Case Study: Here A Tweet, There A Tweet

Kailash Singh was dismayed. he was walking around the 9,000-sq. feet ‘Easily Elegant’ (a.k.a. E-sqd), along with Lopa Mehta, its brand guardian. E-sqd was a lifestyle store — clothes, linen, household accessories and elegant living — with 18 other outlets.

Kailash was an interactive brand strategist. On a recent holiday to California where business associates asked to see Indian lifestyle goods, he had readily opened the store’s website and was shocked that they did not sell online. And that was one of the reasons he had called on Lopa Mehta.

Lopa: The online sales module  is too minuscule a business proposition. It is hard to keep online shoppers’ interest levels up. I have spent a lot of time on this, Kailash. The effort that goes into generating a sale of Rs 6 lakh a month online, could generate four times as much sales per month in our store. We have accepted that being online is irrelevant for E-sqd.

Kailash: Online presence is about much more than sales, Lopa. There is more to your brand which gets communicated, known, felt, understood, perceived… when you stay open and available and visible to the consumer. It’s a completely new world now; just as today we want our product to be known globally... we want to also follow the global Indian customer wherever he goes! How about Twitter? Don’t you want to keep your equity salient in his mind?

Lopa: I get your point, but the ones who have something to say, write to us. Anyway, I don’t have the fursat for another social networking site. It’s intrusive, inquisitive, promotes pointless interest in pointless things. You know each social site now needs a new manager, besides! 

Yet, later Lopa mentioned it to CEO Dwij Nanda. “It seems that not being on Facebook is as backward as not using a deodorant!” Nanda shook his head and said, “Correct! So have we gone and made a fashion statement by not being on Facebook? So will consumers stop consuming? Wouldn’t we rather have them in a 3-D store than speculate in 2-D? Let’s not get into all this. We will all be immensely distracted. From what I see, whether you get there or not, those chaps will cause a buzz around you. That is their business. And we have to remain focussed on ours.

Sankalp Handa (merchandising manager): It may be a good idea to get there to construct, like build new segments, cater to new tastes, research with new groups... engage with them, talk to them... establish presence…
Nayana Dhir (research): Whether or not we are on Twitter or elsewhere, those who have an opinion will opine. It is the nature of these media. The social space is OK to hang out in socially, to inquire ‘hey, wassup?’; but is this relevant data? No. Emphatic ‘No’. Social media is mere rabble rouser, that’s all.

As far as I see, data collection has to be organised and done under a formal environment. In a noisy place, you get noise; you may imagine you are sifting and getting to the heart of the data, but you aren’t. Conventional, old fashioned MR (market reasearch) is what works. The most relevant research data for marketing is one that is done in an unaffected environment, where people are not in performance mode, where they have normal, average stimuli. Does the social media proffer that? I don’t think so.

Reshaad Nariman (youngest of the team): It will be sometime before the new Net behaviours settle into a pattern. Do recall a brand mishap that happened a year ago, in November 2008. McNeil’s Motrin story gives an insight into a different world; it shows us that a huge population is being ‘itself’ as it populates a faceless, smell-less space, where introductions and familiarity is no big deal, where people exist on the go. What is amazing is that it works for them!

[The Motrin-Twitter story: Motrin is a pain killer from McNeil Consumer Healthcare. A campaign in October 2008 targeted ‘babywearing’ moms (mothers who wear the baby on their person as against putting the baby in a pram) and, at some stage, the copy referred to such moms as ‘official moms’ and went on to use a sentence structure that led young moms to feel that McNeil was saying that babies are an accessory. The moms’ annoyance gained terrific momentum on Twitter, so much so that McNeil’s vice-president consumer business, Kathy Widmer apologised on Twitter and withdrew the ad..]

Arjun Das (marketing): A thing works if it is granted space. Take a parallel. In our eight-hour day, we had just one lunch break. Before and after, nobody eats. Recently, we introduced a tea break. Now many people eat during this break, not necessarily because they are hungry. The canteen is also stocking Haldiram sachets. See what is going on? If you create the opportunity, there will be opinions, arguments, protests, morchas, hartals, anything!