In case you had missed out on the action during the summit, you may want to check out some of these resources -

• Podcast by Aleks Krotoski from the Guardian UK around the social media market in India
• WARC report – Social media and marketing in India: a report from the India Social Summit 2010

When Blogworks approached Nielsen to partner on their India Social Media Report research,  I was personally very excited about the exercise. Reason? The Indian market today is looking for empirical evidence that the ‘Social Media opportunity’ is real and that there is a real momentum building up for it. This book that you are holding is that evidence, in my opinion. This has been the fruit of an exciting period of research, during which the findings have oscillated between pleasant surprises and reaffirmation of our beliefs in this medium.

We believe that the world of marketing in India is undergoing a permanent transformation and social media is at the centre of it. By fundamentally changing the way brands communicate with consumers, social media is all set to overhaul the marketing food chain. This is not a futuristic concept or something that is happening in a distant foreign land. This is happening in India as I write and Indian brands have already started realising and reacting to this.

I want to highlight two interesting stories that this research revealed to us. Getting strategic about social media. The term ‘social media’ by itself is something that seems to have multiple definitions within Indian marketing circles. Many brands and sections of the media assume it to be synonymous to social networking and microblogging. The impact of discussion forums, message boards, review sites, video sharing sites and blogs are often overlooked, primarily because they are seldom talked about in mainstream news. As a result of this, many brands have been quite content with just creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account and calling it quits, with a belief that they have done enough to have a ‘social media’ existence.

This has seldom worked for them. For this mind-set to change, social media needs the attention and the commitment of the top management. There needs to be a clear understanding of the relevance of this medium to the brand in question and a process to leverage it. This can come about only if there is a plan and resources available within the organisation to support it. When we posed his question to brands, 27 percent of them said that they already have a stated social media policy and 46 percent said that they are working on one.

Why is this important? It is not that social media is a structured medium where processes and policies define how you react to and leverage market situations. The truth is quite the opposite – it is such a dynamic forum that brands sometimes have to react in hours, if not days. However, the fact that almost 3 out of 4 brands are serious about having a strategic social media policy, tells me that they recognise the importance of this medium, right up to the top management and that is a paradigm shift in perception, compared to a year or so back.

What defines success?

When we asked brands about the top five metrics on which they evaluate their social media success, we got an interesting set of responses. The volume of interaction (fans, followers, etc) expectedly and rightfully took the top spot. However, the surprising element here for me was that ‘lead generation’ featured in the top three. This worries me a bit because it reminds me of a similar trend that has plagued the Indian display advertising market (and continues to do so) – over-obsessing about ‘performance’.
Simply because online is a more ‘measurable’ medium, Indian marketers tend to over-measure it sometimes and bring in impractical ROI angles to their advertising decisions. This has led to large scale domination of performance-based advertising that assumes incorrectly that a display ad (banner) is only as effective as the number of people who click on it. While this might be actually true and even effective in some product categories, it is not by any means the best way to leverage the digital medium. The above-mentioned response on ‘lead generation’ makes me wonder if we will end up making a similar mistake with social media as well.

The audience you end up having for your brand on social media is ‘earned’. It is like a party that you need to be invited to as a brand. You cannot always gate-crash it by asking your customer to click on an ad or sign up for something that is not in his / her mind space. This medium is about engaging and contextual advertising – or in other words, this medium is all about the consumer. This is why historically and even in other countries, social media sites have had the lowest click-through rates for advertising. So it worries me a bit that ‘lead generation’ is one of the key reasons brands are here.

Having said that, ‘Sentiment of the conversations’ and ‘brand awareness’ also featured in this top five list. So I hope my worries are unfounded and we as a market leverage this medium by playing to its strengths. We need to remember that social media in India, is a relatively new trend and the Indian online consumer is just about warming up to it (70% of social networking users in India started in the last 1-2 years). So if there is inertia and teething problems, those are understandable and in some cases even inevitable.

Note: Views of authors are personal, and do not represent views of IndiaSocial or its partners.

In its first edition, we do hope to have seeded something meaningful – a platform of exchange for learnings and insights around social in India. We have taken some wonderful learnings from the edition this year and in the coming years, do hope to make #iss11 even better and more meaningful. Your feedback, suggestions and recommendations remain a crucial element so will keep coming back for more

We have shared some of the slide decks from IndiaSocial Summit 2010 below:

As the tag line for Café Coffee Day goes, “a lot can happen over coffee”. In an ironic twist of events, the brand discovered that “a lot” can really happen, if, allegedly, not allowed over coffee, then over Twitter.

