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

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 my personal blog

Case Study: Minimalist Web Layout

Dr. Rohini Coutinho, a prominent Mumbai Dentist who operates under the guise of the Toothsayer came to us to get her website built. She wanted to rebrand herself from the Toothsayer to ‘Zahne Contemporary Dentistry’.

Before we started with the design we asked her to fill out a standard questionnaire.

It seemed quite clear to us that she wanted an information heavy site that could hold a lot of content but also look minimal at the same time. The minimalist approach was taken keeping in mind that her service had to seem professional – something that would please her working class clientele.

We went into brief creation mode and decided to work with not more than 2 colours. The design had to say that Zahne is ‘non gimmicky’, ‘dependable’, and knowledgeable enough to provide the client with a certain peace of mind.

We also looked at Smashing Magazine’s post on Minimalist Clean Designs:

Pointers were:

1)   Design is focused on content

2)   White Space is King

3)   Typography is the queen – (highlighting certain things, using colour with certain fonts which are key drivers etc.)

4)   Solid Colours

5)   Solid Backgrounds in plain white/ gray/ or black. Light gradients may be experimented with but are not recommended.

6)   Grid Based Layouts

7)   Vibrant Colourful Images – Images add character

Based on the same, the following is the layout we came up with:

In the end we decided to add a bit more colour  on the title bars to add some vibrancy. A large amount of white space ensured that more colours did not look cluttered.

Apart from creating a good layout, a lot of the work with Zahne also revolves around segregation and mapping the navigation of content which is why we looked at a dual navigation structure. The top navigation is a ‘treatment specific navigation’ and the left navigation is a ‘get to know Zahne better’ navigation.

The client approved the layout at first glance (she had rejected 7 layouts from 3 other designers previously).

We were thrilled. The website is currently being coded – inner pages have been designed and approved as well. We will put up the URL on completion.

Credit to Veda Adnani - design student and freelancer. She created a beautiful logo for Zahne.

Watch our Champu Ban Gaya Champion Video for Blue Bus Tees

Our in – house hero Digs, the fabulous voice of Parth, and a great client led to an enjoyable video!

Find great tees as http://www.bluebustees.com

Visit FoxyMoron to know more about our services!

Mistakes Made During the Last 1 Year of Social Media Marketing

Its been almost a year since we started undertaking social media marketing activities for clients. A lot of them have come up with positive feedback – especially the likes of Blue Bus Tees, LK Digi, Big Films, and Percept Knorigin. Without enough watertight measures they did see a return on investment from the efforts undertaken by us to scale free online mediums. This post however, is not to laud any of that – its mostly to enumerate the mistakes made in the past – mistakes that we hope not to repeat in the future (hopefully you’ll find some of them useful enough to not repeat them yourself). This is also keeping in tune with the recent ‘Sach Ka Saamna’ Trend :p

1) Large amount of strategy focussed on activating people within existing social networks. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there needs to be more meat and creativity to a strategy than just plain optimization on social networks. Social networks have an inherent flair – they are platforms for Word of Mouth marketing on steriods! The time has passed from when we needed to have brands creating just a presence on social networks. That not only lacks creativity but also makes the entire medium seem like one thats not too complicated. Agreed that conversation is a part of the social media marketing mix, and that conversations have to be sustained for long however, there have to be spurts of campaigns – campaigns that make people undertake actions. Its only when these ‘actions’ are undertaken by consumers, then will the real power of social media be outlined. The action could be something as simple as ‘unfriending’ a Facebook friend like in the case of Burger King, getting a vote from your friends as was the case with The Great Driving Challenge – and then syncing those votes as feeds into people’s social networks probably drives a lot more value than anything else. I have noticed that social media consultants have started to notice that just a presence on social networks will not work and hence they are creating websites to back the same. The emphasis however, has been on creating either static sites or sites that are not engaging enough. Few people have gone out of their way to ensure that the web properties that they create outside of social networks merge seamlessly with social networks and at the same time provide added functionality by themselves. I have made the mistake of undertaking strategy that is solely married to social networks.

2) Be genuine. Always. A lot of people have said this over and over again. At times, i have made the mistake of fake commenting/ interactions. I am a 150% sure that this does not work. The idea is for a brand to build relationships with important stakeholders. Relationships that cannot be sustained shouldn’t be started at all.

3) Use opinion leaders and use them well. At the start of the year, i was unable to use opinion leaders to further my cause. By identifying interested stakeholders and building relationships with them – getting them on your side, the process becomes a lot easier. The returns are also more valuable. With our work for Blue Bus Tees, this has shown results. The Great Driving Challenge is another perfect example. DeskAway has also done some great work by getting in touch with the correct opinion leaders and thereby getting covered on some of the top technology websites.

4) Not spending as much time ‘educating’ clients and also fudging certain statistics. I have done this once with a client. Out of desperation, sometimes you have to – its a horrible practise though! Be as true as possible. I have seen social media reports from companies glorifying applications they created when in fact the application may not have an uptake/ be engaging enough. I have seen social media companies over value the ‘conversations’ they create. I have seen companies build crap properties and charge an arm and a leg for it. All of us will have to be more faithful to our clients. That obviously requires an objective mechanism for measurement – which we still haven’t created – there are no industry standards rather.

