Influential Marketing Blog

FinnAir, Republic Day & Why Celebration Is The Best Marketing Strategy

A few weeks ago it was my birthday. The day before on a Saturday morning, my two boys came leaping into our room very excited to wake me up. It wasn't so much about my birthday, unfortunately, as it was about getting ready to do their favourite thing on a Saturday morning: going to IHOP for pancakes. And when there is a birthday involved, it is an even bigger deal. Your birthday is a celebration there. They bring over at least 6 of the wait staff to sing their own version of the birthday song to you. You get ice cream for breakfast (what kid wouldn't love that?).

People love celebrations - and they love to be at the center of attention. Birthdays are easy. Probably any restaurant would do something special for your birthday. But what about the moments that people forget to celebrate? 3 days ago was the first day of the Chinese New Year. It is the Year of the Dragon. What did your business do to celebrate? Unless you happen to be Chinese, probably nothing. 

Life and culture gives us plenty of moments to celebrate, but often we let them pass without doing anything. If we could, however, it would be an unexpected delight. Today FinnAir offered a perfect example of that - as they filmed and posted a video on YouTube of their cabin staff performing a surprise Bollywood dance on a flight from Helskinki to India in celebration of India's Republic Day:



South Asians and anyone with a passion for India (or marketing) have been sharing this on Facebook and talking about it all day today. It is going what you might call "micro-viral." In other words, it is going viral among the exact small target community that a marketing team should care most about - people highly likely to travel to Southeast Asia. The timing is perfect too, as one of the things that many South Asian families start to think about at the beginning of the year is planning their travel for the rest of the year. And flights to India get booked far in advance.

So this surprise dance has a potentially beautiful marketing payoff - to get people who are considering travel to India later in the year to consider using FinnAir to get there. As of now the video only has a few thousand views. Perhaps it will never get a million or more. But by offering an unexpected celebration, they have positioned their brand as one that offers a connection to India (literally and figuratively). My guess is that it is already paying off.

2012 Edition: 15 Marketing and Business Trends That Matter

Let me tell you a little secret.  I look forward to putting together an annual trend report the same way that some people look forward to having Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I realize that may sound a bit strange, but ever since I did my first trend recap last year I was hooked.  This year, the process of collecting the trends took all year.  I have a folder on my desk labelled "Trends 2012" and throughout the year I would rip out articles from magazines or printout webpages to save. Last November I started actually writing my trend presentation and finally released it on Slideshare yesterday. 

 

A few things surprised me about the trends this year. Here are a few of the most unexpected things:

1. Only 2 out of 15 trends are based on innovative technology (Trends #10 and #13). Given the prominence of technology in our lives and more and more digital tools, I expected that more of the trends for 2012 would be based entirely on technology innovation. That ended up not being the case as most of the trends focused more on either behaviours or the use of sites and technology that already exist and don't really require much innovation in order to keep growing.
2. Creativity and design are more important than ever. While it would have been too obvious to point this out as a trend on its own, many of the trends that were included in the presentation were highly dependent on encouraging more creativity and delivering great design. Measuring Life, for example, has taken off in part thanks to great product and interface designs. Pointillist Filmmaking or Social Artivism are clearly based on creativity and design. Even Retail Theater, Tagging Reality and Charitable Engagement are all trends that require creative thinking and  strong ability to use design to engage people.
3. People actively seek opportunities to participate, collaborate or experience something. Doing something together came up as a big motivator for many of the trends this year, as Social Loneliness led people to look for more opportunities to have great experiences or be part of something worthwhile. Pointillist Filmmaking, Civic Engagement 2.0 and Retail Theater are all examples where people are seeking the chance to participate in something. Charitable Engagement ChangeSourcing and Co-Curation are other trends where people offer their time and passions to collaborate together on something.

Let me know what you think about these trends with a comment here or on Facebook, or feel free to send me an email at influentialmarketing@gmail.com.  Next week I'll be starting my trend folder to gather stories for 2013 ...

If you would like to get a downloadable version of this presentation, you can find it on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rohitmarketingauthor.

The South Asian Entertainment & Media Movement

I have always had a mixed relationship with Apu. The long standing joke in many South Asian communities was that he was really our first and most recognizable movie star. Still, he was a caricature of a convenience store owner - one of several typecasts for South Asians that have included taxi drivers and call center workers. While NBC's Outsourced did a great job of poking fun at this with smart cultural humor ... it was still a niche. We were still a niche.

