Coca-Cola 'Expedition 206'

In 2010, Coca-Cola is sending a team of Happiness Ambassadors around the world to visit 206 countries in 365 days.

Their mission: Find out what makes people happy.

According to Coca-Cola:

In January 2010, a team of three travelers will begin an unprecedented journey. A mission. An expedition. A quest to visit in 365 days 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold. These three travelers are more than mere explorers–they are Happiness Ambassadors, and they will seek and share the optimism and happiness of Coca-Cola from Aruba to Zimbabwe and everywhere in between. They will participate in some amazing events including the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the World Expo in Shanghai.

Throughout the year-long journey, these Happiness Ambassadors will be sharing their blog posts, tweets, videos, interviews and pictures so you can follow their adventures in every country along the way.

But first we need your help. We need you to help us select the lucky travelers who will undertake this exciting and record-breaking journey. Which Ambassador team will uncover happiness in every corner of the world? It’s up to you. Check out the team profiles, vote for your favorite and let the journey begin.

The campaign is called 'Expedition 206' and will run throughout 2010.

There is an online voting being done to choose which teams should be preferred to undertake the journey, from a shortlist of nine finalists. The winners will begin their journey on 1 January in Madrid and end it in Atlanta on 31 December, at the World of Coca-Cola museum.


Mash-up Social Media Strategy – USP

It will be documented via the official Expedition 206 website as well as on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr.

The public can engage with the campaign by acting as virtual tour guides, making suggestions as to where the ambassadors should go and what they should do when they are there.

"This mash-up of social media — online photo galleries, video clips, blogs, microblogs, social networking — combined with an amazing journey, enthusiastic travellers and a theme of happiness is a great way for us to connect with people around the world.” – Adam Brown, director of digital communications and social media at Coca-Cola

Intel-powered ‘Blogathon’ 2009

In July 2009, Intel launched a new range of ultra-low-voltage processors that enable PC brands to build ultra-thin notebooks offering long battery life and sophisticated processing capabilities in an easily portable form.

Objective: Intel wanted to demonstrate these lifestyle benefits more than ever…

Strategy: Intel tapped Singapore’s most influential tech and fashion bloggers to generate a profile for a visually uninspiring, but technologically exciting, product. Top 10 famous tech bloggers from Singapore were prepared to embark on a live 24-hour, non-stop, Intel-powered ‘Blogathon’.

Vision
1) Create maximum visibility for the slimline notebooks fitted with Intel’s range of ultra-low-voltage processors;
2) Bring the chip to life for consumers by making it relevant to their lifestyles;
3) Educate consumers on the performance of the Intel Core 2 Solo chip.

Execution plan (17 July - 18 July)

Hardware provider (Laptops): Lenovo

Sponsor (design and appearence): Singaporean fashion brand TANGS

Selection process of bloggers: An intensive audit was conducted to identify relevant, influential bloggers to participate in the event. An equal percentage of both ‘tech geeks’ and ‘fashionistas’ were engaged with a view to expanding brand equity between both groups.

Media channels & platforms

Youtube.com: A reality-TV-style video was aired on YouTube four days before the launch. It also served as material for the participants to include in their blogs. The video revealed the bloggers’ initial thoughts about the challenge alongside a sneak preview of their makeover experience at TANGS.

Microsite: A Flash-based microsite with blog aggregator was created to inspire the bloggers to create content over the 24-hour period.

Analytics: A tracking system was integrated on the microsite to ensure precise measurements usually unattainable in a blogger engagement programme (such as measuring the time spent per visitor on average per blog post).

BTL/On-ground support: To maintain a high level of interest during the event, attract on-ground traffic, and maintain a constant level of dialogue, real-time Twitter conversations were aired on LCD TV screens placed in each window display; a product demonstration booth allowed shoppers to try out the Lenovo laptops used by the bloggers; and trained product specialists from Lenovo provided on-site education on the laptops and the capabilities of Intel’s Core 2 Solo processor.

Digital agency: Ogilvy 360º Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, responsible for the live integration of the visual capabilities of Flash

Blog platform: Wordpress, content management system

After the event, a video summarising the highlights was posted on YouTube.

Results

Total hits on the micro-site: 3,705 people from 34 markets visited the microsite in five days; 88 per cent were from Singapore. The site helped build an organic database, with 353 votes cast on-site.

Total visitors / Blog participation: 3,958 unique visitors. A total of 140 blog posts were generated in 24 hours, averaging 5.8 blog posts per hour; 817 comments were posted in 24 hours, averaging 34 per hour. It was covered across eight news platforms, 51 external blogs, and a leading design portal, notcot.org.
With no prizes or activities created on the site to incentivise visitors, bloggers were challenged to create more engaging content than their rivals and to read and comment on posts. This resulted in 42,372 page-views in five days, averaging about 11.44 page-views per person; each visitor spent on average 12:04 minutes on the site, the equivalent of 24 30-second TV commercials watched consecutively in the same time period; the bounce rate was low at 32.42 per cent. Only three out of 10 visitors dropped out in under a minute, while around 10 per cent of visitors (300) viewed 20 pages or more.

Reference: Haymarket Media

Digital Storytelling - An interesting tool to leverage social media platforms

An interesting and interactive technique to engage visitors on popular social media platforms is Digital Storytelling. According to Wikipedia "Digital Storytelling" is an emerging term, one that arises from a grassroots movement that uses new digital tools to help ordinary people tell their own 'true stories' in a compelling and emotionally engaging form. These stories usually take the form of a relatively short story (less than 8 minutes) and can involve interactivity. The term can also be a broader journalistic reference to the variety of emergent new forms of digital narratives (web-based stories, interactive stories, hypertexts, and narrative computer games). As an emerging area of creative work, the definition of digital storytelling is still the subject of much debate.”

Digital storytelling is the best weapon for media creatives. There are three ways in which digital storytelling was different from analogue storytelling. It creates a brand story, and doesn't just provide product information. Also, it allows marketers to pull in people, rather than pushing merely consumers. Thirdly, it creates significant word of mouth.
- Thomas Kin, Creative Director, Global Creative Team, Cheil Worldwide

Digital storytelling aims to make its audience spread the stories spontaneously by word of mouth and create a buzz over the internet. Lately various forms of commercial messages, including advertising on portal sites, microsites and games sites, have become more prevalent.

Some of the interesting campaigns in the recent times that leveraged digital storytelling are Samsung's 'Haptic Mission', Nike’s 'Be the Legend', “Hang in There Jack”, Zack 16 etc.

An interesting proposition would be using digital storytelling of a product in a campaign using social media platform to engage customers.

More interesting case studies on campaigns involving digital storytelling to follow soon….

