The Adidas Match Tracker

Saw something extremely interesting today – The Adidas Match Tracker

It allows users to actually see everything that transpired in a match from ever pass to every host, block, formation change etc.

The theory is “the more you know about the game, the better you are at the game”

I think its an interesting application and football geeks (can i call them that?) will love it!

Im not sure how the technology is developed – if you think you do let me know!

I think another feature that can be added is a ‘future mode’ section where users can forsee the future of their teams by putting in what they think the result of every game will be. In a sense then, a fantasy predictor game can be tied in too.

Good innovation. Neat execution. Nike owns the mindspace of  ’im a football fanatic’ because of its viral hit ‘Write the Future‘ (which is turning out to be a bit of a joke looking at how the World Cup has transpired) – here is Adidas taking big steps. I don’t think its one of these things that generations will talk about though.

They also have http://www.facebook.com/adidasfootball just like Nike has http://www.facebook.com/nikefootball?ref=ts&v=wall

Puma is also doing something similar – http://www.facebook.com/PUMAfootball – i like their communication “Make Football in Public” and “Love = Football” – their scale is lacking though.

I see these brands doing it for Cricket too. If im not mistaken Nike already is. I see us helping them do some of it.

Another Screen Grab from the Match Tracker

Coke Opens Happiness

Went to this interesting site thanks to Prashant – its  website by Coke. They have this Smilizer where they will donate $1 for every laugh uploaded.

I think its a perfect fit. Large organisations usually commit large sums of money for CSR. Here they have used that to integrate it in their brand campaign (in all likelihood). Its a win win situation for the charity, the brand and the consumer.

Here basically the consumer laughs and ‘Opens happiness’ and $1 is donated to the National Park Foundation. What i like is the fact that we can then hear people’s ‘laughs’ by rolling over bubbles and then rate them. Good fun. Neat execution.

Finally a video worth showcasing!

From the Factory

How can a Beer brand get men to love it?

Here’s how!

Fantastic idea! Not sure if many men actually tried it. It makes for a great video though!

Brands should allocate a production sum for ambient viral ideas and their agencies should take measures to make sure that the videos spread the web like Wildfire!

Hat tip Vikky Jain.

Lenticular Lighted Panels used by Coca Cola

Came across a fantastic video thanks to Mrugank from our team. Coke has used a fantastic ambient idea and created a Mexican Wave.

The trend is also pretty clear – create something unique and creative offline and also make it viral online. Increasingly, ambient activities are become viral hits. It started with flashmobs and is now moving towards things like ambient engagements being recorded and spread. The funtheory virals that won at Cannes are another example.

I see a huge opportunity for this in India. We’re super emotional people.

Managing Passion Driven Communities

Over the last 2 months we at FoxyMoron have been managing a couple of sports & film communities. Both i think come in the space of passion. Once triggered, the easiest to manage on Social Media. There are a few learnings that we feel are worthy sharing:

With respect to Sports Communities, one things is certain – the obvious: These communities are largely passion driven. That’s a goldmine for brands to exploit when it comes to Digital. A sports brand is an extension of an individuals lifestyle. Its something larger. It elevates you. It drives you. If you’ve supported a sports team, you would know.

Few Hygiene Factors:

• Reply to every fan. Or atleast try. Fans will always post questions/ comments.
• Identify fans who will help you out with replies and drive them.
• Update frequently. Very frequently.
• Share what fans share if you think its really exciting.
• Help fans make a decision
• Always update insider news first.
• Host regular contests with give aways

Other not so hygiene stuff that helps:

• Reward individual members – feature them on the landing page of the community/ profile of the week
• Create a Fan Army – Find a set of members to be your champions. And keep building this base of champions.
• Recruit a fellow member programmes. Make sure the community then welcomes them.
• Take measures to Aggregate the best content onto your website
• Members driving votes programmes with a carrot at the end
• Offline Activities
• Allow members to determine the nature of Offline Activities
• Use members to organise/ guide and spearhead offline activities

The idea is to have thematic campaigns over time that make the community and brand association jump. Act like a mother who nurtures her kids. Be nice. Do no evil and always be entertaining.

This of course after you have figured out the sweet spot to build your community around.

