Category: Best Short-term campaign

Title: Nokia N8 in social media – The art of storytelling and the power of UGC

Share a little about your organisation/ brand

Bloggers’ Mind is a word of mouth and conversation analytics company. At Bloggers’ Mind, we map, measure and analyze conversations within the Social Media arena that includes social networking communities, blogs, forums and other Internet properties.

Executive Summary

The Nokia N8 social media campaign was a success and generated over 20000 conversation in a span of 2 months. This was an example of an experiential social media campaign that led to creating a global impact and became a big talking point across markets. The Nokia N8 generated over 8000 referrals from bloggers and consumers as a result of the campaigns.

]]> http://www.indiasocial.in/case-study-nokia-n8-in-social-media-the-art-of-storytelling-and-the-power-of-ugc/feed/ 0 http://www.indiasocial.in/near-field-communications-technology-for-the-future/ http://www.indiasocial.in/near-field-communications-technology-for-the-future/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:18:15 +0000 TanujLakhina http://www.indiasocial.in/?p=1594 Near Field Communications (NFC) is pegged to be the technology of the future to make payments through mobile phone devices. Besides that it can also be used to pay for mobile ticketing in public transport, device acting as a debit/credit card to make payments, read RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. Other areas where it can be effectively used include:

• Electronic ticketing
• Electronic money
• Travel cards
• Identity documents
• Electronic keys

What is NFC?

NFC is a short range wireless RFID technology that makes use of interacting electromagnetic radio fields. It is meant for application where physical touch, or close to it, is required in order to maintain security. In a practical scenario, a mobile device with NFC technology when brought in close physical contact with a device reader, would result in a payment being made without the need of using cash or a credit card for that matter.

For NFC to work, the mobile phone needs to come bundled with the technology at the time of manufacture. There would be a chip inside the mobile device which would hold the debit card and credit card information to make payments when brought into contact with a scanning device.

Application in India

There has been limited use of NFC technology all across the world with India currently having only two instances of it being implanted.

Tata DoCoMo – The service was announced in February 2011 where Tata aimed at providing its customers with anytime, anywhere talk time recharge, bill payment and other value added services (VAS) in self service mode. At the time of announcement, the service was to be run on a trial basis in Hyderabad. During the initial phase, services of mobile phone top ups, download of ringtones and wallpapers would be offered.

Citibank – Citibank offered the NFC technology in collaboration with Nokia, Vodafone, MasterCard and VIVOtech. Labelled as ‘Citi Tap and Pay’, Citibank customers could pay for their purchases by using their mobile phones as credit cards. At the time of launch, Citi partnered with Nokia to run the functionality on NFC enabled Nokia 6212, Vodafone for the mobile network associated with the service and MasterCard as the contactless payment and security infrastructure.

For the future

Biggies in the form of Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft are all vying to tap in on the NFC mobile payment market which is expected to grow immensely in the future.

The technology is prevalent in Japan but is still making inroads in other countries across the world. With technologies such as E-commerce becoming popular in India, more and more people are seeing the need to have easier means of making transactions. While E-commerce reduces the need of making physical visits when looking to buy products, in-store payments through NFC could be the end result of the physical visit as well.

In-store payments is seen as the biggest use of NFC technology whereas its usage and adaptability can be drawn to various aspects of life. It could be used for transportation, health care, ease of use, smartly access objects and social media as well.

A Forrester report indicates the technology would take some time in being implemented  as current numbers indicate only 12% of adults in the US and 6% adults in Europe have made transactions through their mobile phones.

Near Field Communications technology is going to be implemented in London during the 2012 Olympics which would enable handset owners with NFC feature enabled to make contactless payments at over 60,000 locations.

What are your views on the technology being implemented in India?

Date: September 14-15, 2010

Venue: ICC London, London

You can share your views, hear the thoughts of industry leaders, meet business partners, and see new products, services and applications in action.This Nokia event would feature advice, technical sessions with Nokia experts, and hands-on coding labs using new, powerful and easy tools.

It is a paid event.

