FoxyMoron | Blog

India’s digital landscape is evolving fast. With over 250 million internet users, India has the third largest Internet user base in the world. This increasing number of mobile phone users and internet usage is driving massive growth. A large chunk of these internet users are active on some social media platform, hence, challenging marketers to have a strong social media marketing strategy in place to maintain a positive online presence. A robust social media presence can establish your reputation as a reliable brand and that doesn’t happen by merely creating a brand page on different platforms. The key is in building relevant audience basis and creating engaging content and campaigns that resonate with them. Here’s how social media can help build a brand’s image.

Curate content- Brands are finally beginning to understand that dedicating resources to reaching consumers on social media is now not only beneficial, but necessary. A key contributing factor in social media marketing is creating content that is relevant for the audiences and creatively puts across your key brand message. Essentially, content marketing is all about providing people with the type of content that resonates the brand’s voice and strikes a chord with consumers in order to excite them.

Wondering if your creative content efforts are able to market your business successfully? The answer lies in consumer engagement. When a trusted consumer passes along the message via your blog post, email campaign, or video link, it is an implied endorsement. Hence, to gain buzz, a brand has to create something that is interesting and different. Smart marketers know how to take simple information and turn it into anamazing narrative involving characters, conflict and cleverly hidden call-to-action activities. Yet, your content will only be shared if it adds value for consumers. Thus, creating and curating engaging content on Social Media can effectively boost a brand’s image. 

Engage Influencers -Today, social media is increasingly influencing and inspiring people. Therefore, engaging with social media influencers is crucial. Influencers are brand advocates who help you to increase your brand awareness and enhance online reputation. The new age influencer is not necessarily a Movie Star or Cricketer but someone whom the brand’s fans can relate to and whose opinion is well looked forward to. A great example of influencer marketing would be Maybelline’s Color Show Glitter Mania launch campaign. By hosting an exclusive launch party, this campaign engaged influencers in an innovative way by giving them the first sneak peek at the new range of products. This approach created buzz around the product launch and co-creation of the next range. It also built a community with the readers of the bloggers and engaged their followers. This resulted in over 200 influencers discussing this unique product launch. 

Listen to conversations-Social media platforms today serve as a medium where people can freely express their views, exchange opinions as well as talk about anything and everything. The tsunami of conservations happening online can either make or break a brand’s image. It takes a minute to upload a picture of an erroneous parcel that you’ve received from your favourite e-commerce site, and another 15 minutes for it to go viral. Therefore, it is important for brands to be vigilant about what people are saying about them online at all times.

While a bad incident can cause some significant damage to a brand’s image, it can also be seen as an opportunity to connect with and engage the consumers differently. For instance, in the case of the man who had ordered a smartphone from Snapdeal and had received a box with a bar of Vim soap. The company- HUL swung into action to protect its brand image by gifting a brand new Samsung smartphone to the complainant after his story went viral on social media.

While most brands use social media for creating awareness, the above discussed activities do createa significant and lasting impact both by gaining new customers over time and fostering customer loyalty. Success in building your brand depends on being useful and developing relationships. If you focus on just promoting it then no one will want to listen to your brand. Instead of short-term tactical plans, think long-term with strategy that can deliver sustainable, organic growth through ongoing, consistent participation.

The digital advertising space is in a state of constant flux. Programmatic advertising is slowly changing the face of digital advertising in India. Programmatic advertising is simply the automated process of buying and selling digital media that uses algorithms and Real Time Bidding, which allows advertisers to bid against each other for the ad inventory offered by publishers. It allows advertisers to use customer data to create, optimize and target cross-channel ads. This process is helping marketers segregate data in a more relevant manner and standardize it across formats like video, display, etc. This extremely efficient system is allowing advertisers to filter only those advertising platforms that best fit their budget and target audiences.

As oppose to the conventional media buying-selling process where a media buyer buys a digital spot through negotiating with the publisher for his respective client, programmatic advertising offers an automated process that works on Real Time Bidding. It’s an extremely efficient system that is organized by ad exchanges and allows advertisers to bid against each other for inventory offered by publishers. It automates all the tedious processes as one can now set parameters such as bid price and network reach. A programmatic buy layers these parameters with behavioural or audience data, simplifying the entire process. The ROI in programmatic buying is automatically and easily measured as compared to traditional media buying process.