This past weekend I had the chance to spend time with more than 300 of my fellow South Asians working in the media, entertainment and marketing industries at the SAMMA Summit in NY. In a room filled with leaders from big marketing agencies, movie studio executives, music industry pioneers, actors and dancers there was a lot of excitement. Coming together as a community offered one of the rare moments to collectively celebrate the impact that South Asians have been having on the industry and the culture of the United States and beyond. Through a collection of great individual stories and company successes, it was clear that South Asians are creating a movement right now and here are a few reasons why:

1. India is growing more important as a media market for expansion.

During the lunchtime keynote the President of Turner International Louise Sams shared how Turner is expanding many of their networks including Cartoon Network into the Indian and South Asian market and their ambitious growth plans for that market. Other networks are similarly vying not just to expand their programming and channels into that market, but also working with local talent to produce custom programming specifically tailored for the South Asian market.

2. "Desification" of the music industry.

As music composer Salim Merchant of Salim-Suleiman once shared, "internationally, Bollywood is the new hip-hop." This year, there was a lot of attention on Desi Hits! - a website founded by Anjula Acharia Bath where you can listen to remixes of pop songs, see collaborations between popular singers like Brittany Spears and well known Bollywood artists. Desi Hits is also bringing iconic Bollywood actresses like Priyanka Chopra to America, taking musicians like Lady Gaga to India, helping up and coming actresses like performer Anusha and breaking down the boundaries between Bollywood and Hollywood. 

3. Being South Asian is no longer a defining or limiting description.

As Rishad Tobaccowala shared in his keynote address, "I never wanted to be the best Indian in marketing. I just wanted to be the best person."  Today there are more examples of people who are succeeding based solely on who they are and what they do, and not because they are Indian or cater to a South Asian audience. One example mentioned was Frieda Pinto, who reached success initially through her role in Slumdog Millionaire, starring as the female lead in the recently released Planet of the Apes. Over the last several years, there have been many others in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue as well.

4. South Asians pioneer an entire media infrastructure.

One of the best discussions of the day delved into the world of South Asian niche media and how there is now a complete ecosystem. From movie theater agreements to ethnic magazines to television channels - South Asian filmmakers in particular have the ability to tap an entire diaspora to promote a new film in a way that can achieve a niche success in a way that many other minorities in the US have yet to build.

5. Individual stories of South Asian success become commonplace.

In a powerful reminder that there are South Asians doing amazing work in unexpected industries, there were lots of great success stories. Sunil Gulati, the President of the United States Soccer Federation and Dr. Sanjay Gupta from CNN were both winners of a SAMMA trailblazers award. Legendary media executive Rishad Tobaccowala, Floyd Cardoz winner of Top Chef Masters 2011 on Bravo, Bobby Ghosh (World Editor at TIME magazine) as well as Naveen Selvadurai (co-Founder of Foursquare) were all participating in the event.

In one of the highlights, keynote speaker Padmini Sharma from Frito-Lay shared a video from an award winning old campaign from Times of India celebrating the 60th anniversary of India's independence. In it, India's most famous actor Amitabh Bachchan reads what was a cover ad from the Times of India about "One India" (video embedded below).

It was a fitting reminder of the power of uniting as a community as South Asians found a moment to gather, reflect and celebrate the growing contributions of our community to culture in the United States. I only hope I don't have to wait a year for another moment to celebrate.

Toyota Venza Reminds Us Of The Dangers Of Evangelism

If there is one universal truth that almost no one in the world of technology or social media has figured out, it might be this: everyone hates evangelists. No matter what they are "evangelizing" - the world view anyone who claims this title for themselves usually has is that the product, service or idea that they have to share with the world is one that everyone should adopt. Evangelists don't see the world as it is - they see it as a place that would be better if only more people agreed with them.

That kind of one-sided thinking is dangerous, whether for joining Facebook, adopting a religion, buying an iPad or anything else. I found an unlikely reminder of this several days ago through a brilliant ad for the Toyota Venza which pits an active middle aged couple against their teenage social media obsessed daughter. As they go out into the world and enjoy their lives, their daughter laments about how "anti-social" they are and calls their 19 friends on Facebook "so sad." Check it out:



How many times might any "social media enthuasiast" find ourselves in exactly that same position? In the ad, the daughter (played perfectly by Allyn Rachel - @allynrachel on Twitter) is an evangelist for a technology that her parents are managing to do just fine without. For me, the ad stood out as a rare reminder that there is a hidden cost to our growing culture of evangelists. As marketers work to build "brand ambassadors" and ordinary customers find pleasure (and sometimes revenue) in becoming the unofficial voices for brands - there will be a coming backlash against those who are overly evangelical.

