Zapylacz – Blog

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With twitter officially declaring on their blog that restaurants are the most benefitted business from their service, Indian restaurants have woken up as well. And what better place would be than the IT capital of India itself to start making use of this service. Ever since Times of India reported that Food and Restaurants are the two words that are most searched in Bangalore, restaurants and food chains have understood that even they can’t stay away from the internet for too long. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of restaurants turning up towards the net and running campaigns, increasing their social presence through blogs, twitters and the facebooks.

Also recently a restaurant in the Indiranagar also got into the newspapers for the wrong reasons. Desperate to get the crowd back, the also turned up to the social media instead of the regular media. The restaurant called the “The Beach”, launched a “Support The Beach” campaign and offered youngsters free and discounted drinks if they tweeted the link to their incident which had their side of the story and explaining what was wrong in the newspaper reports. I don’t know how successful the campaign was but it definitely grabbed eyeballs of the netsavvy youth in the city. Getting your crowd back is a tough ask especially if newspapers tarnish your image, they definitely acted smartly and found the best way to pull the crowd back which was essentially the youth on any given day.

A few shots of The Beach campaign. Entire campaign can be seen here. No, not much use visiting that link as the discount period is over.

Support the beach campaign

The Beach, Bangalore

Support the beach campaign

Well I’ll leave you with some of the ones I found, the rest of the job you have to do and I’ll add to my list here.

• Punjabi Parantha
• Kyra
• Mast Kalandar
• The Beach
• South Indies
• Potluck Restaurant

South Indies on Twitter

I expect more from you people. Let us know @zapylacz or in the comments below.

The Indian Film Industry is finally waking up to the power of social media. Films have started creating websites and doing promotion online, ads were already seen from quite some time and twitter/ facebook/ orkut were also being tried a bit. Recently I noticed that even the biggest production house, Yash Chopra’s Yash Raj Films (YRF) has understood the power of the internet and taken it up to the social media to get some branding and do good promotions for all its films. I decided to do a done a detailed analysis and was impressed to see the results. Let’s see what they’ve done and what are the thoughts behind the campaign.

The Website:
Yes I agree that a flash site looks good but I still do not favour its implementation primarily because of the slow internet speed in India. Quite a few users who see a flash loading page often tend to close the page straightaway, that’s because of no or little patience. We don’t like to wait! Anyways, once its loaded, a decent interface comes up with the latest release in background (Dil Bole Hadippa these days), a nice way to promote the latest. Also the 30% page flash assures that the recent previous or the upcoming films are also noticed. Contests winners about the previous films are also displayed, motivating people to take part in more contests.

YRF Official Website

Next thing I liked about the site was that each film gets a microsite. No need to create new domains, all on sub domain and having enough knowledge and stuff for the fans or the inquisitive lot. Also contests were promoted in good fashion, full marks to the designers for making them strikingly visible.

YRF-dedicated-movie-microsites with Contests-Facebook-Twitter-Youtube

YRF understands that website alone is not enough to promote and hence has a twitter profile, a facebook fan page, and a youtube channel (operating since 2006), the most essential of them all. All their promos are updated there much before they are aired on TV. A very nice move to get free advertising.

Yash Raj Films on Twitter

Not only YRF, each film has got it dedicated twitter profiles or facebook groups and they’ve mentioned that they are official, a good move once again winning the trust of fans, equally important.

Dil Bole Hadippa (DilBoleHadippa) on Twitter

They have also assured that no one has the slightest of doubts about being official, every profile is linked to one another. The website has links to twitter, facebook and youtube channels and vice versa as well.

Dil Bole Hadippa - Official Group (Yash Raj Films) - Facebook

Dil-Bole-Hadippa-Facebook-ads

Though I am not a big supporter of ads, but if you have the money in your pockets, you should do it is my take and that’s what they’ve done. Facebook ads are evident and done enough to gather a lot of support for the fan pages/ groups .

The engagement team has made a point to keep the fans busy and connected by promoting them all over the place. After all brands are made out of fans/ users. Hence by engaging them consistently they are doing a good job that they speak for them.

YRF-dedicated-Facebook-URL

The technical team seems to be doing a good job. Assuring customized URL’s for their pages, the youtube channel apart from the regular stuff, has branded the page very well.

YouTube - yrf's Channel

They’ve also made sure that every film gets its separate playlist so that the user does not miss any promo for a particular film. A good thought indeed.

Dil Bole Hadippa Playlist

Although they have done a very decent job, the absence of a blog is something which I could not understand. An industry like the film industry which relies heavily or rather completely on its viewers/ fans, keeping that informed is a very important aspect. But not having a blog they are missing on a lot of free advertising and PR. If I am not wrong, Aamir Khan’s dog is named Shahrukh is something that every fan of Asmir knows, but where did they come to know of it ? From his blog of course.

