It is no longer “the age of marketing”. It is an age of meaningful communication and conversations. Stop monolog. Start Dialog is the order of the day. We now have to listen to what consumers say to each other and how they influence action instead of they listening to us. It’s all about people sharing their experiences, pledging their vote or support for a brand, product or service story that is shared by someone similar to them that they are willing to trust.

If you want to be a trusted member of such a community, you need to appeal to them on an emotional level and give them stories that are worth repeating.

Given the dynamics of the landscape being such, how can you leverage the concepts and tactics of digital communications to create credible brand and experiential stories that have a long-tail effect, earn the trust through experiences that fulfill desires and build meaningful relationships.

I intend to share these concepts and tactics of digital communication in a series of blogs where I shall cover each concept in terms of:

• What it is
• Where can it be really leveraged
• What are the do’s and dont’s of that concept or tactic and
• Examples of how brands benefited through real-life case studies.

I hope you find this useful and i look forward to to all your comments, thoughts and encouragement

The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is established in collaboration with MIT, with the mission to advance knowledge and nurture technically grounded leaders and innovators to serve societal needs. This will be accomplished, with a focus on Design, through an integrated multi-disciplinary curriculum.

SUTD, the newest University in Singapore had a challenging task of setting up and commencing operations within a year. They were looking for strategic partners who can think on their feet and deliver in a situation that was constantly changing.

Solution

Interakt was chosen as the digital partner and was tasked with implementing solutions across all touch points – web, email, social media and online media. A CMS based on open source technology was implemented that supported their job and admissions portal.

Web – a website framework was developed such that addition of new content could be done in a smooth fashion as and when new content was developed by the university

Email – Interakt deployed its email marketing solution – Resultiks – to support the internal and external communication needs or SUTD. Resultiks’ ability to track respondent’s behaviour was useful in closed-loop-marketing and thus accomplished better a conversion rate.

Social Media – Social media was deployed across platforms like YouTube, Facebook & Flickr. A branded presence was created on these tools that reflected SUTD’s brand positioning. All the tools were integrated with each other and to the website

Online Media – Interakt designed and developed online banner advertisements to promote SUTD among the student cohort applying in this academic year. These banners were run on Google & Yahoo ad networks as well as sites like AsiaOne and ESPN.

In addition, Interakt also developed applications like the admission portal and the RSVP system for event registration.

The Nanyang Business School (NBS), part of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), is a leading business school committed to educating tomorrow’s strategic leaders, through cutting-edge rigorous curricula that are relevant to business practice. NBS provides an outstanding learning environment, with the full range of undergraduate and graduate programmes, state-of-the-art facilities and world-class research centres. The Nanyang MBA is ranked 25th in world and one of the best in Asia that offers that offers global perspective with an Asian focus.

NBS wanted to differentiate itself and connect with its web-savvy audience worldwide, leveraging on the power of social media.

Aim

In line with the Nanyang Business School’s (NBS) and NTU’s strategic directions to reach out and stay connected to its external community, it was thought that a rich and an attractive social extranet will act as a common portal across the school for interaction, knowledge dissemination, and engagement with relevant external stakeholders.

The social extranet would support the NBS functions of marketing, careers and alumni. The extranet was to be designed and built such that it could be easily extended to the careers and alumni functions in subsequent phases. Effective marketing would also require that the design of the interface and context be attractive and appealing to the target audience. Also, it would require engaging this tech-savvy audience by moving to a more interactive mode of communicating via blogs, videos (e.g. showcasing a day in the life of student or graduates in a variety of industries) and having a presence in common social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn, social bookmarking, RSS, Flickr, etc.

An integrated marketing campaign was required that could create a buzz around the social extranet in the target markets in Asia, Europe, North and South America. The primary goal of this campaign was to create awareness and generate leads for the undergraduate and MBA programmes.

Execution

At the core of this project were two micro-sites, one each for the MBA and Undergraduate programme. The micro-sites were designed around the “mash-up” concept such that they not only reflected the “feel” of the target audience but also cleverly integrated all the social media elements within the site. For example, the videos from NTU’s YouTube channel were streamed to the microsite and “Wall” posts on Facebook were updated on the site in real-time.

From the technological perspective, an Admin and Reporting interface was developed that facilitated management of the various social media elements from a single dashboard. NTU administrators could, for example, manage user account, moderate forum post and generate analytics via this interface. All of these elements were interlinked to ensure that there was seamless integration across the multiple touch-points.

United Spirits Limited (USL) is the one of the largest liquor giants in the world, with a range of well-recognised brands, across Whiskeys, Vodka, Wines and other spirits. With the launch of ‘Spiritz & More’, a multi-brand retail chain for an array of liquor choices, United Spirits Limited (USL) created a new eco-system for meaningful consumer engagements and a good shopping experience across the Indian market. Going one step further, USL wanted to engage with its large consumer base through popular digital channel, including social media, in order to stay connected with them, meet their growing expectations while offering new experiences as well as accessibility.

Challenge

Given this mandate of transporting the ‘Spiritz & More’ experience and its essence onto the Internet, Interakt was faced with the unique challenge of having to market the brand without explicitly marketing its products, owing to the strict Indian regulations banning the marketing of alcohol.