Scenario

A tweet-up planned by a group of bloggers/micro bloggers at the Café Coffee Day, Ishapani Center, Chennai, India.

Point of contention

A section of the blogger group interacts over snacks and awaits other participants to join. In the interim, the coffee shop manager approaches them and is to have asked the group rudely to pay cover charges or leave.

The group, miffed, leaves the venue after paying the bill and decides to share its ire against the coffee chain over their original meeting ground – Twitter

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

On Feb 04, 2010, the first message is posted with the hashtag #ccdsucks. Over the next two days, there is a huge-burst of conversations around the episode, most voices lashing out at Cafe Coffee day.

What began as a pouring against the manager’s inappropriate conduct went on to include bad customer service, coffee and existing grievances of the customers against the brand –

There were few who highlighted that the brand had already apologised over their Twitter page stating that they did not have a policy for cover charge and were willing to resolve the issue but the Twitterati who began the hashtag were in no mood to relent.

Impact

According to estimates, there were 650+ posts with the Twitter hashtag #ccdsucks on the Day 2 itself and the subject was among the trending topics during that week. A Facebook group named ccdsucks and an anonymous Twitter account @ccdsucks also came up during the period (both of which have been deleted now). Many individuals highlighted the irony behind CCD having to use #ccdsucks to counter criticism against the brand. The issue started losing steam Feb 07 onwards, with CCD’s apology message finding a more widespread mention and with the growing sentiment that the brand was being too harshly penalised for the mistake of an individual representative.

Analyse Now – voices over blogs

There were also some interesting blogs that came up around the subject sharing observations/learnings from the episode. In a blog post Does Cafe Coffee Day really suck, Beast of Traal highlighted how the biggest issue facing CCD was

“the lack of a leader in the mob protest on Twitter” since different voices “jumping in with criticism, advice, jokes from all directions”

perhaps confused the brand further on how to resolve the issue.

Rajesh Lalwani shared tips for the CCD team on how they could manage the issue better speaking of the opportunity for the brand to

“engage afresh, find (your) supporters and work upon regaining lost ground”.

In another blog post IdeasMaverick shared what both the parties could have done better and concluded saying,

“while the mob frenzy seems to have stir a storm in a coffee cup, it was clearly uncalled for and completely misdirected. Considering their presence on Twitter, Cafe Coffee Day could’ve done better by actively (and constantly) responding to the issue by steering the conversation away from #ccdsucks to an alternative”.

The brand did find a lot of support, even during the peak of  the crisis, showcasing strength amongst consumers. And, it appears business as usual for Cafe Coffee Day, both on the ground, and at the social media touch points – a smart recovery from a short lived crisis.

Do share with us what you thought were your learnings from the episode.

Update – Feb 17, 11:10 pm -  There was another analysis of the episode shared by Vijay Raypati yesterday - “How Cafe Coffee Day Handled Their #CCDSUCKS Issue” that also highlights the no. of conversations between 4th-6th Feb as well as names of top influencers and curators during the episode.

Here’s Vijay’s slidedeck:

Open 3 February 2010, through 28 February 2010 (IST), the IndiaSocial™ Case Challenge invites  submissions of their social media work in India,  from brands, private and government organisations, not-for-profits, media bodies, celebrity brands…

So, if you think you have done case-study social media work for your brand/ organisation, let our esteemed panel decide if your case is truly gold standard

Top 3 cases, as selected by our judging panel, will get featured in impact Weekly and also get an opportunity to present their case at a future event hosted by us.

Top 10 case-studies will be featured on IndiaSocial.in under a special Gold Class section.

We’ve tied up with impact Weekly and exchange4media to help us get the word out.

Do spread the word please and help promote in any way you can.

On the judging panel are:

1. Dina Mehta, Co-Founder & Head of Research, Mosoci
2. George Skaria, Founder, ThoughtSpring and Former Editor, Indian Management
3. Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging
4. Peter Griffin, Editor, Caferati; co-founder SEA-EAT and the World Wide Help Group
5. Pradyuman Maheshwari, Group Editor, exchange4media Group
6. Rajesh Lalwani, Founder, Blogworks and Principal Coordinator, IndiaSocial™

We are looking for both strategic and tactical cases; cases that showcase rigour; cases that made (and continue to make) an impact. When asked about what would decide winners, our panel spoke about…

Framing of clear objectives

Alignment of results with goals

Rigour in measurement

RoI

Stakeholder engagement

Innovation & differentiation

Delight factors

as some…

Now, did we just give you some winning tips?

We’d like to thank our partners and judges for their support to this initiative.

Come on,  join the challenge, it’s an Open invitation.

Submit your case-studies for the Case challenge here.