A recent article on the Wall Street Journal (here) talks aboutnew trends in social media marketing and how big brands are opening theirwallets to the new customer engagement channel. With Facebook in the spot lightof the new advertising wave, an increasing number of brands aspire to be ‘liked’by more and more. The US market has been smitten by the Facebook bug andaccording to the eMarketer report (here) has garnered 72% of all social networkadvertising and is expected to pass Yahoo! to become the No.1 site in US displayad revenues. So, what does this mean for India? With most Indian brands stilltreading on conventional media routes to reach their customers, the potentialto reach the Indian audience (especially the younger generation) through SMM isvirtually untapped.
Hyundai recently launched EON – their latest offering inthe small car segment (TVC here). Touted as ‘the Indian car’, the company promoted their product usingtraditional media. In contrast, the launch of the Ford Focus launched in the USinvested heavily in social media – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Ford evenwent on to create a ‘spokespuppet’ – Doug to differentiate their product in themarket and effectively communicate with their customers. Their YouTube channel standstestament with over 3 million views in just 8 months and over 4000 subscribers.
Compare that with around 50,000 views and just 73 subscribers to the Hyundai IndiaYouTube channel. While Ford has spent only 5% of its budget on online media andstill managed to create enough ruffle, the effectiveness is clear. With Indians today spending more time on social media sites than on personal email according to a Nielsen report (here),brands can effectively engage customers at a fraction of the cost spent throughtraditional media.
SMM provides anun-matched opportunity to engage with customers, listen to their needs anddeliver an experience they ‘actually’ need. Are brands listening?
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