USL being an organization with multiple business lines, each supporting a different set of marketing initiatives and capitalising on various aspects of Indian interests such as cricket, movies, fashion and so on, care was also required to ensure that the online ‘Spiritz & More’ experience, remained completely aligned to its core focus on glamour and lifestyle.

Interakt Solution

Meeting these challenges head on, Interakt conceptualized and delivered a complete solution called SpiritizandMore.com comprising of a comprehensive portal offering content on latest parties in different towns, USL events, information on spirits, responsible drinking and contests, a community section to encourage user participation through blogs and the creation of social networks, Facebook & Twitter presence with daily updates on events, parties, portal updates and contests.

In order to keep the platform relevant and up-to-date during this long-term engagement, Interakt employed the following channels to derive fresh content

• Charted the schedule of USL sponsored or supported events across the country for every 3-month period
• Planned the type and frequency of content to be sourced based on the types of events and activities
• Mapped the content and events on to the SpiritzandMore.com portal, in a way that would be meaningful and interesting for the users
• Conceptualized campaigns around contests, polls and interesting online activities related to these across the different digital channels such as the portal, Facebook & Twitter
• Planned & leveraged email marketing, mobile channels to create awareness of campaigns
• Sourced and utilized third-party content suitable and pertaining to website visitor interests
• Maintained and monitored the digital channels to ensure all that activity was in line with the SpiritzandMore.com branding

And one of the notable highlights of the entire initiative was the engagement of photobloggers across the country, to cover the USL events and provide ‘real’ content on the different channels like the portal, Facebook and Twitter, besides contributions from fashion designers and professionals, at the event themselves.

I am tempted to ask myself ’so which age am I living now?’. Well if I have been in any other industry I would have had to break my head with a problem of plenty. Being a die-hard member of the marketing & communications clan, I can’t resist but to name the current age – the age of dialog. More specifically the age of consumer dialog.

So why it is the age of dialog? Is it because there is so much of dialog around. I wish I can say that. But I am calling it an age of dialog for two reasons – the options for dialog have grown manifold and importance of dialog with the consumer has suddenly increased more than ever.

It takes a simple guess to say the channels for dialog have grown with the growth of interactive media. But why has the importance for Consumer dialog increased? I have to say that it is because the brand owners has not seized the opportunity to interact with the consumer in spite of the growth of the dialog options. Though there are exceptions, still I can take the liberty to generalize because still majority of the brand owners are yet to get it right. Many of the brand owners have not started creating and leveraging the channels of dialog. And if they have, a good majority of them have created the channels for the `feel-good’ and left them hanging. The proof is with each one of us – As consumers each of us have our own experiences – from desperately looking for options to reach the brand to share something we wanted to, mails that never got managed to get a response and many more.

So the consumers instead of being in dialog with the brand owners are using the plethora of options available today to be in conversations amongst themselves. Call it peer to peer conversations. These conversations are taking many avatars including blogs, consumer complaint portals, anti-brand communities, sharing of experiences through social media. It is real socialism out there and this socialism has already taken alarming proportions. Is the marketer hearing these ? yes, maybe, maybe not.

How do you stop consumers talking amongst themselves? just logical and simple. First hear with your ears wide open. Second talk back with your ears still open. But how many ears? The ears that marketer needs will be too many isn’t it ? That is a challenge the marketer has to live with. More popular the brand, more the numbers of ears needed.

Marketing has evolved from `pushing what was created’ to `producing what the consumer wants’. Today, it is no longer just producing what the consumer wants but co-creation of brands and the brand experience in conjunction with the consumer. For co creation to happen it is important to hear the voice of the consumer. Not just that – Engage the consumer in a dialog.

So will the marketing fraternity wake up? Being a smarter race, I hope it does soon. One thing I am sure of – in a world of fancy designations, there could be an interesting addition – Chief Dialog officer. So if it’s time for the CMO’s to fade out let us get ready to welcome the new CDO.

In addition, different media – text, audio, and video is used to make learning engaging. “All media are active metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms” (Marshall McLuhan).That said client’s needs drive the designing of the course as eventually everything boils down to the business realities of the client. For example, if the client wants jazzy presentation, customized content is the right fit. In this case, flash developers are put to good use to come up with eye-catching interfaces building different levels of interactivity. If the content is to be presented with low level of interactivity, rapid e-learning authoring tools come handy – like Articulate, Captivate etc. Interactivity is a must and not having it could turn the audience into a passive crowd. The content should be designed to be able to hook the audience. Essentially, explorative approach, rather than explanatory, should be used.

E-learning has grown since its beginning. From a billboard like presentation, it has transformed into a movie, radio station, text encounter or a blend of all these. Game-based e-learning is now fast catching up. E-learning may be short of tactile (touch) experience. However, different techniques (scenarios, simulations, case studies and RPGs) used to present content, combined with good interface and interactivity, can lend a sense of reality to what learners learn and how the content is mediated. When the learner forgets that he is interacting with a machine, s/he is lost in the content. This leads to immersive learning. Better said, virtual reality comes close to reality.Thus, in e-learning, content is no more king with sword; content is magician with wand or fisherman with bait.