The G Word!

This one of those Aha! moments when you're standing in the kitchen, waiting for the milk to boil so you can put in the tea leaves and get on with your Sunday.

Among all the mundane thoughts swirling around my head like the dizzy birds, I wondered how much I have changed, as a consumer, in the past few years. And with every passing year, the change has been even more radical.  It was exactly two years back when I started a new job, and each passing year I have become even more particular about the stuff I buy. And with every month's salary, I march towards becoming a little more of the person I imagine to be.

Now that I think about consumer products and consumer marketing - how do people usually define their consumers aka TG? In many a case studies and briefs we define him or her as someone between 25-30 years, for instance.

Hold on, is 25 the same as 26 or 27 or 29?  Hell no.

I would hate it if someone treated me like a newbie, 25 year-old at work. Certainly, normally people would mind.

Funny, if we hate it so much, how we succumb to laziness and generalize to keep things simple.

(Imagine - how much you can customize with advance targeting features, only if we didn't Generalize).

Facebook Want Button - The Tool for tracking Purchase Intent, Product Recommendations & E-commerce!

Do I really want whatever I want?

Well, that's another quesiton. But now you can really want stuff and make your sentiments very clear on Facebook! Facebook has been testing the Want button, that goes beyond the like and makes it one-step closer to making the statment - Social Media Works for your Business.

What this means for fellow marketers:

1. Hard Measure of Purchase Intent: That's the magic number marketers are tracing to make all their digital activities link to sales or sales intent. They WANT this. Right now, after every digital execution, a separate research is carried out to show ROMI of all the moolah that was spent.

Now picture this, with every thing on Facebook, as little as posting a picture of your latest variant launch, you can measure the desirability. What do you with this desirability index?

• Can you turn it into a more sophisticated CRM program?
• Can you make your sampling activity go beyond XX numbers of samples distributed and make work harder?
• Can you show a correlation between want & sales?
• Can you convert visitor on your website one step closer to buying your product after seeing the no. of wants?

Answer to all of the above, is YES.

2. Insights, Insights, Insights, Galore: So sweet is the power of data!
Have you ever mapped consumer journey against Facebook? Man, this is help to craft a purchase funnel on digital you have always wanted. Especially in Asia, where eCommerce has still not blossomed to household products. Your consumer, is no longer a stranger.

3. Facebook Ads Get Smarter, Still: What Facebok does with all the Want data can well be imagined. Ads can get targeted based on people you really want your products and their friends of friends. Can this ripple effect lead to you make your product the most "desirable" in different circles?

4. New Claims, More Product Recommendations: Brands need to move beyond hardcore product claims to social claims, as I call it, claims based on people's behavior. This maybe purchase or desire to purchase. Remember claims like the "Fastest selling Tea Tree Oil - 1 sold in 11 minutes". Now, picture this - "The Most Wanted Men's Cleansing Brand in Philippines" - now does that sound good? Does it help make your brand desriable? Can it lead to more sales if you display this at Point of Sale?

You know the answer to all of the above. With Facebook being more accountable for people's money, this is one of the things to come to measure the correaltion of your digital spend to your business objectives.

Google Analytics Plays the Sitar! Plus, more about Gmail Tap and Chrome MultiTask !

 This morning, when I logged into my Google Analytics dashboard to see how by blog is performing I was surprised to see a little music icon. Clicked, and voila, my page views are singing in a soft symphony of the sitar (or the piano)! 

    

Thinking of the rationale behind it, (assuming it's not an April Fool's Joke, which it is!),  it's a pretty cool way to start off your day, if you're into digital marketing or analytics. Let the numbers sing! Haha! ;) Sit in the next room and listen to your Website Analytics. Or, better still, download the track and listen to it on the way to work! Wacky!  Enjoy the video, not brilliant, but makes the point, by a fellow blogger. 

And What's Gmail Tap and Chrome Multitask?

Gmail Tap is based on a morse code solution to help you write mails and text messages anytime, anywhere, without worrying about all the 26 letters! Watch video here. 

Chrome Multitask turns your browsing experience into a socialable event, where you and your friend can together browse on the same computer, or you can explore your ambidextrous browsing skills using two cursors. Check it out here!

Here's to a happy April first! 

Draw Something Stops Growing: Four Things Zynga Can Do By Being Social-By-Design

Yesterday, the news was breaking that the recently acquired OMGPOP app Draw Something is no longer attracting new users. Business Insider reported:

Bad news for Zynga, which just acquired Draw Something developer OMGPOP: Draw Something is no longer acquiring new daily players at the lightning-fast pace it once was, according to AppData.
In fact, it's stopped growing altogether.