So instead of so much dueling evangelism, what if each of us just focused on ourselves instead of "converting" others to our point of view?   In an ideal world, people should always feel free to share their passion about the things they love ... as long as we all don't have to agree on what those things are.

How Australia Uses Social Media To Celebrate Immigrant Experiences

Australia has a unique problem that almost no other country in the world would be able to understand. With a population of just under 20 million people, the country is one of the few places on Earth that anyone might be able to describe as underpopulated. The vast distances most people must travel to get from their home countries to Australia is certainly part of the reason - and the long history of violence against the native aboriginal people (much like the US history with the Native Americans) has led to drastically reduced native population.

Until just the last few decades, Australia was a place which also held onto a fairly racist immigration policy - legislating first against all immigrants, then against Southern Europeans (such as Greeks and Italians), and then against all others until finally in 1973 the country finally adopted the same open immigration policy as most other developed countries of the time.  Slowly, the country began to actively court people from all cultures to come to Australia. When I lived there from 1998 to 2003, I remember being struck by how invested the government was in getting people to join the culture and become Australian. They even had television ads where the call to action was "become a citizen."

Last year, the Australian TV channel SBS launched an interesting documentary series online designed to celebrate one sector of the immigrant experience - people who had come from Africa and built their lives in Australia. Told with an interactive website featuring videos of real people - the campaign offered an inside look at the success stories and real lives of African immigrants in Australia.

It is exactly the kind of campaign that every country should do more of. The immigrant experience is a critical part of the success of many countries, and recently it seems to be under a sort of undue scrutiny from many cultures as reactions to fundamentalist groups, potential terrorism and misguided fear mongering have led to a new rise in popularity for isolationism.

Preventing immigration is not the solution. Australia may have been one of the slowest countries in the world to realize the value of an open immigration policy - but now they celebrate it with campaigns like this one. Let's hope other developed countries can follow their example.

Palm Pre Misses Opportunity With Bollywood Hero Sponsorship

Earlier this month, the IFC channel launched a new three part mini-series called Bollywood Hero that featured the story of an American actor (Chris Kattan) who decides to leave Hollywood for Bollywood to become a leading man. The show aired in early August and has been replaying on the channel since then. I found it entertaining and highly recommend it, but I doubt you're reading this blog to get my review of a TV mini-series ... so let's talk about the marketing.

The first thing any marketer would notice is that the show seemed to have two main sponsors - Palm (focused on promoting their new Pre) and esurance.com:

What was most interesting about these sponsors, however, was not that they both chose to support the program (which I think is great), but in how they chose to "activate" their sponsorships. Palm placed banner ads and logos on the website for the film that pointed to a branded page all about the Palm Pre. No mention of Bollywood, the campaign or anything related to the film. Esurance.com, on the other hand, chose to put together a full campaign called "Bollywood Casting Call" that invited lovers of Bollywood dance to submit their videos for a chance to win the "prize" of being animated to dance in an animated promo for the brand with their cartoon spokesperson Erin Esurance:

Anyone who has seen a Bollywood film (or even a farce about one) knows that a good part of the film is about the dancing. Picking up on that, esurance.com invited people to participant in the fun and offered an outlet to become a part of their campaign. Though the tie to the film could have been stronger, the campaign generated 54 video entries and over 25,000 video views - over what seems to be a relatively short duration of a few weeks. More importantly, esurance.com now has several branded videos online to use as marketing assets, and will soon have one more when they create the animated prize video featuring the winning video.

Palm on the other hand may realize some brand awareness and positive brand association for choosing to sponsor an independent production such as this, but leaves much of their opportunity on the table by not choosing to integrate the campaign more into their overall efforts. What could they have done? Exclusive content on the Pre to drive trial and maybe even purchase, giving product to the winners of the dance contest, or even creating a demo of the product where you could watch a trailer of the film on the Pre would all have been ways to further engage the audience with their product and get more out of their sponsorship.

One final yet simple idea: imagine if Palm just did more to support of one of the best marketing tactics for the film itself ... a flash mob dance in Times Square (video below) that has already generated almost 200,000 views. Sometimes it's not enough to put up the money to simply sponsor or underwrite something - to really get the value from it you need to take a more integrated approach.

