Marketing to the impatient
The media industry has seen a big change with social media coming in in a big way. Do you agree?
Ramana, I have delayed answering your question, as I did not see a question in it for long. However, I am attempting an answer.
Social media is a revolution for sure. Media, which was hitherto owned by publications and television channels and radio channels alike, is today open to all. Everyone can broadcast. Every Tom, Dick and Harish can broadcast. My tweets are read, liked, re-tweeted, massacred and saved alike, by thousands in an instant. In the era before social media, this was not the case.
It has been a game-changer in influencing public discourse in India. Public discourse is really public today in the true sense of the word. There is a certain democracy in social media that was not visible in the old days, pre-social media. Yes, of course, there is anarchy as well.
Marketers need to embrace this quick and decisive media for their brands. Brand marketers are essentially used to marketing to the “patient”. Time to wake up, and smell the social media and learn the art, science and philosophy of marketing to the “impatient”. Social media management is a different skill altogether. Marketers need to be quick, more open than they have been ever in the past, and totally integrity-oriented on this medium. Marketers cannot hide anymore behind the cloak of their PR outfits. Marketers need to be hands-on and quick in this medium. A skill to be acquired and a skill to be mastered.
I am confused about the e-commerce model. Do you see it sustaining itself?
Hyderabad
Marian, many of us are in your shoes of thought.
As of today, literally all e-commerce is a private equity play. The goal of every player is to move on, help monetise PE investments and the road to profit, and get their business in truly public hands. That is really step 1.
After that, it is anyone’s guess how the e-commerce cookie will crumble. The very scale of the global e-commerce business tells us that this will be a play dominated by the global brand rather than the local. Look at the numbers today. Global e-commerce is all of $840 billion. As of today, local e-commerce is $2.8 billion-3.2 billion, depending on whose numbers you will believe. The humility and the future lie in these numbers.
Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Mail your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in
Clarification
In the report ‘The next phase of Facebook’ published in the August 7 edition of cat.a.lyst, the name of Sony Max2’s campaign should read as ‘Bringing Back Good Movies’.