While we talk about solar powered mobile phones, I would like to share with you an interesting article I came across regarding the Bicycle charger kit. It’s an interesting concept where the mobile charges basis the speed of the cycle. The product is targeted at emerging markets where there are frequent power cuts. Nokia 1202 in fact has 1 hour talk time and 74 hours of standby time.

Interestingly Samsung has already launched a solar powered mobile phone while Nokia has ventured into the dual SIM market with the introduction of Nokia C2. Nokia has been facing some tough competition from Micromax whith 80% of its sales driven from the rural markets. However, Nokia continues to create a strong foothold in the market with unique services like Nokia Life Tools. Nokia in partnership with Madura Finance, Ujjivan and SKS microfinance has taken the route of micro-finance which enables rural residents of Punjab and Haryana to buy mobile phones on the EMI basis which is as low as Rs 100 per week.

Another important development has been that of mobile money. In my last post, I had mentioned how mobile money is fast becoming a norm and enables money transfer using a mobile account.

Rural market remains to be an untapped market and marketers are latching onto the opportunity. Social media platforms like Facebook are also trying to reach out to the Tier 2 cities. Semi-urban cities remain a huge challenge for platforms like Twitter and Facebook. However, Orkut has been successful in bridging that divide. Forums like Mig 33 have been able to penetrate the market and have understood the market well. They have managed to dig deep into the insights. Giants like Google have been using mobile buses to educate the rural areas and towns about internet and the use of search engines.

The moolah of market penetration lies in rural India.

I remember my first class in Economics – “Evolution of money”.  The lecturer took us through the lugubrious story right from barter to paper money, while we were dozing off in the last benches of the classroom. I was reminded of this story today, when I sat reading about ‘mobile money’. Money has come a long way and changing face every day. For those of you who might not know, it is a pretty new concept in India. Mobile money was introduced in India as a pilot project in Pune in May, 2010. After the successful test, now the services are commercially available to all Yes Bank and Nokia customers wherein they can pay for shopping and bills directly from their Nokia mobile phones. Mobile marketing could potentially change because of this service.

Yes Bank received regulatory approvals from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to act as the custodian of funds for ‘mobile money services’. They have entered into a partnership with Obopay and Nokia, owing to their widespread retail network. Obopay has been a pioneering service provider for payments via mobile phones. Airtel Mobile Money Transfer existed but it served only as an extension of mChek.  Beam is another service, which had begun with the mobile money services and had begun recruiting rural youth as sales agents. Beam was essentially targeted at rural youth. However, Nokia’s agents would enjoy more trust and reach.  Eko is another such service which uses mobile technology to democratize financial services for the un-banked.

News source: Business Standard, Plugged.in

What could be the possible impact:

• Mobile money can be quite a game changer in the banking sector, mobile marketing and utility payment services. It is connecting the common man with banks. India has 600 million mobile subscribers and 46% of these mobile users don’t have a bank account. PC penetration as we all know is quite low in India.
• P2P (person to person) money transfer service will be embraced by the rural population at large. There is an existing service which allows immigrant workers to send money back home but charges an additional 2-5% of the total amount, for the services. A desire for cheaper service would be more than welcome. Micro-credit could largely benefit  from it.
• Mobile money services provide for two types of accounts on the basis of usage :-

1. “Easy pay” is for paying utility bills
2. “Easy Send” is what interests me. It allows me to send money to recipients who also have a mobile account. Money transfers would become extremely easy.

However, there could be a few bottlenecks in the successful implementation:

• Currently this service is only available at the Yes Bank. For pan-India operations they might have to tie-up with other bank gateways.  Alternately they would have to install the system at every store, which could prove to be a quite a task.
• RBI is seeking to plug in all the loopholes that might lead to scandals and scams.

This particular service currently is available only on Nokia handsets but would soon be made available on SMS, GPR and IVR and will not be limited to Nokia users which would make it seamless. It has the potential to connect all of us and could become a mass media for consumption. I am really keen to see how this would eventually grow beyond a particular network. Would keep you posted on the interesting developments about the concept.