Why Twitter isn't making money

Twitter – an innovative micro-blogging service - has become the new darling among social media marketers and internet geeks. According to comScore, over the last year, Twitter's traffic has exploded 15X to 44.5 million worldwide unique visitors in June, according to comScore. But Twitter's growth story isn't just limited to the U.S. and North America, where only about half its traffic comes from, according to comScore. In June 09, Twitter attracted 11 million visitors from Europe, 7 million from Asia Pacific, and 4 million from Latin America -- a total 22 million unique visitors from those three regions, up from about 2 million the year before.



Everyday there are more than 100+ stories circulated across various news and blog platforms highlighting how companies are leveraging Twitter either to increase sales or to raise awareness or just to be visible. Unlike its other counter parts like Facebook or LinkedIn, every now and then people raise questions like…

“Do they make money…how do they survive?”

“There aren’t any ads or subscription fees, how these guys manage their salaries?

“Is it a charity…Google is the most generous of all but still it knows how to make money”

So…the big question is Why Twitter doesn’t make money if it is an industry synonym for Web 2.0 or Social Media????

According to Daniel Riveong, an Internet Marketer working at e-Storm International in San Francisco, California, twitter has to start making money else…
“Maybe Twitter won’t be around to see 2010, yet many major brands have moved in to communicate with consumers and the world via Twitter. He categorized some of these companies under three types of twittering brands:
# 1 Conversational Twitters: H&R Block, Zappos, 10 Downing Street
# 2 News Item Twitters: Amazon.com, New York Times
# 3 Reputation Monitoring Twitters: Radian6 & GeekSquad”

There are many well wishers of Twitter on the web who suggest various way through which twitter can make money. On such supporter is Mashable blogger Adam Ostrow, who feels that Twitter could “couple e-commerce with advice from other shoppers, an element that most search engines do not offer.”

Steven Verbruggen feels that if they want to make some money quick, premium services like Google Analytics could generate quite some cash flow. He further suggests that Twitter can make money by:
1. Acquiring a company that is interested in data and relations and leverage Twitter as a research platform.
2. Advertising route
3. Turning it into a commercial service, let users pay for the use, or let them pay if they want to go over a certain threshold like following xx people or posting xx tweets per month.
4. Introducing commercial features
5. And last but not the least, by introducing Twitter Analytics.

Sarah Milstien, program founder for Just Food, a local-food-and-farms non-profit, and co-founder of Two Tomatoes Records, feels that
“Twitter could make money in a number of ways, from selling data to selling services (it recently posted an ad for a Business Product Manager, calling the role "Twitter's first product manager focused on revenue generation" and then describing a product that sounds like competition for Yammer and Present.ly). Indeed, Blog posts and articles speculate constantly, and comments around the Web range from curious to seemingly angry that Twitter is not yet generating serious cash.”

OR
Is too late for Twitter to monetize from its business model which has already been copied aped and experimented by different companies.

Few companies are already experimenting with business models, creating a situation where these sites have monetized before Twitter itself (Mashable, for instance, launched the Twitter Brand Sponsors ad format recently). The ad network Federated Media is taking a shot at making money from Twitter; FM has launched ExecTweets. A site created by Federated Media, in partnership with Microsoft, ExecTweets is a platform that aggregates the tweets of top business execs and empowers the community to surface the most insightful, business-related tweets.

Even more interesting: Twitter will officially endorse ExecTweets today and encourage brands to create portals like this.

There are several such sites floating around leveraging on the Twitter mania. In an interesting development, Twitter’s legal team sent a cease and desist order to New Yorker Dean Collins telling him that his mytwitterbutler service has to go because it has the T word in its URL and the domain must be handed over before August 24 or else.

So...what’s stopping Twitter to start making money???

I would like to draw an analogy on Google’s growth in the recent times. Be it Google’s business model, industry buy-ins, favorable developments and later on the migration of its services from a free-for-all to a money making machine. Google started off as an innovative concept and introduced its marvelous search engine, on similar lines Twitter introduced an innovative service that gave the birth of the new buzzword Web 2.0. Google had an instant hit in its kitty with its search engine and suddenly VCs, companies and investors were knocking on Google’s door. Twitter’s story is very similar as well. Twitter has already received funding of $20 million (initially) and $250 million (recently). Like Google, Twitter recently turned down a half-billion dollars from Facebook.

After this phase, Google instead of adopting the traditional money making business models waited patiently and used initial funding to ensure that salaries and sustainability are not serious concerns. They used this grace period intelligently to conceptualize and design state-of-the-art innovative technologies. The company knew that it has struck gold with its most innovative web technology of the decade, so they have to live up to their expectation.

Mantra was to go slow and step by step. Leverage on what they know best and introduce offsprings of the mother – The Search Engine. They invested most of their time on conceptualizing innovative technologies and they took their good long time to introduce them. Today when people talk about innovation, Google, 3M and Apple are always mentioned.

Twitter started off on a similar note. They just can’t follow something that has already been introduced, leveraged and exploited. What would be new (read Twitter) about it? I strongly feel that Twitter is not in a rush as of now and would be using this honeymoon time to do its home work properly and thinking about new innovative web 2.0 technologies and platform.

Twitter will definitely start making money but only with its own innovative tools and applications. To my mind, it will introduce something else to make money only if it can take the legacy of Twitter to the next level of innovation – something that is quite synonymous with its brand name.

I am not an expert in web technologies but I strongly feel that Twitter core mantra is sharing information and all its future endeavors would be around this core concept only (after all Web 2.0 is about it as well). Going forward, I feel Twitter could be thinking of something on these lines: -

1. Authentication – Today anyone can create a login and start using Twitter. Twitter can think of introducing the authentication or verification angle to it so that the analytics chalked out using Twitter would become more reliable.

2. Subscription based tweets – Tweets are the main weapon in its arsenal. All successful case studies on leveraging Twitter had one thing in common i.e. Tweets. Twitter may club it with its Authentication service and start offering specific and customized user tweets for specific reasons. It could be either surveys, analytics, customer service, sales etc.

3. Search Engine – Twitter can integrate a powerful search engine that gives the functionality to filter tweets and get only the most relevant ones as per the specific search criterion. This could become a powerful tool for the enterprise users of Twitter that can be made fee based gradually.

4. Twitpic – An interesting service to move beyond the 140 limit on Twitter and add some personalization to a dull Twitter user home page. Taking it to the next level, Twitter could think of introducing a platform for not only integrating pictures but also videos and files.

