Rajesh Lalwani – Brand consulting India, social media and social business strategy, messaging

Welcome to the new Blogworks website.

Actually, it is more than just a website. It is the coming together of a year’s work on our new visual identity, and even more fundamentally it is an endeavour to showcase the depth, and the width, of our work – from strategy and engagement to design and development; the richness of our processes, our team, and our work.

As time has passed, our obsession with purpose and meaning has only grown and we are helping organisations find expression to their purpose in ways that stakeholders can find meaning and value in. We wanted to share the wide range of work that we are today doing for some of the most reputed organisations, helping them build Movements, to building cutting-edge apps for many others.

We wanted to showcase that we were differentiated from many of our peers in the sharp focus to building brands that would be ‘future ready’ and that in the process had put together a team of consultants with very strong technical backgrounds in branding, communication, research, design and content.

A lot of people compliment us on the team culture and the new site helps us share glimpses even better

The site’s dynamic design allows you to explore our offerings and life without effort and makes it really easy for you to get in touch with us. Let’s see if we have succeeded in that – let’s start a conversation! We love hearing from you!

Do tell me what you think about new Blogworks

Jeremy Wagstaff, Chief Technology Correspondent, Asia for Reuters, spoke with me briefly about Facebook’s India prospects (opportunities, obstacles and what they are doing in this market).

Here are some points that I shared with him:

People usage

1. Facebook has seen aggressive growth and now stands at around 51 million users from India making it an important market from that perspective
2. How Facebook moves forward to keep the users glued to the channel in terms of usage would be important. It will go on to become a utility as initial euphoria has/ will give way to day-to-day usage from connecting > sharing also giving way to buying (holidays, virtual goods and real goods) to paying taxes? and more
3. I do not see Facebook go the Orkut way, for the simple reason that I have always maintained
   • Facebook is Facebook’s primary business, Orkut was not Google’s primary business
4. How Facebook replicates the rich PC/ Tablet experience for the mobile user (without fancy handsets) would be important as mobile internet is seeing faster growth

Marketer and advertising

1. Marketers who are spending more money on the channel are now also looking for ways to measure, and also what more can be done on Facebook
2. Facebook’s own marketing team and efforts are fairly nascent in the India market, though they are reaching out their conferences and direct outreach to marketers
3. Facebook might need to co-opt a larger network of partners, such as Blogworks and others, that have been working in the market to sell the medium, to expand it’s reach and value into the India market
4. I believe that post IPO, the focus will shift to monetization and offerings like ‘Reach Generator’ will focus on large advertisers and organic reach for brand pages might come down. Hence a scenario might emerge where marketers at opposite ends of the spectrum might only be able to harvest the channel well – the very small businesses/ brands (lots of time, personal involvement, reach through engaging the personal networks); the large brands/ organisations (monetary spends on ads, apps, content and engagement). Medium sized businesses may not have the time, or the money, to really achieve massive success
5. It would be interesting to see if this is the direction that Facebook eventually takes where organic reach will become more difficult and reliance on money spent will increase.

Here is  Reuter’s piece that has appeared in several publications today: Facebook can’t take Asia growth for granted

I am a great fan of strategic design; design that is not just pleasing to look at, but serves a strategic purpose. We created these hand-outs for participants at IndiaSocial Summit 2012 and the response to these was fabulous. Sharing them here:

Social Business

Twitter trending

Blogworks Social Media Marketing Triads

Blogworks was in news in Afaqs for the recent #fiestahotwheels activity

Ford India brings real life experience on F1 track

The communication strategy, which revolves around the idea of ‘Real people, real experiences’, saw Ford India bringing the Fiesta experience on the Buddh International Circuit.

Based on the fundamental idea of ‘Real experiences’, the initiative provided first-hand experience of driving the Ford Fiesta Automatic and featured people who make an impact on society, including influential businessmen, photographers, bloggers, writers and fashion designers.

Speaking to afaqs! about the strategy, Nigel E Wark, executive director, sales and marketing, Ford India, says, “We realised that people in India prefer to drive a manual car rather than an automatic one, as they have a certain kind of understanding about an automatic vehicle. To prove that these beliefs are just myths, we decided to bring people and give them a first-hand experience at the F1 track, one of the best tracks to drive a car in the country.”

The campaign, conceptualised by Global Team Ford and Blogworks, was driven through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Till about 11 am on Saturday, March 3, the activity received approximately 1,600 tweets.

Read the story here.

“Time to unfollow the PMO on Twitter.” proclaims Anant Rangaswami on Firstpost

@PMOIndia, the Official Twitter account of the Indian Prime Minister’s office, has been live all of 24 hours on Twitter.

“…few days on Twitter, do you think the Government’s been effective?” asks Sunetra Choudhry on NDTV

It’s just been a few ‘hours’ more since @PMOIndia went live…

We are living in trigger-happy times, and comments like above aren’t making life easier for the newly appointed ‘Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister’s Office’, Pankaj Pachauri , who is now managing engagement strategy for one of  India’s least vocal Prime Ministers.

To begin with, there were a total of 3924 mentions of @PMOIndia on twitter between 23-25 January tells me our internal study (using Radian6). Many of the comments, as expected, were jocular and humorous in nature  (the jokes and parody have been around for a while now), but it wasn’t a bad start at all as they helped get the word out, and as I write this post, the account has in excess of 30,000  followers (and growing).

But the task has only just begun.

Announcements and pictures of PM’s engagement in 3rd person might have worked for charismatic leaders of the 80s and 90s in the TV age,  they doesn’t  cut ice with the Twitterati, already used to having one-on-one conversations with the elite – no star dust here, certainly not where politicians are concerned (in fact, to the contrary – ask Omar Abdullah).

Some people argue that it may not be feasible for the PM to be using a real-time tool like Twitter himself (at least just yet), and that even US President Obama  has a team managing  his Twitter account for him (when he does tweet himself, they are signed BO). But engagements like  Twitter chats  Townhall @ White House have allowed him to engage the nation and understand key issues on people’s mind and it is ‘these’ periodic, timed, high-impact interventions that the Indian PMO should be looking at to drive the initiative. 

While one could argue that the decision to launch the @PMOIndia Twitter handle could have been thought through better; context and purpose established through some introductory communication, it’s only a start and it could still be done.  Authentic listening and choice of correct ‘tone’ might make all the difference.

What is clear though is the irreverence and candidness with which people are dealing with their PM is a sign of times to come for Indian politics and governance  – Days or ‘rule’ are gone. It’s now ‘management’ and pro-active ‘engagement’. Amen to that.

Do share your thoughts.