India Social Case Challenge – Edition 1

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : Nokia Email With Ease Campaign

Share a little about your organisation

Bloggers’ Mind is a three-year-old company, dedicated to Social Media analytics and buzz marketing. It is a 25 member team with offices in US, Delhi and Mumbai. Bloggers’ Mind supports Nokia India in furthering their company objectives and rolling out Social Media campaigns and strategic initiatives.

Executive Summary

Email with ease campaign was launched in April 2009. The KRAs were to:

• Handhold mobile users in setting up their emails in 3 simple steps
• Educate them about the fact that mobile emails are easy to set up and they can do it themselves and
• Clear perceptions around email configuration and the fact that it can only be handled by IT Heads/geeks, increase adoption. A holistic consumer education and advocacy program was launched that reached out to over 10,09,822 active online consumers and helped increase adoption significantly.

Background

Nokia was primarily associated with mobile devices and attracting users towards email solutions was a challenge.

At the same time, there was a compelling need for people to access email on the move as it helped people work smarter. An in-depth consumer behavior study was conducted online that helped derive that the major bottleneck was its complexity to set up. The common user was perplexed with the way email needed to be configured and relied on their organization IT Heads for help.

Approach/ Strategy

• Build thought leadership for Nokia in the mobile email segment
• Drive wider adoption amongst both advanced and aspiring users
• Increase awareness on Mobile Email and its benefits
• Establish the fact that it’s easy to set up mobile email

Stakeholders

Establish thought leadership for Nokia in mobile email

Build a community

• Step 1: Create a pull for early adopters (awareness)
• Step 2: Build advocates (credibility)
• Step 3: Trigger adoption (conversion)

Counter negative perceptions around mobile email, change consumer mindsets

• Launch an education program
• Create awareness features and benefits
• Develop a platform which can be used to address email related queries

Build conviction around ease of use in setting up mobile email

• Trigger conversations
• Ease of use, benefits
• E75 as a preferred option
• Tap into a wide segment of mobile users across Social Media touch points

Duration:April 2009 till date.

The campaign was initiated in April with the launch of E75 (Nokia’s business device) and was later merged into Nokia E72, the latest business device from Nokia, thus ensuring a long term approach and optimization.

Resources:

An expert panel with 8 specialists on email, 4 buzz specialists and campaign lead.

About the initiative

The stakeholders engaged with were:

1. Business executives
2. Entrepreneurs and SMEs and
3. Senior/top management executives.

The initiative was very well received amongst professionals from different walks of life, individual entrepreneurs and business professionals.

1. Capture the audience and build a communication channel: Capture a large audience via an interactive online widget that allows consumers to submit their queries and get expert tips.
2. Influence and engage through an interesting two way dialogue: Launched a dedicated community for Eseries and other S60 users to interact and generate conversations around email on mobile
3. Build a panel of experts to generate credibility: Created a panel of experts aimed at addressing and resolving consumer queries established trust amongst consumers looking for a solution.
4. Spread WOM through influencer relations: Seeded the E75 amongst influential Bloggers to experience and demonstrate the benefits of email on the go, how to use NMS and set up corporate emails.

Impact – Outcome

• Generated over 26,709 conversations, 12,987 comments and impacted over 8,72,8000 consumers over a period of 3 months
• Facebook and Twitter pages attracted over 3,000 fans and generated over 10,098 conversations.
• Averaging 4092 + conversations per month
• 16,098 direct conversations triggered around Nokia Messaging and setting up corporate emails
• Developed an Indian mobile email community with over 13,000+ members, generating over 2500+ conversations
• The online help widget generated over 3000+ queries, over 2000 tips have been shared with consumers helping them resolve their issues
• Over 3000 profiles captured, close to 1000 consumers have acknowledged that the tips shared have allowed them to resolve their issues

Learnings

• Adopt long-term strategies and build campaigns that are sustainable
• Reach out to consumers and provide them a platform to speak up, share their problems
• Shape opinions via specialist guidance and build consumer confidence
• Understand the pain points of consumers at multiple levels and help them graduate to the next level.
• Be patient, rewards come in time. Look at long-term goals than short term.