5. Another out of the box concept could be “Breaking News” service – Most of active Twitter users will validate this statement that Twitter has become an internet channel which gives them the news faster than any other news channel or resource. In real world we have plethora of TV channels and print media resources but as we are moving to the new internet world with Web 2.0, news about people who aren’t known to many, news that the whole world may not be interested in but you would, news about your friends, families, peer-group…will make the difference and who else can do this better or is equipped to do better than TWITTER.

Will surely love your thoughts and ideas on my thoughts. In case you have something interesting, not done before and goes well for Twitter, lets connect and suggest some good and innovative ways through which our dear friend Twitter can take its legacy to a new height – “Google of Web 2.0”

Now Air New Zealand is leveraging facebook to promote its Hong Kong London route targeting young professionals

Companies from different industry verticals are coming up with innovative ideas to leverage Web 2.0 wave. Joining Lufthansa and Emirates Airways, Air New Zealand has launched an application and a fan page to promote its Hong Kong London route targeting young professionals.

“This is the first time the company has rolled out a Facebook focused campaign and wants to use this channel as a test platform. Facebook can reach her target audience, comprising frequent independent travelers between 25 to 34 years old that makes up the bulk of Facebook users here” - Prudence Lau, marketing manager in Hong Kong & Southern China for Air New Zealand

BIG Idea - "Explore the other side of London"

The theme of this Facebook campaign is called "Explore the other side of London" that will run until the end of next month. The campaign is supported by PR activation to invite key media influencers and bloggers to participate.

The application encourages its customers to come up with an idea to travel in London besides the typical tourist spots. It allows consumers to pick a travel companion and create a dream trip where the most unique and wacky trip will stand a chance to win free air tickets and accommodation to London.

Measurement metrics
Lau is also excited about setting up a fan page for Air New Zealand Hong Kong, which she said would be more than just updates on the latest fares but include the latest happenings and trends in New Zealand and England. She would use the number of fans recruited on the Facebook fan page as one of the KPIs on the effectiveness of this campaign.

Rudi Leung, communication planning director for Agenda Hong Kong, said Air New Zealand will benchmark results of this campaign with its previous consumer engagement activities in traditional media, which will help to decide how they would allocate more budgets for social media in the future.

According to Check Facebook, there are almost 2.2 million people using Facebook in Hong Kong.

Ref: Marketing-Interactive.Com

Singapore’s FairPrice leveraging Facebook – An impressive Social Media Marketing Strategy

Supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice has entered social media with a Facebook profile 'That's My FairPrice', already supported by a huge fans base. According to press statement the supermarket chain acquired about 1,000 fans just three hours after its launch. As on 18th August, it had 7,595 fans on facebook.

Presently, it is running an online contest, “That’s my Family” Contest, where it is inviting its fans to post their & their family’s photo on the wall and add a short caption.

Once the photo is uploaded, users are then asked to share their post with their friends and tag at least 20 friends to get them to “Like” your post. If any particular user has the most “Liked” entry at the end of the contest, that user will win the Grand Prize - S$1,000 NTUC FairPrice Gift Vouchers! Also, if any user is among the Top 3 “Liked” entries of the week, he/she stands to win S$100 NTUC FairPrice Gift Vouchers!



Initially, to promote the Facebook profile, NTUC FairPrice also launched an advertising campaign featuring a TVC. The campaign was developed in partnership with iHub Media and FairPrice's media agency MPG. The new Homepage Reach Block Video Fan ad unit, claims to ensure two million impressions and up to a maximum of five impressions per user.

“This debut into social media is yet another channel for us to enhance our relationship with customers, so as to understand and better serve their needs. We will continue to explore new channels to engage our customers, fulfilling our brand promise in delivering excellent customer service.” -- Jeremy Khoo, deputy director of marketing communications at NTUC FairPrice

In Singapore, Facebook reaches more than 1.4 million internet users, or 50 per cent of the web population (comScore Media Metrix, May 2009), with an almost even representation in each age group. On average, more than 366,000 Singapore users log in to Facebook every day.

Last year NTUC Fairprice appointed Euro RSCG and MPG as its creative and media agencies following a six-way review. The retailer also appointed local interactive shop Manic for a website revamp.

References: Brand Asia and Marketing-interactive.com

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Collection of Interesting Case Studies on Social Media Marketing

List of interesting case studies on Social Media Marketing

Crispin Porter’s viral Subservient Chicken garnered about 14 million unique visitors and 396 million hits to date, through Adweek here (March 7, 2005). http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000828049

Up Your Budget Treasure Hunt for Budget Car Rental in 2005, the first ever blog-based viral marketing campaign, promoted entirely through bloggers and blog advertising - with no traditional marketing whatsoever. The results: one million unique visits to the site, 2,000 registered treasure hunters, and over 10 million page views in only four weeks. The clue videos were downloaded a total 43,000 times. There were 19.9 million blog advertising impressions at an average cost of 33 cents. Created by BL Ochman.
http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2006/10/case_study_up_your_budget_i_2005_created_by_bl_ochman.asp

Click TV - Blogger Relations for Click TV (April 17, 2006): An outline of a blogger relations campaign for a Web 2.0 company, Shel Holtz, results here http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/blogger_relations_for_clicktv/

Fiskateers for Fiskars, who make crafting tools. Branded mentions of Fiskars products are up more than 400% on a per-week basis since the program began, from Brains on Fire (2007) http://brainsonfire.com/blog/

Coca Cola’s Community Approach to Second Life (April 17, 2007): Coca-Cola’s new social media strategy in Second Life featured an approach other than buying real estate and creating a store, Shel Holtz & Crayon http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/coca_colas_community_approach_to_second_life/

SeaWorld San Antonio: Journey to Atlantis (May 3, 2007): The launch and results of an “event” site to support the opening of a new ride, My PR Pro http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/2007/05/anatomy-of-social-media-campaign.html

Splashcast’s Social Media for Marketing: (May 16, 2007): Splashcast used social media for marketing purposes, and succeeded by directly engaging the community, Marshall Kirkpatrick http://marshallk.com/social-media-for-marketing-what-weve-done-at-splashcast-so-far

GeoCommons Social Media News Release (May 29, 2007): An outline of the pitfalls and successes of releasing news via SMNR, Livingston Communications http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/05/29/geocommons-social-media-release-a-case-study/

New Adventures of Old Christine (June 14, 2007): The show was about to get a new day and time, and she thought outreach to parent bloggers was a perfect fit, CBS via Marketing Roadmaps http://getgood.typepad.com/getgood_strategic_marketi/2007/06/defining_social_1.html

Sci Fi Channel Digital Press Tour (July 12, 2007): Sci Fi channel begins blogger relations program by providing access to filming setsSci Fi, Channel via Marketing Roadmaps http://getgood.typepad.com/getgood_strategic_marketi/2007/07/sci-fi-channel-.html

