We have joys we have fun we have seasons in the sun

My readers wonder why westlife as my title, actually this line has a close connection with seasonal marketing, as we know that summers are going to start very soon, and this is one peak time which pulls brands and marketers to take advantage of it.

What I am going to explore in this blog is how brands are leveraging on the kids market during the summer season.

We all observe that the evening time is play time for kids and we find kids playing cricket, badminton and other prominent sports at around 6PM in public parks and societies.

Summers arrive and the whole play cycle of a kid gets disturbed so as the clock turns 6 in the evening and kid gets out in his balcony to assess the atmosphere, at the same time cartoon network turns on its most popular cartoon “Dragon ball – Z” or Ben ten and this is not the case only with the toon network, other popular channels like Nickelodeon, POGO start with their popular shows.

This leaves the kid confused that whether he should go out and play or watch his favorite cartoon and turns to his mother to clarify his doubt, the reply he gets is “Son it’s too hot outside you should better stay at home and watch your favorite cartoons on TV”

Now as soon as the viewership goes up, the brands gear up to attack the innocent children with flashy TV commercials.

“Quarter 2 is one of the biggest quarters for Cartoon network and POGO as it contributes to approximately 30% of the annual billing” shares Monica tata, VP and DGM – entertainment networks, South Asia turner International India.

From new shows to exciting film premiers, themed channel to exciting promotions, TV channels are all set to take advantage of this hot summer.

What’s happening! Everyone is getting engaged

Now we have looked upon the high potential marketing mediums which are digital mediums the next thing I want to share is how the science behind these platforms work.

The buzzword today is engagement and not sales, well that’s a little surprising but yes it’s true.

A brand which is directing all its efforts just to grab attention of its target audience via social networks and mobile mediums are looking to engage their audience through any possible medium.

Why this has become so important and crucial is because the attention span is decreasing of the most beloved target segment “13-25 yrs” they are consuming more and more of digital mediums as compared to traditional mediums and the primary objective of a digital marketer has become “Engaging their fan base”

How this works is simple to decode, the facebook page already carried traffic, that means people are following and consuming the updates that the brand is doing on a daily basis, this leaves the brand to put in their communication messages in between at no extra cost, e.g. a week back fastrack announced that it has hit one million fans and it just did a post on facebook that today it is flat 50 per cent off on selected stores at your city.

And believe me I went to the fastrack store to purchase a watch and there were already hundreds of people standing, on asking how did they got to know all said they saw a post on facebook.

This cuts down huge marketing budgets, otherwise if fastrack had to take the traditional medium route it would have ended up burning millions of rupees by giving print and TV commercials announcing 1 million fans.

Brands use a variety of tools to engage there target audience like contests, competitions, freebies and discount vouchers, the secondary objective than becomes what we call as “brand encounter”

Brand encounter in one line if I could define is the first encounter or interaction of the brand with their potential consumer.

So if you were thinking engagement word is only used in Indian weddings, think again that is one word every marketer is thinking day and night.

I am in the office let me socialize professionally

Companies wonder what their employees are up to, are they spending time on social networks or are they playing Farmville in their office?

I went into an office where there was a similar incident happening, the employee was arguing with the IT head to open all the professional networking sites.

Social media has not only changed the way we communicate but also the way we live, the way we spend our time and also impacted huge on our lifestyles by making it more digital.

Coming back to the point of social networking in the professional field, Linkedin is one such name which has been growing at a phenomenal rate in India

If we take a look at some of the global statistics LinkedIn has over 101 million users worldwide with almost 59% as males and 41% females. (http://slidesha.re/gA3PYh)

The LinkedIn sign ups are growing at a astonishing 1 member per second.

With over 9.1 million users from India alone we are the second largest country from which the traffic is coming to this professional networking site.

The site currently operates in more than 200 countries, and is used in 69 companies of the top 100 fortune companies.

I was just checking out the success stories of LinkedIn and this professional networking have helped small scale business from scratch to sky

Check out this link How LinkedIn referrals has built a company http://bit.ly/eif1sK

Also you can check out this how LinkedIn has helped a person bring in a business of $250,000 http://bit.ly/i9vwbU

You Gotta Mobile …. Let’s N-gage

With over 700 million users using a mobile phone in India, the mobile phone industry becomes very exciting for any advertiser who is willing to expand its digital presence; according to web chutney outlook report, the mobile industry is expected to grow at a rate of 600%, now with so many messages like slim sauna belt, free insurance and calls from the operator itself the customer gets very irritated thereby leaving the advertiser in a worry how to reach the customer in an effective way, this concern forced marketers to look upon another booming industry called as Gaming industry.

An efficient marketer is one who thinks of integrating both to produce a service which becomes a memorable experience for the customer and which gets the user to talk about the product even when he is not exposed to any other kind of advertising medium.

Games have a higher engagement and recall and people willingly participate in the activity which leaves the consumer a greater sense of recall.

A mix of both the industry gives rise to a new product called “advergame” which is a game based on an advertisement of a product/service, now the brand has to be very subtly advertised in a game, this should be done in such a manner that the gamer consumes the message every time he plays the game and he does not mind playing the game again and again, which might not be true for other mediums, a person might be bored watching same ad again and again but with game, the shelf life is higher as compared to any other medium.

There has been also a trend which has been observed in the number of downloads of these games on the mobile, according to a study by india games (http:/scr.bi/flSDTo) the expectation from the market is to have a 5-6% average revenue per user of $1 per month at 1.5 games per download per user.

This results in a market size ranging between $240-$288 million.

So all you gaming freaks turn it on and get these exciting games for free on your mobile.

Don’t just tweet about me. Put me in your feeds

I went to one of my relative’s place and got to know that the kid is suffering from fever, I asked how much is the fever and the response that I got was, “The girl is not suffering from temperature, but she is suffering from social media fever”

How much the parents can stop their kids from logging on to facebook, twitter, orkut and other social networks, the kids will continue to do that, Indian social media space has been growing at a mammoth rate, with over 20 million facebookers and 4.5 million twitteratis, India is all set to become one of the biggest contributors of the total traffic of the leading social networks of the world.

What really attracts the youth of our country to these social networks is that they get to satisfy their need of being cool and to connect with their friends around, social media’s utility today is not to connect but a style statement, so if you are not on social networks, people might scream “OHHH you are not facebook” ….

Marketers are never behind when it comes to harnessing any of the mediums to get their message consumed.

If we throw some light on some of the most successful Indian brands today on social media, I can think of two that comes from the same house, one is Titan fastrack and other is Tata Docomo, both of these brands are inching towards a million fans on their facebook page with their engagement levels sky high, and how can one forget the most successful global brand which made around 6.5 million dollars on twitter, today it is the called as “DELL” (http://bit.ly/hEK3xq)

So, with all the facts and figures put together a brand is pumping in more and more money in social media marketing than any other traditional media, and soon a day will come when Digital marketing advertising spends are going to surpass the traditional media spends.