 

As a former journalist, I feel several online content portals are desperate to create "breaking news" and "make it trend". (#ridiculous). I picked this story up when I decided to write a post about how Draw Something can actually become bigger than it is.

Draw Something is very powerful at the core of its idea. It's making friends share personal drawings with other friends. The app makes the user do a unique action. It's not  - please water my plants, send me more ammunition, send me more token etc. It's a unique, personal piece of content that is produced every time a user initiates a game. That's a big break through - it's a stream of personalized, customized, unique content! And it can become bigger by using Social By Design Principles.

Social By Design Mantra #1

MAKE PROFILES VISIBLE: Learning from Zynga games - Draw Something should allow the users to check their friends total points, total drawings and total correct guesses. When in Farmville and Cityville, users are allowed to visit their friends farms or cities, they get to know more about their friends and they even compete with them on the friends ranking leaderboard.

I am playing games with my bosses, and I am very keen to know what's their success ratio! (And I do want to beat them and publish it on facebook #wickedsmile)

Social By Design Mantra #2

FEEDBACK MECHANISM: Some of my friends (blessed with styluses) make awesome drawings. I want to compliment them. I want to WhatsApp them and say - Hey ! I loved this!! But can I do that - nope! Imagine, after guessing or failing to guess a drawing - you can give stars and rate it - Fabulous or Rotten Tomatoes To You - and to either compliment or poke fun at your friends - you could share it on Facebook - to drive conversations. Simple, doable, fun and FREE PR! ;)

Social By Design Mantra #3

DRAW SOMETHING GALLERIES: What the App successfully does is it shows some "popular" drawings of Lady Gaga etc. It will be great to make a gallery where users can browse, get inspiration and even share the ridiculous drawings on Facebook! If it is ridiculous it has a higher chance of getting shared and there are more ridiculous artists without styluses!

Social By Design Mantra #4

USING THE DATA TO WOW ME (and make money from me): I have 250 points on Draw Something. On an average, I have made 80-100 drawings.

• Do I want to see the drawings? YEEEESSSS! Can I? Nope. 
• If Draw Something told me when I reached 500 points, I can choose any 5 drawings, make a collage and get a free printed mug, would I continue to play?  YES! 
•  Would I pay for the mug or gift it with all my drawings I made for my friend as a personal birthday present? YES! 
• Would I like to see a cool video of my photos? YES! 
•  And would I share my great "modern art" on facebook - YES!

Here's hoping for more Drawings.

P.S. Zynga, if you're interested in hiring me, I'm here! ;D
P.S. : For publishing houses - explore this story angle - Draw Something leads to increase in sales for Styluses ;)

TV Drama 'Touch': Resonates With Digital Serendipity?

It's an ancient Chinese belief that an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.

Spooky? Rings a bell with the whole "Six Degrees of Separation" Theory? (somebody says its only two degrees now!) I think it's an amazing premise to start narrating your story. The new TV Drama Touch,  starring Keifer Sutherland is about him and his son Jake, who connects everyday events with numbers, in a sort of in-between world, not talking or physically connecting with anyone else.

A scene from new TV Drama Touch

Martin Bohm is a widower and single father who is haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son Jake. But when Martin discovers that Jake can predict events before they happen, everything changes. Source: IMDB 

Is it only me, or do you also think the young kid looks like a young Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network! =)

Going back to where I started, I find the Chinese belief  very fascinating. Let's apply it to our world now, just like Touch, we are all about connections.  While watching the show, my mind kept wavering to the famous Facebook social connections data visualization, where it showed all personal connections on the social network. The network you have can stretch to cover the whole world if need be - fascinatingly resonates the Chinese proverb.


This is one for the tickles! Top 3 Applications of the Touch "Red Thread" Theory:


1) Social Ads: OMG! Can this be truly serendipitous? I was searching for a wedding venue and I saw this ad of a beautiful church which is liked my ex-boyfriend. Could this be a sign! Should we get back together!!


2) Big Bang Theory: I would love to see Sheldon Cooper make a joke/or apply this stuff in the coming episodes. 


3) Use it for Ted Mosby: How I Met Your Mother is just dragging on. Perhaps they can make the girl Asian, link it to the Red Thread Theory, and make this season as #AWESOME and #EPIC as Touch.