Make every community a passion driven community. I think thats our ideology to designing social strategies. I think its the idea of passion. The idea of triggering passion. The idea of uniting people around something larger than the brand itself and then fitting brand attributes into the same is something worth considering for all brands. So far we’ve been able to do it successfully.

How to tickle that passion is another altogether. A new post. A new approach. Till then.

PS – i realised that i have used the word ‘fan’ a lot. Thank you Facebook platform for tickling the right ideas.

FoxyMoron is Hiring Social Media Managers!

This is a ‘notification’ to all those wise people who love to waste their time on Facebook and Twitter and the rest of the social media/ network brigade. If you’ve every wished to work for this super edgy ‘Foxy’ organisation.

There’s no clear name for this position. Some of the people who work for it at FoxyMoron call themselves either ‘Social Bhai’, ‘Social Media Catalyst’, ‘Online Marketing Manager/ Strategist’ and what have you.

Irrespective of what the position is called here is what you would be required to do:

a) Manage brands and their complete web presence online

b) Cook up interesting ways for Brands to be noticed online and on mobile

c) Find that Eureka Moment for some of the biggest brands in the country – ideas and creativity will be at the center of everything you do!

You will also required to have strong fundamentals in research and ensure that FoxyMoron reaches the pinnacle of the online marketing profession in India in the next couple of years.

What we require from you.

i) Be Sharp, Be Innovative, Be Foxy

ii) Have a mad sense of humour. Have the ability to say the same thing in 10,000 different ways.

iii) Have the hunger to work long hours and late nights.

iv) It helps if your academics are strong! If they aren’t its fine as long as you have the 3 points listed above!

v) It would also help if apart from the usual Microsoft Softwares you are a king (or atleast a prince) at the Adobe Suite (Photoshop particularly, Illustrator, Flash and After Effects) – if not we’ll make you one!

vi) You should be active on all major social networking platforms

vii) Ideally we’d like you to be well read.

viii) HAVE AN OPINION. At FoxyMoron we love people who have opinions.

ix) Give us a really good reason to hire you!

x) An eye for Aesthetics. We at FoxyMoron like everything to be beautiful. Your eye should be able to accommodate all things beautiful!

The Environment

You can have a look at how we work on our Facebook Page. – http://www.facebook.com/befoxy

We’d also love it if you could visit our website – http://www.foxymoron.org and our blog – http://www.befoxy.in before you come in.

If you are interested, write in to harshil (at) foxymoron.org (he replies quickly) or info (at) foxymoron (dot) org. If you have all the particular requirements, we’re waiting for you with arms wide open!

ADDITIONAL PERKS:

We feed you well (really well)

Our office is a roller coaster ride!

You will learn. A LOT.

Life at FoxyMoron: (for more click here)

Interesting Approach to Community Building for Sports Teams

The recent developments by Royal Challengers Bangalore has shown an interesting approach to community building.

The brand is looking for 3 fans to run the community – they’ve launched the Fanatic Fans Challenge.

They’re looking for 3 fans to spearhead and run the community.

The plan for now, seems to be to get the 3 fans at all locations where the team plays and post insights onto the Royal Challengers community and thus maintain the flow of content and specific interactions on the social network. The fans thus become like superstars. They are bound to be on TV and their comments on social media being widely read make them mini benchmark commentators of sorts. This will surely propel them to keep writing without costing the challengers a lot.

This is particularly interesting because so far brands have really failed to create engagement in their branded community once the media spends stop. Few brand communities that i have had a chance to gain access to have shown dismal stats. 60 – 100 active users/ fans per day on a community that’s a lakh strong.

Most of them have made the mistake of trying to be providence communities. They have thrown in groups, events, music etc. (mostly using White Label Social Networking Platforms to save costs) – things that consumers don’t care about.

The key question – why will a consumer come to your community if he/she can do this on Facebook anyway.

The key for brands is to figure out what they can give ‘extra’ in their brand community that their existing social network does not offer and sync that with the objective of the brand communities.

I have heard non sensical objectives so far – “We want to own a base that we can communicate with/ We want to own an email database” – that’s fine! But if you don’t know what the carrot for the base will be on YOUR network  why not just have the base on a Facebook/ Orkut/ Twitter instead of spending monies on building your own?