What Next

Take the campaign to the next level and leverage on the current user based.

• Use the power of influence and awareness to build advocacy and spread the word across a larger audience.
• Drive higher adoption and activations for Nokia Messaging (email solutions).
• Broadbase the campaign to younger generations, middle management/students

Reasoning

This is a best example of a Social Media case, wherein a practical statement was identified, steps were taken to address the pain points and the efforts were measured at every step to ascertain the impact of the campaign. This ties in a few fundamentals of Social Media very well, that are:

• Identify and engage
• Convert and advocate
• Measure the influence.

Credits – Strategy

Self

Credits – Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: Bloggers’ Mind
Number of Employees: 11-50
Category: Technology
Case submitted by: Songita Verma; Founder and CEO
Website: http://bloggersmind.com

Case studies featured :

1) TATA DOCOMO – A child of the social web

2) Nokia “Search for N”

In my last post I had reviewed the case studies submitted by Not-for-profit organizations; this post does a recap of the telecom & mobile sector. I am sharing two extremely insightful case studies submitted by TATA DOCOMO & Nokia -

TATA DOCOMO – A child of the social web

Objective of the campaign was to –

• Build consumer engagement
• Address and resolve complaints
• Crowd sourcing
• Build brand advocacy
• Micro communication

Stakeholders: Youth of India specifically 15-24 urban

Apertures used: Facebook, Twitter & Orkut.

Nokia “Search for N”

The Nokia N97 was the first touch device in the high end Nseries segment. It was positioned to make one’s internet experience personal through it’s customizable home screen that allowed one to select widgets of their own choice and create short cuts on the home screen itself for instant access. The KRAs were to:

1. Establish the category of personal internet and create excitement around widgets (since most people were not aware of what widgets are)
2. Reach out to the technology leaders and explorers and highlight benefits of N97
3. Communicate the seamless experience via Nokia’s Ovi Store on the N97. A high decibel Social Media campaign was kick started with a virtual treasure hunt called “Search for N.” The hunt was to find clues that were centered on various aspects of the N97 such as the personal home screen, widgets, QWERTY keypad etc and allowed us to familiarize consumers with the device.

Capitalized on the reach and popularity of the web editors and reach out to the tech and geeky community

Stakeholders: Technology leaders

Apertures used: Facebook, Twitter

Initiative included –

1. Identify the right web partners: Partner with sites and blogs having huge popularity and credibility amongst technology/mobile followers.
2. Create interesting content: Develop the hunt clues and questions in an innovative format that makes it a worthwhile experience for consumers
3. Deliver it through an interactive format: Design an interactive hunt for people to follow the clue and discover the answer, yet make it simple and interactive – maximize participation. Participate through Search for N Widget.
4. Make it compelling for consumers through 360 buzz: Reach out to consumers across social media touch points, create hype and excitement around Search for N, inform and invite a large number of people.

The web editors: Thinkdigit.com, Techtree.com, Fonearena.com, Digital Inspiration and Brajeshwar.com

India Social Case Challenge – Edition 1

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : Nokia “Search for N”

Share a little about your organisation

Bloggers Mind is a three-year-old company, dedicated to Social Media analytics and buzz marketing. It is a 25 member team with offices in US, Delhi and Mumbai. Bloggers’ Mind supports, Nokia India in furthering their company objectives and rolling out Social Media campaigns and strategic initiatives.

Executive Summary

The Nokia N97 was the first touch device in the high end Nseries segment. It was positioned to make one’s internet experience personal through it’s customizable home screen that allowed one to select widgets of their own choice and create short cuts on the home screen itself for instant access. The KRAs were to:

1. Establish the category of personal internet and create excitement around widgets (since most people were not aware of what widgets are)
2. Reach out to the technology leaders and explorers and highlight benefits of N97
3. Communicate the seamless experience via Nokia’s Ovi Store on the N97. A high decibel Social Media campaign was kick started with a virtual treasure hunt called “Search for N.” The hunt was to find clues that were centered on various aspects of the N97 such as the personal home screen, widgets, QWERTY keypad etc and allowed us to familiarize consumers with the device.