Goodwill’s Social Media Strategy (August 29, 2007): How Goodwill used social media to rebrand its vintage clothing, Livingston Communications http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/08/29/case-study-goodwills-social-media-strategy/

Five Lessons from the SIGGART Online Word of Mouth Campaign (August 30, 2007): Thiseco-friendly aluminum water bottles company chalked up tons of quantifiable results, including 8000 unique visitors who visited for an average of 17 minutes, Gold Group http://goldgroup.blog.com/2045504/

Hugh Macleod at gapingvoid has done a spectacular job of marketing Stormhoek wine entirely through blogs and social networking, vis a vis BL Ochman (Sept. 17, 2007) http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2007/09/with_as_many_as_1200.asp

Gates Foundation ED in ‘08 (Sept. 25, 2008): This very successful case study shows social media tools from video to Facebook, and calls to action like ordering endorsement kits, Mindshare Interactive http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/09/25/era-of-conversation-case-study-gates-foundations-ed-in-08-campaign/

Social Media Case Study: CMP’s TechMash (September 27, 2007) Social media forms used to garner attendance at CMP event, Horn Group http://www.engageinpr.com/?p=348

A Social Media News Release from Eurekstar (October 2, 2007): Shift Partner and Father of the SMNR breaks down form and function in this one, SHIFT Communications. http://www.pr-squared.com/2007/10/a_social_media_release_work.html

Marketing Pro Lewis Green discusses how his BizSolutionsPlus blog yielded four clients in one year (October 15, 2007). http://lgbusinesssolutions.typepad.com/solutions_to_grow_your_bu/2007/10/a-case-stufy-bl.html

Squidoo is profitable, and without venture capital, Viget Labs and Seth Godin (December 18, 2007)
http://blog.viget.com/squidoo-profitable-and-lasting-without-vc/

The White House uses social media to get the word out on drug policies (December 18, 2007)
http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/12/18/case-study-white-house-pushes-back/

ITToolbox, who’ve grown their social network for IT professionals into multi-million business with more than $8 million in ad sales, and 1.7 million pages of user generated content as of Jan. 1, 2008.
http://www.ittoolbox.com/

Sony drives approximately 11,000,000 million visits to 30 Days Night moviecontests page using Facebook widget (reported by Jeremiah, January 29, 2008) http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/29/case-study-how-sony-leveraged-a-popular-vampire-facebook-widget-to-reach-its-community/

Nokia’s Mosh creates more than 200,000 rabid friends, almost 30 million downloads through crowd-sourcing initiative (reported by the Buzz Bin, March 3, 2008) http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2008/03/03/nokia-mosh/

The Human Capital Institute uses its liveblog to engage its membership, determine if they are social media savvy, Livingston Communications (March 18, 2008) http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2008/03/18/case-study-national-human-capital-institute-liveblog/

H&R Block Friends Stressed Out Taxed Americans on Twitter (reported by Social Media Explorer, March 21, 2008) http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2008/03/21/case-study-how-to-blatantly-advertise-through-social-media-%E2%80%A6-and-get-away-with-it/

Disney’s continued MySpace Step Up 2 the Streets success yields a surprise box-office hit; it also managed to expand the movie’s already sizeable and enthusiastic group of fans. The movie’s MySpace profile has more than 156,000 friends (March 24, 2008, AdAge via Social media Optimization).
http://social-media-optimization.com/2008/03/a-successful-myspace-social-media-campaign/

Neat Receipts Becomes a Hit with Mommy Bloggers (SHIFT Communications, April 2, 2008).
http://www.pr-squared.com/2008/04/blogger_relations_case_study_m.html

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog: HHS engaged national leaders and the online pandemic flu community through its 5-week blog summit (June 2007 by OgilvyPR). http://blog.pandemicflu.gov/

Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company drove traffic to their site, increased buzz and branded in social media and the blogosphere using a beta test. More than 1500 blogs participated (Pierson Grant Public Relations, June 3, 2008). http://thefuturebuzz.com/2008/06/03/a-case-study-in-building-buzz-in-the-blogosphere-joffrey%E2%80%99s-coffee-tea-company/

Scripps Networks - HGTV’s Rate My Space. Online community creates prime advertising real estate, generating ROI within weeks and creating continuous stream of advertising revenues. Success leads to companion television series - social media successfully serves to bridge gap between online and on-air (NY Times, June 19, 2008). http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/a-home-improvement-web-site-begets-a-tv-series/

Adidas leverages mobile social media to increase retail revenues 20x around NBA All Star game in Vegas (Event Marketer, June 24, 2008). http://www.eventmarketer.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=2107

Network Solutions is using a monitoring program to turn around a negative blog post ratio in the 58 percentile range (Livingston Communications, August 8, 2008). http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2008/08/07/network-solutions-changes-perceptions-with-new-actions/

The Nature Conservancy leverages Facebook and Digg for cause marketing: How TNC raised nearly $75,000 through Facebook Causes and a partnership with Lil Green Patch, a popular Facebook application. The group has also built significant brand awareness through the social news site Digg! (As reported by Jonathon Colman of TNC, September 29, 2008). http://www.slideshare.net/jcolman/fundraising-on-facebook-a-new-model-for-fundraising-on-facebook-using-an-old-skool-tool-causerelated-marketing-presentation

JetBlue Twitter – Case Study: When JetBlue joined Twitter in the spring of 2007, it was one of the first major brands to do so. Today, the company has nearly a million of followers, and its account is often cited as an example of smart corporate twittering. But the company started out on Twitter with modest goals. It wanted to help customers. http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_jetblue

Teusner Wines Twitter – Case Study: Teusner Wines, a boutique winery in Australia’s Barossa Valley, has three employees. Dave Brookes is the sales and marketing department. A cycling fan, Brookes was watching the Tour Down Under in January 2009 when he noticed that Lance Armstrong was on Twitter. “I followed him,” says Brookes, “and I starting thinking Twitter would a good tool to tell people about the winery.” http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_teusner

Current Media Twitter – Case Study: For the 2008 presidential elections, Current knew it had to do something different. The media company, headquartered in San Francisco, would receive the same live feed of the debates as every other broadcaster. Unless Current distinguished its coverage, viewers would have no particular reason to tune in. http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_current

Tasti D-lite Twitter – Case Study: The popular dessert franchise Tasti D-lite offers customers over 100 flavors of guilt-free frozen treats. Tasti has been beloved by customers in the greater New York area for over 20 years, growing to 50+ locations and continuing to open new locations while expanding its geographic reach. http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_tastidlite