To get back to the Royal Challengers, something refreshing is that once you log into the community, you have just 1 thing you can do – share your media, your thoughts, read, and comment – so for now its more like a community built around a content piece – which is interesting. They seemed to have figured out that (duhh) that fans of the Royal Challengers come to the website or would come to a community ONLY if there is relevant cricket centered RCB content – and that’s what they’re keen to provide – content and content related interactions that you wont get anywhere on the web!

I was speaking to my friend Fundubytes (Rupesh) who was one of the key people in the ideation team at EC who came up with the idea of finding fanatic fans – he guided me to the core of their insight.

A Royal Challengers community on Orkut that has allocated responsibility of managing the community to fans (the community is managed by a fan). So 1 fan is responsible for pictures, 1 for analytics, 1 for polls etc. This automatically makes sure that content is active and stakeholders keep creating their content mostly because they are recognized. Moreover you find the best quality content.

I had done something similar when i was managing a Force India F1 Community. I gave members who were active the status of ‘Pit Crew’. Special members who had unique skill sets (knowledge, driving skills) were given titles such as ‘Resident Think Tank’ and ‘Driving Champ’ etc. This motivated members to a large extent and made sure they promoted the group, and its content. The ones who were listening in also found the concept a lot more meaningful.

For that community i had noticed that people came to the community only during race weekends. A few other people managing sports communities also noticed the same thing.

This may not necessarily be true at all times but i think it’s safe to assume that fans come to a sporting community only when there is a match/ race or a large sporting decision is made (signing of new players, unveiling of cars/ technology/ stadiums).

Brands need to realize this and say that it’s OK to have maximum traffic and these periods and invest in applications/ ideas/ contests that maximize the use experience on sporting event days. For the rest of the days, producing peripheral content about the sport/ things that go on at the team/ sneak peaks/ and building heritage for the club/ team is a good idea. That’s where pools of fan ambassadors are useful.

I actually think that the Facebook Pages platform has got it spot on in terms of pushing the right levers for consumer engagement. Some of the things i think they have done well are:

• Consolidated folder for fan photos & videos
• Easy response – ‘like’ + Comment
• Consumers can share multimedia with their status
• Its a feed
• The brand is a center of the conversation
• Singularity in interaction focus with multiple tools at the consumers’ disposal

A brand community where i have seen good interactions is the Brawn GP fan wall. 2 reasons. 1) Its easy 2) Its winning – i think its definitely a way brands should consider going towards rather than building providence communities.

Here’s my idea of an ideal fan community for a sports team (it could apply to a couple of other categories as well)

Please forgive the art work – the idea is to give an insight into the functionality.

Explained a little in detail:

What do you think the communities of sports teams should be like? I’d love to know.

I also can’t wait to get my hands on a brand that actually allows us to be in the heat of things and help then build and activate their brand community!

If you do know someone please drop me a line!

I’d also like to know what my friends (Asfaq, Gaurav, Anil,Rajiv, Manu,Rohan, Rupesh, Maneesh, Sahil, Mihir, Moksh and Eklavya) in social media who have been involved in building communities or writing about community building think. Do lend your thoughts on how you think brand communities should be built and who you think is getting it right

(At the end of 2007 i had said that brands should look to build generic communities. I was wrong.)

Case Study: Brand Integration into Corporate Communication

Hindustan Colas, a subsidiary of Hindustan Petroleum approached us to help them create the cover of their annual report along with other corporate collaterals.

In one word line, Hincol makes ‘Better Roads’. Their philosophy is focussed on using New Technology to take India, International.

The simple idea that we came up with is to make the communication do only 1 thing – showcase the benefit that the company brings forth in the road building eco system.

The creative was such that we used 2 qualities of paper for the cover of the annual report. One is a paper with textured quality which is the ‘rough’ side of the road and the other is a smooth glossy paper which depicts the result of the road made by Hincol. The copy simply said ‘We Make the Difference’. The communication was greatly appreciated because at most points, the audience is likely to feel both sides of the cover and it very aptly conveys what the company does.

Here is the visual of the creative with the front and the back cover of the annual report (click for a larger view)

Kudos to the creative and design team. Shrutti Garg, Sanket Avlani and Suveer Bajaj were involved in the ideation and execution process. Inputs were delivered by Pratik Gupta and Harshil Karia.

Do lend us your thoughts on what you think about the concept.

What brands will need to be careful 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 Challengers seem 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 my personal blog