Asking what the fans wished to see in future, what are their opinions, what could be rectified or improved in future is an easy way to get public opinions and then deliver to them. This would improve their fan base, credibility and gain a lot of respect among the crowd. This can be seen by the amount of respect Google has in the online world. A major reason for that is that it does what it’s users want, also the reason why Google’s head designer quit, he had to do not what he thought, but what people wanted. But that’s a one off case, and negligible compared to amount of respect and confidence Google gained among its consumers. So listening to people is a must do for YRF.

Barring the blogging part, Yash Raj Films have done a commendable job on the social media as of now and I must say Kudos to their team altogether. I seriously suggest Quickgun Murugun’s online marketing agency to learn a thing or two or rather all what YRF has done as what they did was entirely crap. Cheers YRF !

Although I did a detailed analysis, I may have missed something which you have noticed. Also possible that you disagree with me on certain points. Do drop in the comments section and let’s have a discussion over it.

Initially I thought flame wars were limited to the Linux OS but guess what, I was wrong ! Even the social networking community has it. People fighting over what is better Orkut or Facebook. Well even though India still has a bigger base on Orkut as compared to Facebook(FB), but the pace at which people are joining FB is much faster than they joined Orkut. Recently I overheard someone say to his friend,

“Orkut is passe, join Facebook now”

Well people may have a bigger friends list on orkut, even I have, but that’s only a matter of time, I guess, when the stats reverse. Oh, by the way if you are wondering about all those statements I made, here’s a 4 minute testimony to the facts and probably enough motivation for you to join or engross more on FB whether for business or for fun !

“As a businessman I feel, be where your customers are, not where they were“

And don’t worry I will be coming up a post soon to talk in terms of stats if you wish to indulge in flame wars

Our next case in study is the Domino’s Youtube scandal. 4 months ago, 2 youtube employees posted a video that showed them spoiling the food they were preparing to be sent. The video showed one of the employees putting cheese in his nose and then using in the food as well as sneezing and spitting in the pizza’s. The video spread like wildfire and reached half a million views in its first three days itself. When the authorities came to to know they asked youtube to remove the video but I guess nothing can be removed from the Social Media permanently and it kept surfacing at quite a few places. The companies’ brand image took a HIT and a great great PR loss is what it ended in what the employees termed just as a ‘PRANK’. Though the employees have been suspended but both the company officials as well as outlet owners were seen shedding their faults, blaming each others.

All this resulted in heavy losses to the company. Unconfirmed reports said that the losses were up to a staggering $50 million as the company, which operates in 60 countries, bookings took a beating. Criminal cases had been filed against the employees and the President of the Domino’s himself used youtube to apologize for the incident.
Here’s the apology

But does that nullify the complete effect ? The answer is NOT COMPLETELY. While the original video took 3 days to reach half a million and was much over a million views before it was taken off Youtube the apology has under a million views, that too in 4 months duration. You can imagine the damage that it had done.
Things to be learnt : you need to keep a strong eye on this new age media as news here spreads Virally. It takes years to built trust and seconds to break that.

We came up with Social Media stats a few days back and then I realized that this should have been there even before the Social Media thing, after all LinkedIn is the biggest Professional Networking Portal so why should it be left behind. Without much talking I take you to the stats.

I guess the presentation says all by itself so need for me to explain anything. Enough testimony to use LinkedIn and start networking. Have queries ? Drop in the comments, would love to handle those and share as well as gain more.

And we all thought that the United Airlines’ had had enough, but wait a minute, not everyone thinks so. Dave Carroll (whose guitar was broken by United staff) has produced a 2nd song in the series “United Breaks Guitars”. While the first song surpassed 3 million views in 10 days, 4,983,199 views when I saw last, Carroll has released a 2nd song and looks like he’ll fulfill his promise of 3 songs.
I guess nothing much that United can do now, except for seeing the hits on the video increase and wait for the 3rd song. Hail Social Media.
Not much to talk, I think time to enjoy the song, here it is.

In an attempt to explain why companies need Social Media Branding we started a series last week. The series will comprise of cases where Social Media has affected companies/brands/individuals in a good or bad manner. Last time we posted the case of the United Airlines Stock Crash case, incidentally this time also we post a story which is concerned with United Airlines.
The Case : A Canadian guy travels on a United Airlines flight, but on reaching his destination he sees that his guitar had been damaged by the airline personnel. He pursued the airlines for an year for the damages but when he saw there was no response from them, he put up a video on Youtube which said “United Breaks Guitars”. Being a musician himself he composed a nice song and it became an instant hit. See video :

Effect : When the video views reached 50,000, United Airlines contacted the person and paid him damages and tried to hush up the case. But it had been quite late by then, the net’s a Virus. The video had spread virally to all corners of the world already.

Result : Although United Airlines cleaned up the mistake but now the incident has become one of the most talked about incidents in the Social Media Industry. With the story on CNN and the video reaching a massive 4,000,000+ views the Airline has taken a bashing already. What worsens up the matter is that even if google for United Airlines, you get a first page result of the youtube video “United Breaks Guitars”.