Lenovo Extends The Olympic Experience With 100 Athlete Blogs

For any die-hard Olympic enthusiasts like me, you already know that today is a special day. It's exactly one month from the beginning of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing (on 08/08/08) and media attention is already starting to turn towards these Games in a more frenzied way. For several months now, I have been part of the team here in Ogilvy's 360 Digital Influence group working on what I believe will be one of the most unique Olympic sponsorships of the coming games. Of course, I'm biased since I work on the campaign, but yesterday we started to spread the word about a new campaign that I have mentioned already once before on this blog.

The campaign is called The Voices of the Olympic Games and over the past several months we have recruited 100 athletes from more than 25 countries and more than 30 sports to all blog about their experiences leading up to the games. Our campaign strategy, in a sentence is:

Use Lenovo products to power athletes sharing their real experiences leading up to and during the Olympic Games directly with fans around the world.

There are several reasons why I'm really excited about this campaign. The most obvious is that as part of it, I will be heading to Beijing to offer a live voice - something I can't wait to do. More than that, however, the scale of this project and bringing this many real voices together from so many different cultures and sports is a much needed view of the Games that will be unique in its lack of melodrama.  None of our blog posts will be set to sappy overture-style music, and the stories we have are all an unfiltered view directly from the athletes that are competing. 

Along with our site aggregating all these voices at http://summergames.lenovo.com, we are also going to be using a live Twitter feed (@lenovo2008), Flickr, del.ici.ous, and there is a Facebook application created in partnership with Citizen Sports that has already topped 60,000 downloads. I'll be blogging lots more about the Olympics, but for now please check out our site and let me know what you think. We've got another month to put the finishing touches on it before Opening Ceremonies!

Campaign Mentions & Buzz (leave a comment if you'd like to be added to this list):

• Kevin Dugan: http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2008/07/social-media-br.html
• Adrants: http://www.adrants.com/2008/07/ogilvy-er-lenovo-blogs-and-tweets.php
• MarketingVox: http://www.marketingvox.com/39699-039699/
• Kyle Flaherty: http://www.engageinpr.com/2008/07/08/olympics-and-social-media/

Ironweed Films and The Secret of Repackaging That Works

Would you join a book of the month club?  How about taking the packaged tour to see the sights at a new travel destination instead of exploring them on your own?  There was a time when I didn't understand why anyone would choose something like that.  After all, if you can have all the fun of seeing a new place for the first time, why pollute it with a watered down tour designed for tourists (the one word no real traveller wants to associate themself with).  The easy thing to think is that packaged options are for amateurs.  And no one wants to be an amateur.  But then I went to the Outback in Australia.  For whatever reason, I ended up on an adventure tour instead of just getting a car and going.  I had already seen the Outback once by car exploring on my own.  This time, with a friend visiting, I took the tour.  Along the way, we took in a wounded kangaroo to drop off at a shelter and slept under a deeply coloured sky turned extreme by all the smoke from bush fires in the air.  Every experience on the tour was one I would not have had exploring by myself. 

The reason why I started with this story is because this weekend I was thinking again about the power of packaging when it comes to marketing an experience.  I spent the day saturday with a great team of people working on the marketing strategy for my coming book launch and one of the things we talked about was how to package the experience.  It got me thinking about the last packaged experience I joined ... a group called Ironweed Films.  The company has a charge to share great (and underappreciated) independent films with their members each month.  It is, essentially, a film of the month club.  What sets their experience apart, though, is that in addition to a single full length film, they also package it with 2-3 other short films and put a custom cover around the DVD.  The result is that you don't just get a single movie every month, you get an exploration of an idea or theme, played out over several films - and even the chance to take action on their website with a related activity for each film collection.  Past topics have included nature, abortion, elections, iraq, and the future of food.  What makes Ironweed Films stand out offers a lot of lessons on how to do repackaging right.  For those of you who have a service that you are looking to package, read these lessons first:

1. Offer added value.  The biggest thing Ironweed does is that they go through all the films out there to pair up films that explore similar themes.  As a result, each month you don't just get a single point of view on an immerssive topic, you get several.  In most cases, unless you were in the industry and looking for these films all the tme, they include films you might never have seen.
2. Don't forget about having your own brand. When you are repacking things from others, it may be difficult to create your own unique and memorable brand.  Where Ironweed succeeds is in designing their own brand that members can associate with.  Everything from the brown paper envelope with purple writing that the DVDs arrive in, as well as the numbering of monthly DVDs (kind of like episodic comic books) to give you the sense that each DVD is a collectible item add to the branded approach.
3. Make it about passion.  There are essentially two models for repackaging items.  The first is to repackage multiple things for convenience or to make more money.  The classic example of that would be those packages of 4 colors of peppers sold in the supermarkets.  It's all about ease for you, and they charge you for it.  The other model, and the one that Ironweed promotes, is building their repackaging around a mission to bring more independent films to more people (a cause they believe in).  As a result, the passion makes the site and service even more appealing.

