Digital marketing lessons from Avatar

Here is an excellent slide show put together by Abhishek on Avatar and digital marketing. Taking instances from the movie, he has very clearly put forth lessons to be learnt in the digital marketing space. There are 15 lessons in all. Three are my personal favorites, and I swear by them.

Lesson #2:

Game well and success will find you.

Vodafone. Try this. Ask ten people  what they remember about Vodafone. The zoozoos seem to have taken precedence from the pug.  I would attribute 70% of their success to their viral campaigns. They did everything right. Excellent mix of online and offline communication.

Of course, Vodafone budget is not for everybody. So here’s another lesson for small budget social media clients -

Lesson #1:

Brands that are handicapped by small marketing budgets, Welcome to social media!

Ever heard of the small Italian cafe in Limerick. The one that serves great Italian home-food. This little cafe has employed social media to reach out. When your business is small, there’s little or no scope to grab media attention. This is when social media comes into the picture.

What began as an accident has actually turned into a big business move. Some of the outposts that they use include twitter, facebook and blogging. With campaign ideas like “Italian Facebook Cookalong”, its a little wonder that they have more than 2000 friends. To get more people involved, they post happy faces of their customers enjoying the food. Also, a great way to share recipe secrets, possible menu comments and more.

Lesson #13:

When marketing online, choose media vehicles that bond with your customers.

Be fancy only if you are meant to be fancy. There’s no point in trying to be someone you are not. The brand personality cannot change. There’s a lot to learn from Walmart’s failed facebook campaign. When the brand is all about affordability and discounts, their fb page screamed style. Brand truth once formulated cannot be changed.

There are 12 other lessons that are equally inspiring and interesting. Thanks Abhishek for this wonderful presentation. Looking forward to more!

Mobile marketing made better!

On an average, I receive around 30 text messages from different companies. Discounts, gift vouchers, call for interviews, product launches, invites, and many more. These messages now work on an auto-mode in everybody’s mind. Open message – curse – delete.

Here’s a thought.

Mobile marketing, according to me, is still a very powerful medium to reach the right target audience. If segmented properly. Sending people a whole lot of mass text messages is no use.

What if mobile marketing could take over a similar strategy as Dell did on twitter.

What if a company like HP began messaging a few people to begin with. People who form part of their target audience. Other interested people can sign up to receive text messages from their site. These privileged few receive incentives and discounts. Would’nt it increase in better targeted marketing. Let the customer choose to receive messages that he wishes to read. And help not to frustrate other people, who at some point of time might become a one-time customer. Or even a loyalist.

Would this work?

Powerful idea

My all-time favourite print ad has been Southwest’s retaliation- “Liar Liar pants on fire” to Northwest on their claim to be No. 1 in customer satisfaction.

Recently, I came across another ad that caught my eye.

• Today, where visuals dominate, this ad has reversed the process. An excellent portrayal of the cliches that are unfortunately true.
• A touch of humour in reality.
• This is an example of a powerful idea backed by an extremely simple, yet equally powerful execution.

From a consumer’s point of view:

Sans the advertising p-o-v, I wanted to find out if this ad makes an impact on non-advertisers. So I picked 5 people belonging to different industries and have nothing to do with marketing. I showed the ad to them individually. Here’s what happened:

3 of them found the use of colors attractive.

All of them had an immediate smile while reading the copy.

Most important, all of them could recollect the date filmfare was scheduled for, even 10 minutes after the ad was taken away from them. The ad has hit the target bang-on.

Most of the ads or even websites focus on design and colors. The cosmetic appearances are temporary. What manages to create an impact is always the content, communicated in a creative manner. Compromising on content is a sin. Ads like this bring out the power of ideation before getting into the visuals. They have their message right and the creative route chosen is excellent. Great work Mudra!