think unconventionally.

After taking into account all these conversations and ‘research,’ – I was able to decide a few things for myself.

1. I do value the network and credibility an MBA from a top school brings you. But I haven’t yet been denied or lost an opportunity because of either.

2. I am still learning and growing tremendously as a professional from my job, my mentors and the people I surround myself with. There is a new learning curve to overcome (whether in strategy, operations or leadership) every few months that I thrive on. Also, as a personality – I grow and learn better by doing.

3. Financially and in my personal life (my wedding, my fiance’s grad. school etc), I have a few other things that need to be a top priority right now. The incurred debt from an MBA is not a problem as I am confident that I can get rid of it in a few months. But right now, we need (me) to have a stable salary to be able to support us. This, I realize, is an important factor. With all the research I did, I was also sure to ask talk about how grad school can impact a new marriage. This is largely a personal choice but for me, it was a no-brainer.

So what’s the verdict? I haven’t dismissed the possibility of an MBA. I am certain though, that I am not ready for it right now and probably need another year or two. And lastly, I may have to consider exploring evening-MBA option simply because I cannot imagine being out of the workforce for two years. I love working wayy too much to do that.

Seems so simple! But it took me six months to decide upon this. Whew.

So what’s the verdict?

Training to be an entrepreneur

Jinal Shah — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:23:08 +0000

Because of the instant-nature of my job, I often don’t find time to sit down, reflect and compute the bytes of information that I feed into my head daily via Twitter, Facebook and a number of other networks. I try not to lose focus of my personal goals as I gain more work experience and become more confident and self-assured daily.

I consider my current phase of life as a “training” period for my next phase of life, which is running my own business. I think a lot about how I want my life to make a difference, the impact I want to make. I will be honest – my primary goal is to build a highly profitable and financially successful business and I don’t harbor false notions about my capitalistic desires. However, I also want to be a strong leader and I want to create a business that will impact more than a handful of lives. An honorable business that will create jobs and hopefully, contribute to the general well-being of society. There is a lot of work that needs to be done, but for now I am also sub-consciously training myself to be a leader, to understand how to run a business and to learn from both the good habits and the bad habits of entrepreneurs. I’ve picked up a few ideas and values that I want to build my business around. I just wanted to put them down on paper, so here:

1) Execute quickly and efficiently: This is the most important thing I have learned and it is the single most common factor all entrepreneurial minded have in common. I must have heard, ‘better to ask for forgiveness than permission’ about 10 times from all different people. It is branded in my head now. It is important to think things through and be doggedly focused on the end goal. It is equally important to not gloss over the details in the beginning, because it is not a pleasant situation to deal with midway down the road. But the point is – do your homework fast and just execute. Start making, building, selling – whatever it is your idea is. But just start it.

2) Cut a good deal, but provide equal value: I don’t like asking for or doing free work unless it is a fair barter. When doing a free project for an author, he asked me “How can I make this worth your while?” I had never been asked that question before. It showed me integrity. It showed me that I was dealing with a fair businessman who was also looking out for my best interests. Not everyone in the business world is going to look out for my best interests, but those who do – I know I want to hang on to them.
This is a principle I want to live by and do business by. So when the time comes for me to start pulling in favors, I want to know that I have earned those favors or that I will pay for them. Yes – there are no free lunches.

3) Brilliance shines effortlessly: Some entrepreneurs or wanna-be entrepreneurs feel a strong need to constantly talk about how smart they are, how connected they are and how cool they are. And it gets frankly annoying after a while. The leaders I admire are the ones who know when to talk, when to namedrop and when to shut up. And that is the kind of leader I aspire to be everyday.

4) Inspire loyalty: The founder/ public face of a huge non-profit never thanked his volunteers or even bothered to find out their names when he flew into Philly for a conference organized and managed by the volunteers. Three months later, every single volunteer had quit or moved on. A small gesture of appreciation would have avoided this situation and kept the volunteer roster loyal and motivated. Instead, the non-profit had to struggle for another few months before they could build a sound volunteer board again. Lesson: No employee is too lowly. Don’t gush, but certainly don’t ignore anyone’s contribution. I admire companies and entrepreneurs who are able to retain employees long-term. To me, it says a lot about the company.

5) Give control: I read these stories about how once you are an entrepreneur you cease having a life. No vacations, no time-off. But I have met an equal number of amazing entrepreneurs who build their business around the idea that it will survive and run smoothly without their continued presence. And that happens upon relinquishing control and trusting the right person to take care of the business in your absence.

So that’s what has been on my mind so far. Would love to hear your thoughts and your ideas on what you think makes a good entrepreneur/ leader.

Twitter – The end of the begining ?

Jinal Shah — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:06:27 +0000

Ben Malbon and team of BBH Labs has an amazing, thought-provoking discussion on Twitter and the future of it.