CoffeeGroundz Twitter – Case Study: CoffeeGroundz is a popular, albeit modest, Houston, TX based independent coffee shop that sells a variety of locally roasted coffee, tea, pastries, sandwiches, and alcoholic beverages. There are a couple of booths, 16 tables and another ten on the patio. If you come to CoffeeGroundz, J.R. Cohen, its general manager, strives to make sure “you feel at home.” http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_coffeegroundz

Etsy Twitter – Case Study: Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade. Since launching in 2005, the Brooklyn, NY company has grown to over 65 employees. More importantly, over 250,000 sellers have opened up shop on Etsy to sell their handmade goods.
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_etsy

NAKEDPizza Twitter – Case Study: Founded in late 2006 as one small store in New Orleans in an area that flooded during hurricane Katrina, NAKEDPizza (originally named World's Healthiest Pizza) was launched as an ambitious business model that seeks to change the nutritional profile of fast food in America.
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_nakedpizza

American Apparel Twitter – Case Study: The Los Angeles company and leading basics brand provides hip clothing for people of all ages. Vertically-integrated American Apparel is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States. http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_americanapparel

Pepsi Twitter – Case Study: Pepsi may be a classic brand, but it’s using 21st century tools to collaborate and build relationships with customers.
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_pepsi

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More to follow...

Dell Twitter Case Study

First adopters of social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and blogging understand that their success can be measured and based on audience engagement, recognition, and involvement. Yet, Social Media’s Achilles heel, in the eyes of corporate decision makers who still utilize Web 1.0 analytics and measurement for their marketing, sales, and promotion efforts, is the lack of compelling ROI case studies: until now.

The fundamental recommendations from Twitter can be summarised in four simple steps
- Listen to what people are saying about your brand on Twitter
- Set up your own presence and be honest about who you are
- Follow people that are relevant to you
- Respond to discussions about your brand and business

Dell leveraged Twitter perfectly to generate sales. In December 2008, InternetNews reported that Dell has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts via Twitter. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

Background
Dell Outlet faces a common but vexing challenge. A division of the giant made-to-order computer business, Dell Outlet carries refurbished equipment and other inventory that it needs to sell quickly. Because the division has to get the word out fast, it doesn’t have the luxury of hiring an agency and developing an ad campaign. Instead, the outlet relies primarily on email marketing, paid search results, search-engine optimization and affiliate links to raise awareness and drive sales. It’s always looking for new, cost-effective ways to reach people.

Dell's worst problem had been that customers were having too many of the wrong conversations with too many service technicians in too many countries. "It was a real mess," confesses Dick Hunter, former head of manufacturing and now head of customer service. Dell's DNA of cost-cutting "got in the way," Hunter says. "In order to become very efficient, I think we became ineffective."

Hunter has increased service spending 35%, cut outsourcing partners from 14 to 6 (and is headed to 3), and retrained staff to take on more problems and responsibility (higher-end techs can scrap their phone scripts; techs in other countries learn empathy). Crucially, Hunter also stopped counting the "handle time" per call that rushed representatives and motivated them to transfer customers so they would be someone else's problem. At Dell's worst, more than 7,000 of the 400,000 customers calling each week suffered transfers more than seven times.

Today, the transfer rate has fallen from 45% to 18%. Now Hunter tracks the minutes per resolution of a problem, which runs in the 40s. His favorite acronym mantra (among many) is RI1: resolve in one call. (Apple (AAPL) claims it resolves 90% of problems in one call.) He is also experimenting with outreach e-mails and chatty phone calls to 5,000 selected New Yorkers before problems strike, trying to replace the brother-in-law as their trusted adviser.

Strategy
What did Dell do to make it happen, while others are still playing the wait and watch game.

- Fast to adopt:
While its competitors watched how the new entrant to the social media scenario would perform Dell set up its strategy and used Twitter as a channel of distribution to sell their products, taking the leadership stance and approach.

- Segmentated users:
Dell had a very clear strategy and focus to leverage Twitter, its stretegy revolved around studing the model and its users. Dell segmented twitter users demographically by setting up different twitter accounts ( ie. They started Dell Twitter for NZ users , Dell Twitter for UK users, Dell Twitter for Canada users ) Each of these twitter accounts spoke to users in a different country with localised product offerings.

- Created special offering for each of its segments :
With the segmentation strategy was adopted for different markets, it backed it up with special offers for each of these segments. Thus adapting the ‘Think Global, Act Local’ approach for their overall Twitter marketing strategy.

- Created a following and build a trust factor :
Companies that have built communities have always been succcessful in selling their products. Dell leveraged its online brand identity and trust factor to create and build a large community on Twitter. They built a strong and loyal following of more than 2000 users.

- Targeted Sales messages to the community :
Once they had a following they strategically leveraged their offers and promotions in form of Tweets or messages on Twitter to their following.

Tactics
Holding Conversations: When company employees discovered Twitter at the South by Southwest conference in 2007, they thought they’d hit on a good channel for pushing out information.

“We thought, ‘Great—this has a really short lead time, and it will let us communicate our message effectively,’” says Stefanie Nelson, manager of demand generation at Dell Outlet. “We started using it for one-way communication.” The company was surprised when people responded. “They wanted to ask questions. They wanted to share their experiences, good and bad,” says Nelson, who’s based in Austin, TX. “We realized that people were really interested in talking with us.”

Raising awareness: So instead of using Twitter just to let people know about deals, the company has come to think of it as a good place to interact with customers—and to raise awareness about the brand. “When we respond to people on Twitter, they get really excited, and we gain advocates.”

That doesn’t mean Dell Outlet has abandoned the deals. In fact, the company often posts offers that are exclusive to Twitter. They twitter only a few times a week so as not to spam their followers, and they use tracking URLs to gauge what followers find most appealing.

Increasing sales: Do the coupons work? Big time. Not only do they get retweeted and picked up by coupon sites—both of which spread the brand name—they also drive sales. Dell Outlet has booked more than $3 million in revenue attributable to its Twitter posts. In addition, the division has done research showing that awareness of the outlet has grown, too.

“The uplift has been more than we dreamed,” says Nelson.

Connecting with customers: Dell now has more than 80 Dell-branded Twitter accounts (including @dellhomeoffers for new system deals) offering everything from videos of new technologies to promotions for Asia-Pacific customers. It also encourages employees to twitter, and has well over 100 employee accounts. Dell uses many of those accounts (with names like @StefanieAtDell), primarily for customer service exchanges that require direct messages (Twitter’s private channel) and to reach out to people who are twittering about Dell (which they find via Twitter search).

