Social media: Firms still in trial & error mode

Digitation can even change business models, says Ram Charan.

The digital device is increasingly making consumers very powerful. The flick of a button or the click of a mouse is actually compelling companies to chalk out new strategies. This is happening on account of a few things, which includes having ready access to information, using various tools including social media to transfer this information and commenting, rating, reviewing and recommending at the same time.

Digitisation then is no more uni-dimensional as it was a decade ago. Instead it is now four-dimensional, where consumers sympathise, identify, participate and spread information about a brand. This, in a sense, is disruptive, says renowned management thinker and adviser Ram Charan. “It has the potential to even change business models,” he says.

The overriding theme on the first day of the Ad Asia 2011 was about how digitisation is liberating consumers. A key spoke of this wheel is social media, which as Charan explains, “is making consumers change their mind and the pace of it is incredible.”

Sample this: There are 100 million internet users in India. This is slated to go up to 350 million by 2015. In China, there are 485 million Internet users, which are slated to touch 750 million users. While internet usage is growing, it is also pushing up time spent on social media. The total minutes spent on Facebook each month stands at 700 billion. This is slated to grow as more users converge on the site and spend time on it, says Laxman Narasimhan, director, McKinsey & Company.

Are marketers really prepared to face this onslaught? While most companies are beginning to address this with strategies that are tailor-made for the online medium, most admit that it is not enough. Harish Manwani, chief operating officer, Unilever says, “In a country like India, where mobile phone penetration is high, how do you use the device to talk to consumers?”

That is a question that rings through many minds. But there are few answers at the moment as digital strategies are still in the trial and error mode.

There are some exceptions, of course. For instance, Parle Agro, the Mumbai-based fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), last year used Twitter to track inventory of its snack brand Hippo. Consumers of Hippo were encouraged to communicate whether there was adequate stock of the brand at their nearest store or wherever they walked in. The moment adequate stocks weren’t there, consumers would tweet and the company would attempt to refill in the shortest possible time. Parle’s attempts at using twitter as a means to track distribution won it awards at this year’s creative and media awards held in Goa in April.

As companies get a better handle of using social media, ad spends devoted to it will also grow.

Currently, digital advertising stands at three per cent only of the Rs 26,000 crore total advertising pie. Print advertising is 46 per cent, TV, 42 per cent, outdoor, five per cent, and radio, four per cent.

But as advertising moves online, the yardstick to measure viewership will not be TRPs, but Google Page Ranks.