Here is the comment I posted on the blog: (Read the main post first!)

I think there are two lenses to have this conversation from: a personal lens and a business lens.

On the personal front, I think Maria phrased it the best. Curiosity and Credibility -also lets not forget instant gratification that this medium allows us. From a theoretical POV, I can also argue, vanity and a kind of cultural megalomania (look how funny my tweets are, or how cool the links I share are)
Whatever the reasons, they pander to the very basic human instinct and we respond to them. I think these responses are also quite evident on Facebook (rememeber how everyone had the ‘Places I have visited’ and the ‘Books I have read’ applications installed when the aps first premiered? ) However, on Twitter – the gratification is on steroids! The speed, the quickness, the instant-ness…
I think what Twitter has done, is made us as human beings incredibly self-aware. We have come to realize the power of our words, our curatorial abilities and our personalities – and because it is so easily manifested on Twitter, I think this is just the beginning. As Twitter evolves, we too, will evolve how we use it.

On the business front, I personally think the answer has never been clearer or simpler. I believe that brands and entrepreneurs are coming to accept that perhaps, the only value with investing time and resources on Twitter is that of a direct connection with the customers. Cliched, but I cannot think of a single social technology that has made customer service so incredibly simple or relevant.

As a collective Twitter community, we have also evolved from the obsessive need to gain ‘followers’ and ‘follow’ people back. Infact, now if I see someone following everyone that follows them – they lose a little bit of credibility with me. It goes to show that they are not curating the information they receive – only paying attention to the information they send out.

It is OK for brands to follow / harness only their audiences. They don’t and shouldn’t feel obligated anymore to follow everyone back. The barriers to entry on Twitter are only diminishing – So in that respect – I believe for brands and businesses, this is just the beginning.

No. I don’t think this is the end of the beginning. Early-adopters such as ourselves may move on to some other technology, but that does not mean Twitter has peaked. We early adopters moved on from Hi5 and Friendster – but those networks continue to thrive. Albeit, with a different audience, but they are successful.

Early adopters like us are never the sole/ target audience of any new technology. Also, any new technology takes atleast a few years before it finds who the ‘monetiziable’ audience is and eventually, it evolves into pandering to that audience. More often than not, early adopters are not that audience.

About monetizing Twitter itself – that’s a question I think everyone is interested in watching how and when that will happen.

A fresh new perspective on marketing

Jinal Shah — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:59:36 +0000

The Glass is Half FULL

View more presentations from Jacquelyn Corbett cyr.

Brilliant!

Agencies in the market for work

Jinal Shah — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:51:33 +0000

This is where the recession has its upside. Its pushing everyone out of their comfort zones.
DDB West created a snazzy, clever website for a new project “The Rebound Project” positioning themselves as an agency ready for a gaming project. In another instance, this months’ Fast Company issue carries a full-page advertisement (yes print!) by innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212 making an open bid for interesting projects to work on for free*.

I don’t know if its working for either of them, but I have to applaud their efforts

Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009

Jinal Shah — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:22:30 +0000

I am a few days late but I wanted to compute and think through what I learned at the conference. Once again, thank you to Anjali Ramchandran who very graciously donated me her PSFK Conference ticket. I couldn’t believe my luck and her kindness. Anjali – thank you very much again!

The day kicked off with an amazing panel on Rethinking healthcare. My most important learning from this panel? Simplify complex problems using design and information. I wrote in more detail about this particular panel here.

The next talk, Ghosts in the Darkness, by Celestine Arnold, was perhaps my favorite and the most illuminating talk of the day. Celestine chose a very interesting topic – the representation of minorities in video games, social networks and virtual worlds. Throughout her talk, I wished I had a tape-recorder because I wanted to remember everything she was saying. Her talk centered around how most video-games are created for and cater to a very white market and about the stereotypical representation of minorities in the games. Her deck is not yet online but I’ll be sure to share it.

Next up was Kevin Slavin of Area/Code: Best quote of the day came from him, “Mobile is an ecosystem that cell phones happen to be a part of”
Slavin made some incredibly thought provoking comments about the relationship we have with inanimate objects. ‘All objects are living things and have a sou. We are headed into a world where entities have a physical presence and a digital presence.”

The panel on sustainability with Sarah Beatty (Green Depot) Simon Collins (Parsons) Ryan Jacoby (IDEO) and Matthew Lusk (Hecho Inc) highlighted how the conversation around sustainability has evolved. Collins summed it up in the very beginning of the discussion, Sustainability is not a destination, it is a journey. What I took away from this panel was that sustainability comes down to intelligent design (designers) and intelligent choices (consumers)

The most fun I had was at the Open to Change panel with panelists John Geraci (outside.in) Scott Heiferman (Meetup.com) Avner Ronen (boxee.tv) and Domenico Vitale (www.pic-nyc.com)
This panel focused on how creators and the community come together to develop new thinking and make ideas happen. Nothing new learned, but just re-affirmed my own believes and faith in the power of the community. It’s fantastic to see entrepreneurs like Avner Ronen spending much of his time building the community around Boxee. I particularly enjoyed an anecdote he shared: Boxee has a wiki set up and Avner made a note on the wiki about an upcoming pitch with Hulu and its content partners. In no time, Boxee fans and its community had written and provided insights into the pitch document that Avner later took to Hulu. Hail the community!!