Programmatic advertising benefits all three parties involved in the process- the advertiser, the agency and the publisher. For advertisers and agencies, it offers more transparent and streamlined way to purchase ad inventories that is more effective in reaching the target audience, resulting in greater ROI. And for publishers, it helps optimize their sales by allowing them to sell unsold or minimum cost inventory and increase revenues. The reason that it offers a more efficient and transparent way of transaction, allows you to customize your reach and increases the digital media ROI, has made it very popular among advertisers. Also, since the process is automatic, it reduces the margin of error. 

Programmatic advertising is a fairly new phenomenon in India as compared to the West where it’s been used for over a decade now. While here in India a majority marketers are still hesitant about adopting the process, in the West, the advertiser have revved up their systems and have advanced to Mobile Programmatic Advertising where they’re taking advantage of the mobile space to target customers more precisely.

In the coming years, programmatic advertising will change the underlying nature of how digital advertising is bought, sold and measured in India. With the marketers now taking digital marketing more seriously than ever, it will surely give a boost to programmatic advertising.

Go Sell Yourself!

Advertising is often compared to prostitution, and in reality it's very similar except for one thing; prostitutes have more job satisfaction! That is true, many people in this industry are jaded, bitter and cynical. There might be a ton of reasons why, but a few just on the top of my head are the fact that clients are too hard on them, no one in the entire world respects them, whether it's their client, colleagues or even their cat. The number of petty little changes that they have to go through is ridiculous and this list can go on and on and on.

What doesn't strike us though is all this boils down to something so simple and straight forward, it's shocking. Firstly, a surprising revelation! A whopping 86% of advertisers think that their clients have ridiculous demands. While the statistic is completely false; a number I made up 5 seconds ago, the alarming fact is that it didn't surprise most advertisers because it seemed rather accurate. To those people I have a news flash, the client and you want the same things! Good work, creative thinking and a slap bang great idea. Is it that simple? No. Is getting there going to be easy? No. Can you make it easier on yourself? YES. What do you have to do? SELL.

We all have ideas that seem to sound great in our head, and that's because of two things. One − because as it’s playing out in our head, it is being narrated by Morgan Freeman. Secondly, we often fail to articulate the beauty of an idea, the way it has taken shape in our mind. So what do we need to do to make sure that the idea seems as beautiful and groundbreaking to the client as it does to us? We need to sell it. And let me tell you how.

1) Everyone Can Sell

Remember when you were young and you walked by that toy store and saw that toy that you just HAD to have? You begged your mum and she said no, but you didn't relent…you went on and on till she gave in. Or remember that time you convinced your father to let you stay out till 11:30pm instead of 10pm? In essence you sold your idea. The idea that you had to have the toy or the idea that you had to stay out late. Everyone has that innate ability to sell what they want. So you just have to search deep down and bring that out in the room when you have people sitting around you. Just as you managed to win your parents over with your sales pitch decades ago, if your idea is good enough then you can do it once again!

2) Reasoning

What are you doing? Why are you doing it? How are you going to do it? Who is going to buy into it? I know I sound like a needy girlfriend, but well, all clients are needy girlfriends. They're going to have more questions that you can even imagine but you need to answer those questions when you're selling your idea even before the client asks those questions. So always focus on the reasons why your idea is good and use those same reasons to convince your client. If you do it right, who knows? You might just get lucky! (I was talking about getting lucky with the client, not the needy girlfriend.

 3) Paint a Picture

Imagine a world where everything is perfect. Where everyone loves each other and you can walk down the road and just give someone a hug, all the best things in life are free and the weather is always just perfect. Sounds good yeah? Well that is the exact picture you have to paint to the people listening to you! Paint a picture in their mind. Get them hooked. And then let your idea reel them in.

4) Believe It Baby

If you believe that your idea is going to change the world and make it a better place, if you believe your idea is going to be the best thing since slice bread, if you think your idea is going to get everyone listening to you to stand up and simply applaud your brilliance, then you have to transfer that same belief to your audience. If you believe it, then you will be confident about it and nothing sells an idea better than confidence. Believe in the idea and it will be easy to make others believe it as well.

Think about all this. Try it the next time you have to sell an idea. I wouldn't start with a make or break pitch that will define your career, start with something a little more daunting. Sell the idea of an all-boys trip to your friends, and then sell that idea to your girlfriend. Even if one person reading this does it successfully, I’ll be immensely satisfied.

Disclaimer: Do not try this at work. The results may cause increased responsibility by senior management and lead to higher levels of respect from colleagues.

SOCIAL MEDIA DAY

Can you imagine your life before social media? Wasn’t it so different? Even though platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been around for around a decade, they’ve become an integral part of our daily lives. From the way we receive our daily news updates to the way we interact with people – there’s no avoiding it.