@DellOutlet now has over 15,000 followers who are receiving these marketing messages from Dell. So while Twitter is trying to figure out how to make money from its service, it is interesting to see that Dell recognizes that Twitter is a marketing channel, and more importantly, it is a channel that can increase revenues.

Results
- At start of program, 49% of blog posts were negative. Today, overall tonality is 22%negative.
- Direct2Dell currently ranked about 700 on Technorati, among the highest corporate blogs.
- Direct2Dell gets more than 5 million unique views per month
- Over 7000 ideas have been submitted via IdeaStorm
- Studio Dell is gets more than 200,000 views per month

Dell has over 650,000 followers on Twitter. Although they are only following 23, they are known as a value provider:

Coupons: Dell distributes valuable discount coupons through Twitter
Customer Service: Dell answers questions and solves problems by engaging with their audience
Crowdsourcing: like their efforts at Ideastorm, they crowdsource their Twitter network for ideas on products, services, processes, and anything related to making their consumers satisfied
Network: Dell brilliantly and seamlessly integrate their Twitter network of followers with their Facebook fans for their Facebook company page. They convert many Twitter followers to Facebook fans and vice-versa

Nelson has learned when starting a new account on Twitter, it’s smart to reach out to your current customer base. They’re already interested in chatting with you, and they’ll tell other people about you. But no matter who’s following you on Twitter, she says, “offering relevant information that people are interested in is key.”

Dell & Twitter

View more presentations from Dell Inc.

Interesting Social Media Trends - A Study

Social media trends indicate that online marketing is set to undergo a dramatic makeover. Businesses are increasingly integrating social networking websites into their marketing strategy. A recent study conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (a representative body of American marketers) revealed that 26% of marketers found trends in social media taking it towards further growth.

Recession has called for accountability and efforts are being made towards innovating measurement techniques. This would help in calculating the ROI from marketing through social media. The Online Measurement and Strategy Report 2009 (conducted by Econsultancy in combination with Lynchpin) recorded that the proportion of firms looking at social media metrics has doubled during the course of a year from 21% to 40%.

The popularity of tools monitoring the buzz continues to rise. Be it staying alert with Google or inhaling the web on Addictomatic, such tools have become essential to internet marketing. Influence has emerged as a main indicator of success. The authority an account exercises over its followers and the networking activity as a whole are becoming the measurement tools.

# Social Media Engagement Trends
Over 60% of young consumers use social networking sites at least weekly, and about 40% check their networks every day. These young creators grew up in the age of personal computers, graphical user interfaces, and digital social annotations. The social computing boom of the past few years has created an online identity and digital hub, altered as frequently as one's clothes.



Adults are also researching news and creating content online. 22% of adults read blogs at least monthly, and 19% of adults surveyed are members of a social media site. Customer ratings and reviews was the most popular online activity, with about 40% of survey participants utilizing sites such as Amazon to read the thoughts and opinions of peers before making a purchase.



Forrester analysts identified six levels of social media participation in ascending levels of sophistication: inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and creators. The categories are not mutually exclusive, as a blog author (a creator) will likely read other blogs (as a spectator), occasionally comment (a critic), and perhaps use web feeds or annotation tools (a collector).

These varied levels of social media participation highlight the need to better engage your audience across the board, easing them into the social media experience. Many social media sites focus on the joiners and creators, setting high barriers of entry and participation. A casual reader might mark a story or video as a personal favorite, or share a collection with friends. A collector might engage more audience members, creating a more focused community for a niche audience. Businesses and websites can engage multiple market segments and open up their community to wider participation.

# Comparative Analysis of Top Social Media Networks





# The Rise of New Business Models?

Frankly, predicting new business models within the media industry is difficult with its complex web of content distribution relationships spanning theaters, international distribution, cable and satellite distribution. However, with the success of industry ratified models like Hulu and the sense of inevitability that content is destined towards freedom, 2009’s recession will force new media models into play because the old models aren’t working any more.

Business Week’s Steven Wildstrom notes that consumers can’t find many great old movies on DVD or online in this era of the long tail retailing.

The battle is between an industry that wants to tightly control who gets to see what when and customers who want to watch what they want wherever and whenever. This clash is slowly being resolved in favor of consumers. Movies are becoming available for download and on DVD more quickly after theatrical release. Director Steven Soderbergh has a deal with Mark Cuban’s Landmark Theatres and HDNet that allows some of his movies to be released on disk and online the same day they show up in theaters. I expect more movies to be launched this way.

The day you can choose to see a new movie in a theater, on your TV, on your laptop, or on your iPhone is still some time off, but it is coming.

# The 2009 Recession will Elevate Social Media Marketing as a Corporate Cost Control Measure

Brand advertising has generally employed one-way messaging to consumers who typically respond to brand commercials as agenda-laden, or even spam. That’s why Tivo fast forwarding of ads is a value proposition. Brand advertising developed in the 1950’s with Madison Avenue’s recognition of the power of the new visual media to branding. It worked because broadcast TV was, at the time, the most optimal means to distribute the message.

Brand advertising is expensive because it employs the vertical professional services of advertising agencies – creative, research and production – to develop “campaigns”, and ad budgets for mass market placement. Social media in part threatens to disintermediate advertising professionals by leveraging “crowdsourcing” to test marketing and advertising concepts more quickly and cheaply.

# Entertainment Bubble
“Content creators are layering a multitude of media into entertainment for simultaneous consumption and engagement. For example, “LittleBigPlanet” users are gamers, social networkers and content creators, “The Hills” ‘Backchannel’ social networking site is where fans can gather to talk about the show as its happening on TV, and author StephenieMeyer has a playlist that readers can listen to while they’re reading the Twilight series. People are almost in an entertainment bubble of sorts”. -- Ann Mack, Director of Trendspotting, JWT (Source: sctimes.com)

# On Mobile
Social networks are going mobile. With devices such as the iPhone closely integrating the Web and cell phones, social networks like MySpace are working towards establishing their mobile presence.
“..Next year your media friend might start collecting dust when a mighty mini version takes hold, with the iPhone, the Bold and the Google phone, we’re beginning to truly be able to take our shows on the road. For example, the iPhonecan be a baby monitor and a Google phone, such as the T-Mobile G1, has a bar code scanner which allows you scan any bar code at the store and then immediately compare prices online. People are cutting their Internet service to save money and relying on their phones. After all, an iPhoneis much easier to fit into your pocket than an iBook”.
Mobilize Me -- Jane Buckingham, President, The Intelligence Group
Source: sctimes.com

Companies will continue to place a high priority on mobility initiatives primarily for productivity increases, with mobility activities heating up in emerging markets. In addition, we will see growth in the mobile "wannabe" user segment as employees bring their personal devices, such as the iPhone, into work and expect organizations to develop ways to support these new devices —even with the slowdown expected in consumer mobile device purchases. -- Forrester

# On Engagements
“The recession will put consumers in a more powerful position. Feedback 1.0 was the lone customer posting a review or complaint and companies ignoring him. Feedback 2.0 was when millions posted, with companies largely ignoring them.