The only drawback of this panel was that instead of allowing the panelists to speak, the moderator answered the audience questions! Also, he talked more than any of the panelists. :S

And as a delicious finish – Wooster Collective’s, Marc (also my boss!) and Sara Schiller, talked about street art and basically, why tweaking the public space is so infectious. They shared a terrific compendium of public art photographs from their own archives. “We used the internet to celebrate an art form that was only being discussed as vandalism by traditional media.”
So why is tweaking the public space so infections? Marc says, “It is site-specific, allows the city to become a collaborator, adds context and meaning and most importantly – becomes personal and intimate.” The ephemeral quality of street art is what makes its impact so profound.

Piers and team – congratulations on an amazing job with the conference!

Re-inventing Healthcare

Jinal Shah — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:26:30 +0000

The PSFK Conference yesterday was kicked off by a very interesting panel on re-inventing healthcare and innovations in the industry. I have many thoughts on what I learned at the conference and so I’m breaking it up in several posts so that I can focus and collate my thoughts on each of the big ideas and not just regurgitate it.

Richard Fine of Help Remedies has a very interesting idea. Help Remedies products are stripping apart the frills of medicine packaging and bringing it down to its purest levels. Fine made some good points about the packaging, the upselling and the choices that pharmaceutical companies package up to gain a larger market share on simple products like acetaminophen and band-aids. Now, you cannot not love the packaging and presentation of the Help Remedies products – it stands apart and it makes a point.

But what disappointed me was the total lack of dialog or questions around the bottom-line and the business model. Innovation in design is not the answer to curing the health industry of its woes. It is a part of the answer. Help Remedies sells its 12 tablets of simple acetaminophen for $6. And they sell 8 surgical band-aids for $6. As compared to a Rite-Aid tablet pack that sells 100 tablets for $5.95 or 80 band-aids for $3.99.

Now the obvious question is, do I simply want to look cool by buying a better packaged drug or do I want value for my money? And I think the answer to this is also very obvious. Screw the packaging, give me more value for my money.

At the presentation, Fine mentioned that their products are currently being sold at top hotels (Mondrian) museums and elite boutiques. See the full list of venues here.

My contention with this idea is not that their products are sold and currently cater to an obviously design-conscious, upper strata of the society. It is OK that this is their business model. But my problem is with the idea that when presenting to a creative crowd, do not just highlight the creative/ differentiation and the positioning. The panel was about altering the way we think about medicine -and the way we think about heatlhcare or medicine or anything for that matter cannot be divorced from the business of it.

Perhaps the responsibility of illuminating both sides of the coin lies more with the moderator of the panel than the actual speakers.

Now I don’t own a business or have never run one. So I am sure that there is a reason why a simple product like theirs is not competitively priced. Manufacturing, Distribution, Formulations – perhaps Help Remedies CANNOT afford to sell their products for a more competitive price, but the point is – talk about it! Don’t underestimate the intelligence of a creative community by not addressing the business implications and challenges of actually trying to change how we view an industry.

Just my opinion.

Reinventing & Reinnovating B-School programs

Jinal Shah — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:44:53 +0000

With the current state of the economy, I find it very interesting that we are taking stock and questioning everything from consumption and , morality to education and ethics. This article in NYT questions whether the time is now to retrain MBA programs.

Since I don’t have an MBA, my opinions are slightly skewed. So forgive me. But I was in B-school as an undergrad and quit in favor of a more liberal arts oriented Communications major. I don’t think that communications is necessarily divorced from business – you need business skills even as a communications professional. However, what I valued most about the Comms. school was the priority and focus on ethics, standards and morality that were ingrained into the students as part of journalism school training.

And that is exactly what the critics of the current b-School programs purport:

…..that they graduate with a focus on maximizing shareholder value and only a limited understanding of ethical and social considerations essential to business leadership.

I have said this before because I truly believe in this. This recession is a boon in a way – because it has stopped the self-perpetrating cycle of greed and consumption and is forcing individuals, communities, charities and even organizations to stop and reflect. In the 1950s, this introspection resulted in an increased focus on vigorous quant and analytical skills from MBA schools. This time, it will result in a stronger focus on corporate, social and ethical responsibility AND creativity. Because, the bottomline is never the only ultimate deciding factor.