The accent seems to be on ?social media marketing? in the Rs 19,500-crore Indian advertising industry. To target youth, leading advertising agencies are strongly recommending the concept of social media marketing to advertisers. For instance, Arc Worldwide has created a virtual character, scientist professor Narayan Thumbuswamy, who invites friends on social media networks to look for cleaner, sharper images on Godrej LCD TV sets. Arc has also used social media to promote Tata Tea?s ?Jaagore? campaign.
Likewise, Ogilvy & Mather has designed social media marketing campaigns for its varied clients, which include Vodafone, IBM and Cisco. In fact, you can see Vodafone?s ZooZoo characters crawling all over popular social marketing sites in India. Cashing in on the popularity of ZooZoos, Vodafone has released ?The Making of ZooZoos? online for all to see. The characters created for Vodafone?s value-added services have taken on a life of their own in the social media space with the official Facebook page for the ZooZoos.
That is not all. A number of companies are beginning to analyse Twitter feeds to understand what consumers are saying about their brands in competitive markets. Call it Twitter analytics.
Just what?s fuelling this enthusing for social media marketing? No huge media spends or great technological investments are required to build a social networking strategy. ?This media is currently a hot sector in India as a consumer will always trust another consumer?s experience. It?s like fishing where fish are,? says an ad guru in Mumbai. At present, social media site Facebook has 10.3 million users while LinkedIn has 2.24 million users in India.
Realising the growing importance of social media marketing in India, many ad agencies are training their employees to create maximum impact for clients in the cyber world. Industry analysts point out that the new concept is gaining a lot of momentum in India, as it is cost-effective and highly targeted. As a result, Indian advertisers are increasingly opting for this mode of marketing as there?s no media spend involved. Besides, it?s a very effective medium in grabbing eyeballs.
lalitha.srinivasan@expressindia.com
