It’s that festive time of the year again. So what’s on your mind besides the obvious shopping, sweets, firecrackers and gifts? Well, did you say spending time online? Don’t worry; you are not the only one. The world is online this Diwali.

Wonder what they are doing. Let’s just take a look:

Shopping

Indians love to shop for Diwali and now more than ever this trend is moving online. According to a recent PayPal Survey Indians are expected to spend more this Diwali than they did last year despite a weakened economy. Further, 75% of the respondents intend to shop online during this festive period. This switch is primarily motivated by reasons such as availability of time, to avoid crowds and for an access to a wider range of products.

The trend towards online Diwali shopping is also very evident if one were to check the shopping category for India on Google Insights. Diwali cards, greetings, and Diwali gifts are some of the keywords building up.

Fireworks

Those of us who detest jostling their way through the huge Diwali rush and bargaining to buy fireworks, can now actually order fireworks online. A Hyderabad based fireworks supplier Megastar Fireworks has recently launched this facility and is receiving a good response already. http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/now-order-fireworks-online-this-diwali/372958/

Further, with heightened consciousness about celebrating Diwali the green and peaceful way virtual fireworks could turn out to be a big hit this Diwali.

Gifting

With Diwali going hi tech, how can virtual gifting be far behind. Facebook, with its 7.5 million net savvy Indian population is leading the way in virtual gifting this year.  Take a look at some of the Diwali centric Facebook applications available, most notably the recently launched “Happy Diwali” by Cadbury’s.

Diwali Special Editions

Besides lining up the usual offers and promotions, companies are now viewing Diwali as an excellent opportunity to initiate a dialogue and build relationship with its customers online. We have recently executed one such Diwali special for Family Nestlé, where visitors can get Diwali recipes, Diwali related tips, send e-cards and participate in contests (http://www.nestle.in/nestle_kitchen/home.aspx).

We recently worked on an online campaign for the launch of Maruti's All New Estilo. Here are some insights into the Campaign: 

Objectives 

To generate a ‘WOW’ around the All New Estilo launch through an online campaign comprising a teaser website, viral promotion and a launch website. 

Campaign Duration

5 days 

Campaign Details 

• A teaser website — www.GuesstheWOWCar.com  was conceptualised and developed to intrigue the visitors with sneak peaks and WOW views and invite them to Guess the WOW Car’s name. The highlights of the site were the intro teaser video and the interactive games that gave out hints for the guessing contest. 
• Along with the teaser website, a teaser promotion campaign was executed leveraging social media platforms. The teaser video was optimized and posted across video sharing sites such as YouTube. Subsequently the site and the video were viralled through car forums, networking communities, car blogs and social bookmarking sites. 
• The launch day was marked by the live webcast of the estilo launch event on the teaser site and the transition to the all new www.Marutisuzukiestilo.com. This flash based interactive site takes forward the freshness of the New Estilo through animated virtual environments, a completely innovative execution of the 360 degree car view and audio video elements. 

Results Achieved 

• The teaser site received more than 40000 visitors within just 4 days of the campaign and a phenomenal 15000 forms were submitted 
• The teaser video received around 5000 views and was syndicated across networks, forums, and blogs in record time 
• The online visibility of the teaser site shot up phenomenally and the social media was buzzing with conversations around the launch

Michael Jackson’s death and funeral service broke records online

He broke records not just in life, but even after his death.  Michael Jackson’s death was the most talked about subject online this past week. His fans thronged social networking sites to express their emotions and read what others had to say. Here’s a snapshot: 

MJ’s Facebook fan page following grew from 80,000 fans to a phenomenal 8.9 million as of today. This has made Michael Jackson’s fan page the most popular ever on FB, going even beyond President Obama. 

His funeral service, streamed live on the net, also created a record. According to Yahoo, the ceremony was the single most streamed in its history with 5 million streams. In addition to this, the global web traffic was as high as 33% above normal during the event, and almost 800,000 status updates related to online broadcast of the funeral service were posted on Facebook. 

Google to launch Google Chrome Operating System 

Last Tuesday, Google announced that it will soon launch Google Chrome OS, an operating system, designed to work with its Chrome browser. Seen as a direct threat to Microsoft’s Windows, the OS will be available for use by second half of 2010.

This will be a fast and lightweight OS with an ability to take the user onto the web in just a few seconds. According to Google, the software will be optimized for small, lightweight laptop computers called netbooks, used primarily to surf the web and check e-mail.

US president Obama gives African new media usage a fillip with his recent visit 

He did it again…US president Barack Obama made extensive use of social media and mobile tools to stay in touch with the people of Africa during his visit last week. 

According to sources, a very aggressive new media strategy was planned to speak directly to the people of Africa. Web users were invited to sign up to receive SMS alerts offering news and updates on his activities in the country and excerpts of his speech. Additionally, live streams of his speech were also available on social networking websites such as Facebook and the White House official blog.

In a recent announcement, ZenithOptimedia, a unit of French advertising group Publicis, has revised its global advertising growth forecast. They now predict that the global advertising market to decline 8.5% this year, compared to its previous forecast of a 6.9% decline. The worst hit are the North American and European markets with US leading the way with a sharp 10.6 percent decline. China and India seem to be the only promising markets as of now, with ad spends still on their way up.

Therefore, a clear responsibility for digital agencies like iStrat is to steer the marketers’ money in the right direction, so that they derive maximum returns and develop trust on the medium. And in the long run, create evangelists for this medium, who will not shift the budgets back to the traditional media even after the economy has recovered.