5) Using the ’social media is not about numbers’ argument. Trust me, it is about numbers. We need to find relative audiences, no doubt. But if you can find only 1000 fans/ group members/ unique visitors for a national or international brand then you have to be kidding when you say the same. If your numbers aren’t good enough, it only means that your property is crap, your idea stinks, and you haven’t worked hard enough. Brand managers have choice – they have money to spend on SEO, PPC, Social Media, Banner Advertising. If you want social media to be the center of your brand’s online strategy – make sure it can deliver the numbers. The brand manager will then divert all his online resources to your campaign!

6) Not understanding the metrics by which your client measures success. We have to, have to do this! Atleast till standard metrics are a given at the marketplace.

7) Putting 1 brand manager/ social media evangelist on more than 1 brand. I would never ever do this again. 1 brand manager/ brand team per brand ensures deeper involvement, a stronger marriage, and greater results. Social media at the end of the day is about breathing life into a brand in the online space – if the person managing the brand, cannot be on the brand 24 x 7 – the spillover effects of word of mouth will not be achieved.

These are mistakes that we will definitely not repeat again. To work with us, call FoxyMoron.

Hindustan Times Jumps on the Twitter Bandwagon. Does not create a Conversation!

HT Media has a reasonably big section on the front page of its Mumbai Editions advertising that they are now on Twitter.

Its interesting from the perspective that an offline media powerhouse (which has been treading into online heavily, read: the launch of Shine and Desimartini) is looking to build a presence online as well and readying itself to create a captive audience online, add value, and be more future ready.

Lets also not forget that according to ComScore, the traffic to Twitter grew to reach 0.12Million visitors in February. Neilsen on the other hand says that 60% of Twitter users fail to return to the microblogging network. No clear numbers for India.

Their twitter page however, at this point is fairly disappointing. The page is being used to distribute links to their content rather than create conversations. They are simply passing on links to stories from the main website.

In the long run this is very close to spam. It does not effectively capture the utility of Twitter’s conversational capability. Its an RSS Feed in another form.

Further, the number of followers they have able to attract is largely disappointing given the prime real estate that they have (an advertisement on Mumbai’s 2nd largest daily – not sure if they have this on the editions in other cities as well).

There are some great posts on how media houses can use Twitter on Search Engine Guide. Mashable has a good post on how social media is using Twitter.

In my opinion, HT Media can start off by:

Ensuring that they create conversations with people who are mentioning keywords related to their articles using Twitter Search. For example they have an article on Bipasha Basu. Here are Twitter users who have mentioned the actress. There’s a chance to strike up a friendship!

Actually Following Key Newsmakers to listen in on current news. For example profiles such as India Today, WATBlog, Labnol etc. are great sources of generating news stories and leads. Building relationships with these influencers also ensures that HT gets linked more often through their posts.

Finding out HT users on Twitter and following them (they have email databases arising from sign ups and also from people who may have commented on the HT website). In order to refrain from seeming as spam they should regularly unfollow those who do not follow them back by using FriendorFollow. They can then be encouraged to Tweet and ReTweet HT stories.

Twitter can also be used as a medium to add value to editorials by giving 1 line insights and quotes from their top journalists.

Over time, the main twitter profile can be used to pass on voice love and link love to the blogs and twitter profiles of their top journlists as well. This brings to the fore another thought. Will social media profiles built by media companies for individuals using company resources be bound by contract?


Once they have a few followers they can also try and generate polls through Twitter. A page in the main paper with opinions from Twitter perhaps.

They can also have a citizen journalism section through Twitter where users can either send pictures or news updates and the paper can provide hat tips to Twitter users who generate leads (eg. written by Vir Sanghvi tipped off by Harshil Karia)

The last obvious thing that they can do is try and create a process for feedback on articles.

Its pretty clear that so far, HT is just feeling the waters. Im pretty sure that they will get up to speed on these development. If not, they can always find FoxyMoron

Facebook Updates Chat!

Facebook has grown at a breathtaking speed for the last year or so. I won’t bore you with the numbers.

As a result, users have started segmenting friends into lists. You may not want to let your co workers see your pictures for example or you may not want your family to see what your friends write on your wall.

This privacy button was missing for chat. All the friends you add could see you online. The only switch that you had so far was the ‘go offline completely’ switch. Facebook has now added the option to let only certain lists of friends see you online.

So if your boss is stalking you on Facebook and checking if you are online while sitting in his cabin, you can simply put him in an ‘annoying people’ list and block him! :p

Samsung Gives Brands a Lesson on How to Be Successful with YouTube

What a joy to watch! Kudos to Samsung for backing the idea and putting big bucks behind it without having its logo splashed everywhere. Brand Use + Relevant Compelling Content is the key. A case study worth sharing with clients who want their logo everywhere no matter what.

Closer home, Pepsi has done something similar too.

In Canada, Visa also used such a tactic where they asked 3 artists to interpret the word GO and streamed it live at http://www.theartofgo.ca/. This reaffirms my faith that content is king!