Video is one of the most engaging and expressive ways to tell a story. Facebook has made it easier for advertisers to not only track but also increase the reach for their respective videos.

Take a look at how Facebook strikes yet again!

The ’Engagement Rate’ on Facebook is one of the most sought after metrics to measure the degree of responsiveness received from your fans on your content. However there has always been ambiguity around how it should be calculated as each Analytics platform has its own take on it.

In an effort to have a comprehensive approach to this metric calculation FoxyMoron shares the following recommendations. Do take a look at the infograph below:

The power and reach of the digital space in today’s world is growing at a tremendous rate with many brands realizing the importance of adopting digital strategies within their larger marketing strategies in order to connect better with consumers. Apart from being one of the preferred choices for advertising, the digital space is also a young and dynamic space to be in. As it attracts out-of-the-box thinkers given the abundant creative platforms for growth, there is a need to be abreast with the latest trends in the industry and stay ahead in within the competitive space.

A small but significant change was made on Google Analyitcs recently. This alteration will be useful for monitoring websites & blog performances, metrics, features and generating reports for clients. The other day our SEO team spotted that Google Analytics has silently changed the term ‘visits’ and replaced it with ‘sessions.’

Google Analytics does not simply keep a tab on the website ‘visit’, it now tracks the user’s journey across various digital platforms. The whole concept of a session might be a bit confusing for some of you but can be easily understood by the infograph below. 

Brands continue to find it extremely challenging to display their content on the Facebook news feed, simultaneously striving to achieve the most possible organic reach.  Previously, we all agreed that text posts were the quick fix reach boosting solution; however with the coming of the New Year we have noticed a slight change in the interactions received from various brand posts.

Formerly, we always removed the thumbnail of a link in a Facebook update to make it appear as a text update, sometimes even adding a custom designed image which would help grab the fans attention and drive interactions. This is because having a thumbnail of a link present in a Facebook update automatically reduced its reach. However this is not the case anymore, Facebook is equally favorable towards all types of posts be it link, text, image or video. It has bettered the UI for its Link Share posts, permitting us to support text updates with thumbnails of links or images. Here is how they would look:

Everyone's continued support only pushes to do bigger, better & Foxier work!

Digital is now evolving as an ecosystem and not just a medium. Or atleast that's how we've got to start viewing it. In the long run, advertisers cannot just look at digital as a place to gain media impressions. It has to be synced in with pushing consumers to purchase, putting them into loyalty loops and creating advocates out of them. The signs are clear and that's where we have to go. Data, and gathering the right data, and making sense of it to make the consumers' life easy has got to be the way forward. 

Is your brand human? Does it ‘talk’ to your audience? What attracts the audience to build a relationship with your brand like a human?

A brand cannot be created like a machine with algorithms. Yes, a lot of research and analytics goes into developing its core message, vision and mission. However, the audience at large defines a brand’s marketing strategy to a certain extent. If a consumer is unhappy with your content or dislikes how you’re communicating, you have definitely lost out on a brand advocate.

Remember, your audience wants to hear you. They want relevant conversations that make them think. Never underestimate the power of your audience. Therefore, humanizing your band is a necessity in today’s competitive business market. This will create a loyal audience, brand evangelists who will respect the brand and be prepared to shout from any corner of the world, of how wonderful the brand is!

A year after the ‘The Great Saltgunners' Tweet Up’ convention, we yet again introduced a Foxy campaign for AXN India fans of its hugely in demand TV show Supernatural just before the premier of the latest Season 9 in India. In a first of its kind initiative, AXN India gave fans of the most anticipated show of the year, Supernatural Season 9, an opportunity to tweet with the official AXN India twitter handle for a day.  In a never before done brand initiative in India, AXN invited 2 of its contest winners in  Delhi and Mumbai to take over the AXN India Twitter handle and interact with its loyal fan base of close to 12,000 people. The winners were also awarded official signed merchandise of Supernatural.

Lost in the midst of a bright future

running around interests

landing up in to a place of creative minds

churning the love & passion for work

the love inside, the humanity besides

making it easy to have a life

and not just work, earn or live

but to have an experience to cherish for a life time.

The latest issue of India Today focused on the DIY Generation, who knows what they want and are not afraid to go all out and get it!

15 Young Indian entrepreneurs ditched the corporate rat race to set up ventures on their own. In the Youth Special section, they discuss how and why they took the plunge to pursue their dreams.

Indian SMEs ususally try to operate in the unorganised sector for many reasons, and among them, tax burden is a crucial one. The hassles of complying to taxes, lack of guidance and cost make SMEs operate outside the tax net, negatively affecting the country’s overall economy.