Feedback 3.0 finds companies listening and replying. For example, Starbucks lovers can already “help shape the future of Starbucks,” by sharing their ideas online, and hotel managers can respond to complaints and praises posted on TripAdvisor”. -- ReinierEvers, Founder, TrendWatching.com

# “How Social Media is helping businesses?”
Facebook Connect, and its social network cousins Google Friend Connect, and the still obscure MySpace ID will facilitate the portability of social networks, or the “social graph”. This will be one of the most powerful applications towards creating a social media business model in 2009, but is hard to explain to social media newbies. What does it mean?

Through Facebook Connect, consumers log into other sites using their Facebook login details. Once inside the site, users can discuss or post their activities in real time to their Facebook network. The effect is to bring in their network of friends into the hosting site. For example, a teenage girl may visit a Facebook Connect – enabled retail fashion site like Forever 21, buy an awesome sweater at a deep discount sale price, and broadcast this fact to her large Facebook network. A few of her Facebook friends do the same thing, and by extension, you can imagine the instant viral marketing power of each new succeeding Facebook network put “into play” for a good sweater deal.

# Crowd sourcing will be a huge social media trend for 2009.



Crowd souring has the potential to take off pretty big, although i don’t see the online movement in that direction. The launch of Predictify suggest such a conclusion. Also, Idea Blob has been fairly successful. There are a number of crowd sourcing creative (graphic design and video) that are bubbling to the surface beyond the e-lance model. This will only continue to increase as the need for outsourcing and budget cutting continues in 2009. The trend known as crowd funding may also see an upward and exciting trajectory.

# Rise of video driven communities
Video driven communities that drive conversation will take off in social media. Winelibrary TV, Epic FU, and The Politico Playbook (aka Kotecki TV) have shown what video can do. Momversation, sponsored by Target, is driving conversation and community around the issues of moms. The video serves as a fantastic differentiator, creates emotional connection, and is potentially truly remarkable content.

Twitter under microscope - An HP Research Study

A study of social interactions within Twitter (via Snake Coffee), conducted by B. A. Huberman, D.M. Romero, and F. Wu (HP Labs) reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

In a paper named Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope (PDF) the researchers investigated how relevant a list of “friends” is to members of the network. Practically, they were interested in finding out how many people each user communicates directly with through Twitter. They have defined user’s friend as a person whom the user directed at least two posts. By that the researchers were able to compare number of friends to number of followers.

Research Findings:

1. Saturation of delivered content:
The researchers expected that users who receive attention from many people (hold many followers) will post more often than users who receive little attention. Indeed, the total number of posts increases with both the number of followers and friends. However, as Figure shows, the number of total posts eventually saturates as a function of the number of followers. This implies that users with a large number of followers are not necessarily those with very large number of total posts.



On the other hand, the number of total posts does not saturate as a function of number of friends, as seen on Figure below.



The researchers concluded that in order to predict how active a Twitter user is, the number of friends is a more accurate signal than the number of his followers.

2. Social saturation:
The research shows (see Figure) that even though the number of
friends initially increases as the number of followees increases, after a while the number of friends saturates. This trend can be explained by the fact that the cost of “declaring” a new followee is very low compared to the cost of maintaining friends. Hence, the number of people a user actually communicates with eventually stops increasing while the number of followees can continue to grow indefinitely.



3. Reciprocity:
The research presents evidence to reciprocated attention. On average, 90 percent of a user’s friends reciprocate attention by being friends of the user as well (see figure).



Research Conclusions:
1. Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends. On the other hand, users with many followers or followees post updates more infrequently than those with few followers or followees.




2. A link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. In the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view.

Sources: HP Twitter Study

About the authors
Bernardo A. Huberman is a Senior HP Fellow and Director of the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett–Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, Calif.
Web: http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/people/huberman/
E–mail: bernardo [dot] huberman [at] hp [dot] com
Daniel M. Romero is a graduate student at the Center for Applied Mathematics of Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.) and also a researcher in the Social Computing Lab of HP Laboratories.
E–mail: dmr239 [at] cornell [dot] edu

Commodity market to reach $1.73 trillion by 2010: Assocham

The Indian commodity market is expected to grow by 30 percent and will reach Rs.74,156 billion ($1.73 trillion) in volume by 2010, according to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham). Assocham found that the Indian commodity market expanded 50 times in a span of five years from Rs.665.3 billion in 2002 to Rs.33,753 billion in 2007 as people's participation in such trade continued to grow. "The growth in commodities derivatives trading would now grow by about 30 percent to reach a projected level of Rs.74,156 billion in the next two years," said Assocham president Sajjan Jindal.

The turnover in proportion to GDP of commodity trade increased from 4.7 percent in 2004 to 20 percent in 2007 and is expected to go up many-fold since commodity markets would remain friendly to subscribers. "The daily average volume of trade in commodities exchanges by December 2007 was over Rs.120 billion," said Jindal.

"Gold, silver and crude recorded the highest turnover in Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) while in National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd (NCDEX), soya oil, guar seed and soyabean and in NMCE pepper, rubber and raw jute were the most actively traded commodities on an average. This trend is likely to continue," he added. The study points out that futures trading in commodities results in transparent and fair price discovery on account of large-scale participation of entities associated with different value chains.

It also noted that Indian commodity exchanges are still at a nascent stage of development as there are numerous bottlenecks hampering their growth. "Some of the major problems associated with commodity markets in India include infrastructure, trading system, broking community, controlled market, integration of regional and national exchanges and integration of spot and futures markets," the study said.

To attract active traders to commodity futures, the regulatory authority needs to introduce a more stringent code of conduct in setting standards for brokers, imposing capital adequacy norms and defining qualification criteria, it noted.

For a vibrant futures market, it is imperative that commodity pricing be left to market forces, without monopolistic government control. However, in India, scores of commodities in which futures trading is permitted are still protected under the Essential Commodity Act, 1955. The integration of the spot and futures market is another critical factor for the expansion of the commodity futures market in India. The state governments largely control the spot market in commodities, the study said. The institutional and policy-level issues associated with commodity exchanges have to be addressed by the government in coordination with the Forward Markets Commission in order to take necessary measures to pave the way for a significant expansion and further development of the commodity futures markets, Assocham stressed.

