Social is the key instrument in a brand’s orchestra: Socialathon 2014

Social media is at its peak, bringing marketers closer to its consumers. Today, several organisations are using social media to alter their marketing approach and garner greater gains from their social business efforts. Various corporations are transforming their strategy, skill, and processes to facilitate social media to play a major role in their marketing efforts and also in their enterprise as a whole. As more and more companies redefine their use of social media, it will spectacularly transform how their brands connect with consumers, and how they define and build their marketing capabilities.

During a highly engaging session of Socialathon 2014, panelists explored the intricacies of social media and its impact on organisations, beyond marketing. The panelists included Gautham Maediratta, GM – Digital and Mobility, Omnicom Media Group; Manu Seth, Director-Marketing, HTC South Asia and the session was moderated by Sanjay Menon, VP, Marketing Services, Lead, SapientNitro.

Mr Menon set the tone of the session by sharing an account of how some of the campus recruits left a bank job because they could not have access to social media if they took the job, which left the CEO perplexed. “Social media is an integral part today. It helps building a brand, makes it experiential and different. In the aim of building the brand in our ecosystem we forget the impact of social media. From an organisational stand point, social media has lot of value and helps you to reach out to consumers. Informal employee engagement programs and social groups and Facebook pages are a great way to flourish. But, I still think we miss massively on how much in terms of potential there is on social media to harness in building the internal engagement in an organisation”, he commented.

“Social is very important, it’s all about social networking. It’s important how we look at social beyond marketing attribute and add value. HR and sales can leverage their performances; can create a pool where people can refer which can further build customer interaction,” averred Mr Maediratta.

Furthermore, he added, “Social media can play a major role in amplifying every single piece across the marketing pipe.”

Several companies are using social business to improve marketing, innovation, leadership and operations. Mr Seth stated, “A crowd funding model is a familiar concept. In order to amplify our campaign at HTC, ‘Here’s to change’, which meant change needs to start within the family. All employees from every department were gathered to meet and a cross functional discussion. Every employee was asked to have a happy customer at the end of the day. It so happened that the interest wasn’t only generated from sales and marketing departments alone. There were people from the IT and service sectors, who were interested and joined the campaign. A cross functional approach is really helpful”.

Mr Seth believes that if social media is used in the right way and platform, it really grows beyond marketing within the organisation and really helps in creating a great achievement.

Mr Menon concluded the session by comparing social media to an instrument in an orchestra. In an orchestra, if even a single instrument is out of tune, it results in noise. So, if the brand is the conductor of the orchestra, every piece must be aware of the overall music that is supposed to be played. Only then will each instrument play the required music and not noise. Your consumer is your audience and only if they hear good music, will they return back.

Via Digital Market Asia Mobile

Copenhagen INK

Lars is the owner of Copenhagen INK and is an experienced and passionate marketer with a proven track record of driving business impact through innovative commercial marketing initiatives.

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