Point to Learn : If you are a service oriented company, you ought to listen to your customers. Had this incident happened a decade ago, it would have never come into limelight as not everyone approaches the media. But in this present scenario, when nobody is out of media, everybody has the power to spread the word and it can really bring more damages as this new form of media has empowered the customers and the best thing is that this is un-censored.
Don’t underestimate the new age customer and the new media – Social Media.

We have been asked a lot over the reality of social media, is it a fad, is it for real, is it here to stay, does Indian market  really needs it ? There have points like : Okay, it’s working for others so what ! What if I don’t benefit from it ? Is it worth the money I pay you ?

And the most common one SHOW ME SOME STATS. While we have made a road map to answer the rest and have already started answering them in a series of posts, the STATS answer is Right Here Right Now.

I guess you cannot question us again on the stats. The only thing that might be concerning you is that India does not have substantial internet reach as compared to the developed nations. My answer to that is : Okay, it does not have the same reach PRESENTLY but does not mean that it will NEVER reach there. It’s just a matter of time when we are there, and with our population way over the other developed nations, we have a much bigger market to target. The only question to ask yourself is whether you want be there before your target or wait till your competitor reaches your target audience. The question “Whether or not I should be there” is gone now, it’s only a question of WHEN ?

Companies/people in the United States might have understood but Indian firms are still playing the waiting game. All of a sudden with major magazines like BusinessToday and Dare having their cover stories on the importance of social media, there is so much social media hype that companies have totally misunderstood what’s the real sense of social media.
For the same reason we have started a series of articles that will make all you business owners to think that probably you should be using it before it gets too late.
The first case is a United Airlines stock crash case. Although the story goes back to last year i.e. September ‘08 but stills it clearly delivers the message.

The Case : A chicago tribune story prompted the United Airlines Stock to crash by 99.2% in barely 2 hours time before the trading had to be suspended on the stock.
The Reason for crash : A Chicago tribune report says that United has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Hence stock prices plummeted.
The Reality : United filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2002. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2006. But someone read the article and not finding the date, thought the report to be latest. Luck was on the other side as both the rising oil prices and recession prompted the people to believe the report to be true. The story was available on chicago tribune website and spread virally like wildfire which resulted in the airlines’ stock prices crash.
It was only after the airlines spokesperson confirmed the report was false that the trading resumed and stock prices rose back to normal. Later on United asked Chicago times to remove the archived story to avoid a repeat.
That’s the power of internet ! I guess it cannot be denied that THIS or something SIMILAR can happen to any of the companies. As it is said “Bad news travels fast“.
Point to Learn : You need to keep an eye all the time to see what’s happening and who’s playing with your brand value in order to protect it.

Time and again I face this question or rather answer from reputed people that,

Things will happen after all the Internet is FREE

Ideally these people are rated very high in the business circles because of the success they have had in their various sectors but achieving success in one field does not make you a champion in all the other fields automatically. But how much does Sachin Tendulkar knows about the technicalities of the Ferrari F-50 Spider ? Probably next to nothing and that’s what my answer is to all those people who feel that “Internet Is FREE”.

Recently we have been meeting a lot of people, some of them high profile businessmen, some IIM-Grads and some of them who have non-Internet startups. Though most of them quite senior to me but some of them also also fall in or near my age group. Initially I thought that people in the age group > 45 do not understand the power of internet and hence they say. But when I saw that people even on the other side of the above mentioned age group not understanding the situation I had alarm bells ringing in my head that clearly said ‘this is not going to be easy’, in fact “it’s going to be very tough”.

I guess you are still wondering what that blog post topic means. Let’s get to it straightaway. Ok the internet for you is free in office, maybe at home you spend some 800 INR and get that connection working and since then you assume that it’s free.

Let me ask a very basic question, When we start our machines, what is that we do? Open our mailboxes, open some social networking sites, search for something which we require, a restaurant or a new mobile or some place or some person or anything of our interest. Now let’s say that there was no Orkut, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blogs and no Google. Then what do you do? No don’t say, if no Google then I use a Yahoo or a Bing. My question is if there was no website where you would find the information, what worth would the internet be to YOU ? If there is no content to read or browse then what do we do ? If there is no facebook or orkut then how do I stay in touch with my friends ? Obviously I can’t call everyone ! So no content results equals to no internet. Now even if you spend 800 bucks on that connection you won’t have anything to do over the internet if there’s nothing to read or see.

My point is that the Content is King, not internet. Internet might be free but it’s the content that costs. Any blog post that has been written, it requires time and effort to be written. And what I am trying to explain is that time and effort equals Money in the real world. The day labnol or mashable or chrisbrogan stop earning money from their blogs, why would they do it ? Why would starbucks do a twitter or a facebook campaign for their patrons ? Why would someone bother to answer a bad review for a Dell that a customer made on their website or somewhere else for that matter. All these things require time and effort to be put in and obviously TIME and EFFORT are equivalent to MONEY if spoken in the Layman Businessman’s language. So how could you term the Internet Free if it has no value without the CONTENT.

Well those are my views let me know what you feel, would love to engage in discussions.