Sources: ASSOCHAM, Silicon India and PTI

Indian Telecom Market

Market Penetration
Every one in four Indians has a phone now, thanks to the scorching pace at which the burgeoning telecom services sector grew in the last fiscal, says an annual survey. With the total wireless subscriber base crossing 261 million as on March 31, wireless connectivity forms 22 percent of the total tele-density at 25 percent across the country, the survey adds. The annual survey by Voice and Data of CyberMedia group revealed that the Indian telecom subscriber base zoomed by 66 percent year-on-year (YoY) in the fiscal under review over the previous year.

"A booming economy, easing of entry barriers and lowering of tariffs fuelled the growth in FY 2008, with 104 million new subscribers getting connected and making India the second fastest growing telecom market in the world," CyberMedia publisher Prasanto K. Roy said Tuesday, citing the survey findings. The trigger for rapid telecom service growth was the revolutionary telecom policies of the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments, resulting in affordable connectivity to a common man.

""With India's telecom tariffs still the lowest in the world, there's enormous and sustained growth beyond the metros. So telcos see huge opportunity in the three-fourths of Indians still untouched by the mobile phone revolution," Roy noted. Thriving in the growing market, the Indian telecom services industry generated Rs.1,306 billion ($31 billion) in 2007-08, registering 21.3 percent growth. Mobile, fixed line, national long distance (NLD), ILD, broadband, VSAT (very small aperture terminal) and radio-trunking constitute the telecom services industry. Growing at 36.4 percent YoY, revenue from mobile service increased to Rs. 766 billion from Rs. 562 billion in the previous fiscal (FY 2007).

Majority of new mobile subscribers is from towns and villages with less than 200,000 population. The mobile network covers about 50 percent of the 600,000 towns and villages across the country. The top five service providers vie for a larger share of the growing telecom pie. State-run BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) leads the pack with Rs.353 billion despite 12 percent decline from the previous fiscal," Roy pointed out.

BSNL is followed by Bharti Airtel, with Rs.264 billion, Reliance Communications Rs.186 billion and Vodafone Rs.155 billion, respectively. The top five operators based on cellular subscriber base are Bharti (62 million), Reliance (46 million), Vodafone (44 million), BSNL (41 million) and Idea cellular (24 million).

Prospects (Source: Gartner)
Total cellular services revenue in India is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent from 2008-2012 to exceed US$37 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The India mobile subscriber base is set to exceed 737 million connections by 2012 growing at a CAGR of 21 percent in the same period. This growth is poised to continue through the forecast period, and India is expected to remain the world’s second largest wireless market after China in terms of mobile connections.

“The growth in the mobile subscriber base is on the back of a rapidly proliferating rural market, lower handset costs, and low tariff rates in the Indian market,” said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Rural telephony will continue to trigger growth and is expected to grow fourfold during the forecast period. Call rates have further dropped to about 1.5 cents per minute narrowing the gap with fixed-line rates. These factors along with an increasing competitive landscape will fuel market growth and encourage the adoption of wireless services in the rural and semi urban provinces of India.”

Cellular market penetration is projected to increase from 19.8 percent in 2007 to 60.7 percent in 2012. Gartner analysts said this growth could be primarily attributed to the increasing focus on the rural market, local consumer durable and electronic companies entering the domestic mobile handset segment, and lower handset prices. Vendors will continue to focus on sub-25$ handsets to capture market share.

The Indian mobile connection market continues to be dominated by prepaid subscribers. Prepaid connections accounted for more than 89 percent of all mobile connections in 2007 and are expected to grow to more than 92 percent of the connection base by 2012. The total services revenue for prepaid connections is expected to grow at 18.9 percent CAGR for the period 2008 - 2012 and the total services revenue for postpaid connections is expected to grow at 15 percent CAGR during the same forecast period. By 2012, the prepaid subscriber base will cross 683 million and postpaid subscriber base will exceed 53 million subscribers. The churn rate in India is 41.0 percent (2008), and despite a maturing market the ratio is expected to go up to 49 percent in 2012.

Revenues – Data revenues driving growth
The revenues from data services will significantly contribute to the growth of overall cellular services revenue in India, with a CAGR of 26.3 percent in the forecast period.

Prepaid subscribers are expected to adopt data services faster than the post-paid segment. Data revenues for the prepaid segment are projected to grow at 29 percent CAGR during the forecast period as compared to 22 percent CAGR for the post paid subscribers during the same period.

The bulk of the revenues will continue to come from voice revenues. However, with the increased growth in data services, the percentage of revenues coming from voice will reduce from 89 percent in 2007 to 85 percent in 2012.

Expected changes in the Indian Telecom landscape
According to Gartner, the industry will witness several changes in the coming year that could revolutionize the face of the telecom industry with the introduction of new technologies such as WiMAX, 3G and Mobile Number Portability (MNP). India will move to its next phase of evolution with the commercial launch of WiMAX by 1Q09 and 3G by 2Q09. With the introduction of MNP in 2008, churn rates are not expected to rise significantly, as India continues to be a prepaid dominated market.

“The Indian wireless market is a vibrant, price-sensitive and high-growth market,” Mr. Gupta said. “With 14 telecom service operators already present and another two set to join, the Indian telecom industry is expected to see some level of M&A activity in 2009. Given the high level of competition and anticipated consolidation, different business models will emerge that could push tariffs further down, with Indian mobile service consumers set to emerge as the biggest beneficiaries.”

Rural India will wrest 40 percent of new telecom market
India's rural telecom connectivity is poised for explosive growth in the next five to 10 years, grabbing a 40 percent share of the new market, a study released in July 08 said. "Of the estimated new 250 million Indian wireless users, in next 5-10 years approximately 100 million will be from rural areas," said the study by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and Ernst and Young.

The paper said operators have demonstrated they can achieve profitability by reducing fixed costs, controlling variable costs and carefully tailoring services to the requirements of their customers. A similar model with minor customization could be emulated in the rural areas, it said. The government will likely phase out the Access Deficit Charge (ADC) - a levy imposed on private players in rural areas - and roll out new incentives for mobile networks in rural India, the report said. Passive infrastructure sharing and spectrum hoarding cess on defaulter operators who fail to meet their roll-out obligations are illustrations of proactive government initiative, it observed.

"Erecting wireless telecom towers in India's tough rural terrain is still expensive and logistically challenging, reinforcing the desirability of sharing," the paper said. The paper also noted that the ultra-low cost handset of approximately Rs.840 ($20) to the market with built-in subsidies, lifetime validity and minimal maintenance costs have promoted mobile usage in remote areas. Moreover, operators could learn from business models that have been experimented across the developing world for expanding rural connectivity.

Source: Moneycontrol.com, Silicon India and IANS