Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

A tired sportsman can never win a match.  A tired scientist can never invent. A tired salesman can never make the sale. Giving right amount of rest, taking right amount of work, determines success of workforce. 

Strong brands are made of? It is not like the men of steel thing. It is certainly not only about a great product. And it definitely does not involve a business strategy. In my research on brand communities, and study of consumption cultures, which ironically lead me to do my thesis on anti-branding did make realize one thing about strong brands. They have a story. This is not a story they've deliberately crafted, it is their true story. It is about their founders, leaders, and their captains. Strong brands could've been built by the principles of branding. But that was two decades back, also known as the golden era of post-modern branding. The post-postmodern branding paradigm is built of the foundations of identity. Brands that have a story have an identity. Spending $X million on a campaign does not work anymore. Strong brands are made of strong narratives, strong stories.

A few days back I posted a link of my favorite scene from the academy award winning movie - The Artist. The scene was really remarkable and the best direction and screenplay I had scene in a movie for long time. In my offline discussions about the movie my colleagues too appreciated that scene. But as I posted it on Facebook it received a very limited response. The reason for this could be many and the first being that people avoid me, or my friend network was busy or they hadn't watched the movie. I silently accepted all three, but two to three days later, I started getting some "LIKES" on the update. Now I was curious. Trying not to appear narcissistic, I called up a friend to inquire about it to a friend who had liked it. He said, he found it today on his updates and he too liked the scene. He had also logged in on Facebook and used it for a good one hour in the last one week or so. Well that explains volumes about the time my friend wastes (or uses) on Faceb...

A social worker friend of mine is working in a hospital with many terminally ill cancer patients. Most of them are there due to consumption of tobacco and cigarettes in particular. She feels very strongly about banning tobacco in this country (India). But can we ? Let's look at two things Educated people smoke. Many livelihoods depend on the sale of tobacco. Assuming the first option i.e. getting the educated guys on track is a plausible solution, what about the latter? It is a well known fact that tobacco and in particular cigarettes contribute in a big way to the GDP of this country. If tomorrow we ban cigarettes, those that support their families by selling cigarettes will resist and even protest.  But in the long run, cigarettes are harmful to the productivity of labor of any country and thus we need to look into stopping its production and consumption. Unfortunately policy makers have looked at reducing its consumption by propaganda and increasing taxes thus...

Well print advertising in developed world is dead. To put it simply People aren't really buying it.The following graph will show you just that. If you carefully look at the graph, it took about five decades to go from about $20 billion in annual ad revenue to $63.5 billion in 2000, and then only about one decade to go back to approximately $20 billion. Did they innovate? They invested in websites and apps. Print ad may be near its silent grave in the developed world but it is still going strong in developing nations with low internet penetration. This is a lesson for emerging economies where internet penetration is still low. How to avoid the cliff edge? 

A cousin of mine cleared the final exam and became a Chartered Accountant. It is not easy to clear the exam in one go but he did it. He did it despite the fact that he needed to work part-time and fund himself, and with family conditions not being the greatest and most conducive of all. Kudos to him! As I came to know about his victory, I called him up to congratulate him. I also talked about future plans. He said he wanted to get in one company preferably in the education industry and work there for a long time and make it big. He stressed on staying in the company and being loyal to it. To put it simply, the employee who has struggled to climb up in life values the importance of loyalty. He has been loyal to his goal. Those who get things easily in life mostly lack conviction and cause. For organizations it is important thus to foster such people whose rise has been a result of conviction and struggle.

A friend of mine is planning to start an e-commerce portal in an already flooded Indian e-commerce market .Ask him about how to get customers? The answer is e-mail marketing. It is cheap. Spamming people is definitely cheap. At the core is not a new idea. To survive with such an idea requires heavy capital investment. I am not saying the idea is bad. It is just not a new one. People have tried it before and some have mastered it. The problem is that he requires capital, which presently is not a luxury.  Fundamentally startups that require heavy levels of advertising hint to the fact that their service or product does not sell by itself. If your business plan is heavily banking on high levels of investment in advertising, maybe you need to re-look at it.

A fairness cream gives you the hope that you'll look better.  An eco-friendly car gives you the hope that earth can be better. A luxury hotel gives you the hope that you'll live lavishly. A great leader gives you the hope that life can be better.  All good ideas sell one thing and that is hope. A conviction to create a mechanism to give hope to people leads to innovation.

The identity of a brand is built through its story. It is similar to the way our identity and personality becomes a reflection of major events and the story of our life. The story of founders of these brands in a way gets spilled over to the brands sometimes positively, and sometimes negatively. If you are building a new brand, tell a story. As a startup, following the MBA jargon is good, but it reduces the human touch. The human touch is what gives a brand a personality and makes it memorable.