Aside from my Outback experience, I am still not sure that I am a fan of taking the packaged experience when travelling.  That can still be a pretty inconsistent gamble.  When it comes to repackaging an experience though, Ironweed has a model worth considering.

Blog Action Day: 7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

One thing I can't resist is an ambitious project.  As a marketer, if there is a groundswell for something that I believe in or find interesting, I am highly likely to try and be a part of it.  That's why I join all sorts of groups, and why I try to lend my voice to causes that I believe are worthwhile.  The latest effort that I have been looking forward to being part of is also the reason why I'm posting twice in a single day ... something I don't usually do.  Today is Blog Action Day - something I have been promoting on the sidebar of my blog for several weeks now.

The aim of the project is to collect together all kinds of bloggers to talk about the environment.  The site featured a very smart way of letting bloggers sign up early and attaches a currency to being first in how all the blog participants are listed (in order of joining rather than by size of blog - so I'm in the 4001 to 5000 list).  The built in measurement of the site is also done through aggregating the readers via RSS, which they planned for by requesting the RSS link for every blog that wanted to participate when you signed up.  So far, it's a brilliant model for how to run a blog centric social marketing campaign - and the results are stellar so far.  The site boasts more than 15,000 blogs participating with an aggregated RSS reach of more than 12 million readers, and is publishing real time updates on buzz on the Blog Action Day blog.

Let's consider this reach for a moment.  One of the big measurement challenges in blogging is to equate an RSS reader with a regular old impression.  Impressions are typically measured on a monthly basis and multiplied out.  RSS readers are individual readers and therefore far more accurate.  I happen to believe an RSS reader is more involved than a regular impression as well - but how much more?  Even if you conservatively say it is worth 2x as much, this gives the reach of Blog Action day nearly 25 million readers.  On a single day.  That's pretty impressive.

But the point of this post is to talk about the reach but to talk about the environment.  My original thought was to come up with something new to say about it ... but while I was live blogging at the Corporate Climate Response event a few months ago, I published a post about tips for eating differently to impact climate change.  That's my contribution for Blog Action Day, republished below:

7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

During a session run by Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network at the Corporate Climate Response Conference, she shared a wide range of interesting research that was likely difficult for most participants to absorb quickly enough (and extremely difficult to keep up with for blogging purposes!). Luckily, FCRN has a fantastic research archive published online at their website and also provide links to an assortment of research from other groups collected into a single archive. One of the more interesting points Garnett raised was what steps regular consumers could take in order to change their own eating habits to make an impact on CO2 emissions. This is often a little talked about topic, and as Garnett noted, it is notoriously difficult to ask consumers to do - mostly because of the huge cultural significance of food and the difficulty of sacrifice. For many consumers, however, it may simply be a lack of information. For all of them, here are 7 tips Garnett shared about ways you can change your eating habits to have an impact:

1. Change the balance of what you eat (less meat and dairy, “lower down” on the food chain)
2. Choose seasonal field grown foods (require less storage, heating & transport)
3. Do not eat or purchase certain foods (including foods that are hothoused or those that are air freighted)
4. Reduce your dependence on the “cold chain” (get rid of the second freezer, choose less processed robust foods and do more frequent non car-based shopping)
5. Waste less food (improve your “food turnover” to eat what you buy sooner and reduce wastage)
6. Cook more efficiently (cook for more people and for several days at a time, use the oven less frequently)
7. Redefine your ideal for quality (be willing to accept variability in quality and supply

In addition to this post, here are a few other posts from this blog over the past year which may hopefully inspire your thinking and perhaps even inspire some action:

"Greenest Hits" From Influential Marketing Blog:

• The Greenest Sports Event on Earth
• The Marketing of "An Inconvenient Truth"
• Live Earth Includes DC, Thanks To The Native Americans
• One Hour No Power Campaign - And Other Ways to Save the World
• Wikimapia, Google's Green Summer and Marketing Mashups

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Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!