Considering that the N97 was the flagship touch device in the Nseries category, it had it’s own learning curve as it was a completely new interface for consumers. Also, the experience of Ovi store was an important consumer experience and the idea was to cultivate new habits of accessing widgets and apps on the move. In the pre-launch phase alone, over 9,000 conversations were generated that helped build huge excitement around N97 and the personal Internet experience.

Approach/ Strategy

Campaign objectives/goals

• Create a WOW around N97 as a high end internet device and build excitement around widgets
• Drive activations for Nokia’s Ovi Store.

Build excitement: in the pre-launch stage

• Launched Search for N, a virtual treasure hunt in association with popular technology Bloggers and portals – rope them in as web editors to drive the contest
• Build buzz around the upcoming N97
• Capitalized on the reach and popularity of the web editors and reach out to the tech and geeky community

Build engagement

• Engaged with consumers through Nokia Nseries and N97 community pages on Facebook and Twitter
• Drove conversations around N97, seek first impressions and discussions around key product attributes

Duration:

May 2009 (5 Day activity)
After the end of the contest, all participants were reached out to and were converted into long-term advocates as part of our communities.

Resources -
A team of 5 Social Media specialists, 4 from digital activation team.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders were essentially technology leaders, who are ahead of the technology curve and like to stay connected all the time, essentially the super geeks and young explorers who like to have the best of multimedia and productivity.

About the initiative

1. Identify the right web partners: Partner with sites and blogs having huge popularity and credibility amongst technology/mobile followers.
2. Create interesting content: Develop the hunt clues and questions in an innovative format that makes it a worthwhile experience for consumers
3. Deliver it through an interactive format: Design an interactive hunt for people to follow the clue and discover the answer, yet make it simple and interactive – maximize participation. Participate through Search for N Widget.
4. Make it compelling for consumers through 360 buzz: Reach out to consumers across social media touch points, create hype and excitement around Search for N, inform and invite a large number of people.

The web editors: Thinkdigit.com, Techtree.com, Fonearena.com, Digital Inspiration and Brajeshwar.com

The working mechanics:

• Participate in Search for N
• Choose your web editor
• The contest was on for 5 days
• Each day, the web editors posted about a compelling feature of the device and the task for the participants to find the clue, guess the answer and submit it on the contest widget embedded on the sites.

Impact – Outcome

• A whooping number of entries achieved over 5 days
• Total entries: 32240
  
• Correct Entries: 21790
• An incremental jump by 34.84% on 4th day and 25.26% on 5th day
• Crossed 4691 entries on 1st day, adding an average of 5000+ entries on each day from 2nd till 5th
• More than 1000 participants waiting anxiously every morning for the question of the day
• Triggered over 6000+ conversations, 4000+ comments, 30000 views
• Over 32000 consumer profiles captured

Learnings

• Adopt innovative ideas and keep the engagement interactive
• Use networks that are influential and command a high reach
• Keep your campaigns alive and have a surprise element: something to look forward to sustain the excitement

What Next

1. Sustain the engagement and continue to drive adoption for Nokia’s Ovi Store.
2. Leverage on the captured user base to build positive WOM around the upcoming Nseries internet enabled devices and apps.
3. Use this as a platform to launch new products.

Reasoning

The consumer engagement initiative was driven primarily through online WOM and engagement. In 5 days, the campaign not only garnered a huge number of tech savvy consumers but also drove massive buzz around the upcoming N97 and Ovi store experience. The audience reach was also optimum since the product was definitely aimed at the high end users. Lastly, the campaign was measurable and was able to meet the business goals of the client.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: Bloggers’ Mind
Number of Employees: 11-5
Category: Brand
Case submitted by: Songita Verma, Founder and CEO.
Website: http://bloggersmind.com/