What made news in the social media circles last week. Here’s a snapshot:

YouTube doubles upload limit to 2GB

YouTube announced this week that it would be increasing the maximum upload limit from 1GB to 2GB. This upgrade was revealed along with tips for sharing and embedding HD videos.  The upgrade is targeted at users focusing on HD video uploads.

Bing builds Twitter results into its search

Microsoft’s search engine Bing has now begun including the latest tweets of popular Twitter users in its search results. As of now, this new feature is available only for a few thousand Twitter accounts based on their number of followers and the volume of tweets they produce. Ashton Kutcher is one of them. 

Facebook gaining ground in Orkut dominated countries

Facebook of late is making inroads in Brazil and India -- countries where Google-owned Orkut is the leading social media property. The number of Facebook users in the two countries has doubled in the last two months, while Orkut has seen a relative slowdown in activity.

This past week has seen social media enter the war zone. Whether it is the Iranian twitter revolution or the use of social media by armed forces, social media has been constantly in news. Here’s a quick round up from the war zone. 

The landslide victory for the serving Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the subsequent charges of rigging by the supporters of losing candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, gave rise to a mass unrest in Iran last week. Within no time the news spread across the world, and in an effort to control the situation, the Iranian government banned all foreign media from reporting the protests. In addition to this, most popular social networking and broadcasting sites like Facebook and YouTube were also blocked to prevent citizen reporting.  This, however, has not managed to stop the flurry of information coming out of Iran. Thanks to Twitter and proxies, Iranian’s are sending out real time updates to the world. 

Here are some stats to give you an idea of the magnitude of activity happening:

•  At any given hour almost 10,000 to 50,000 tweets mentioning “Iran” are being posted
• June 16 saw as many as 221,744/ hour tweets around Iran
• There is a flurry of “Green Avataars” on twitter by people around the world in support of the Iranian protestors
• Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s Facebook page has 61,000 supporters
• 9500 videos tagged Iran have been posted on YouTube this week.  

Moving from Iran to armed forces… Some bad news for net savvy Indian Army men. The Indian Army has warned its personnel against the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut. This warning has been issued to prevent leak of classified information like place of posting, unit and rank to enemy agents.  On the other hand the U.S. army has issued an order unblocking social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, for the first time, for its men. This move, they feel, will allow soldiers to 'tell the Army story' and facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information.  

Progressive we must say… 

All in all, a busy week for social media on the front line.

Almost 200 million people around the world will be busy boosting their vanity this Saturday, June 13th. What are your plans for the day? For those who haven’t yet guessed it, Facebook is offering Vanity URLs to all its members starting Saturday, 9.31 am India time. This would allow Facebook members to get customised URLs for their profiles and pages. Currently, the Facebook URLs appear as a string of numbers that are neither user friendly nor search friendly.

With this switch, Facebook profiles will become easily searchable and Facebook brand fan pages will become more accessible. And, we think it is a fairly strategic move by Facebook, considering the fact that some other sites in the domain, like Twitter, already have this feature.

What it means for Facebook Users and Marketers?

• Come Saturday, millions will vie for their preferred URL. Some will get, some will be disappointed and will have to settle for other options.

• For brand marketers with Facebook fan pages, it is a golden opportunity. They would want to secure the relevant URLs before a squatter does that, under all circumstances.

But what’s written in fine print?

Facebook has put in some restrictions to ensure that this exercise does not become a happy ground for cyber squatters. According to the FAQs published, a Fan Page must “have a minimum 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009”, to be able to lay claim for a customised URL.

This is good news for some of the big brands with very popular fan pages, but bad news for start ups and smaller brands with less than 1000 fans.

So, what are the options available to brands with lesser fan base?

• Brands can protect their URLs by preventing their trademarks from being registered as usernames. All one has to do is fill up this form on Facebook.
• Wait till June 28th. Since according to a recent revelation, the 1,000 fan restriction will be lifted on this day. Details are still awaited though.

All in all, something to look forward to. Just keep your fingers crossed and wish that your URL is not taken by someone before you get hold of it.

Twitter, the micro-blogging phenomenon, has won the prestigious Webby Breakout of the Year Award this year. This award, according to many, will help catapult Twitter into the big league, considering the fact that the previous winners of this award were the likes of YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr.  

Just 3 years old, Twitter has grown by 900% last year, and has managed to draw many a celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Ashton Kutcher and President Obama to its list of evangelists. The official Webby website goes on to call Twitter “the ultimate embodiment of the democratic spirit of the Web”, because of the level playing field it offers to one and all. 

Very well deserved we must say! 

Some of the other notable winners from the social media space include the photo-sharing site Flickr for the online community award, YouTube LIVE for online event, Digg for social networking and Pasricha's blog 1000awesomethings.com for Personal/Cultural blog category. 

In news category, NYTimes.com won the Webby for best writing and practices, whereas The Guardian was awarded the title of Best Newspaper site. Further, BBC won the webby for best news site category. 

This year the Webby Awards received almost 10,000 entries from more than 60 countries, including India. However, India’s presence in the final list is hardly anything to talk about. The two Indian mentions we could find in the “Honoree List” are the Jaago Re website and the mobile site of Moneycontrol.com.  

Hope to see some awards coming India’s way next year.

Mr. Advani is not the only one wooing voter online now. With Congress waking up to the reality of online media, Election 2009 has truly turned into a digital war. Though Congress had stepped in late, still it is interesting to see what activities they are doing online.

Here are a few observations:

• Unlike BJP where the whole Campaign is built around the communication Advani as PM, Congress’s online campaign is more party centric than personality oriented. Congress party’s ads are driving clicks to the party website www.aicc.org.in, whereas the BJP ads are linked to Mr. Advani’s website http://www.lkadvani.in
• Both parties are using Google Adwords for their campaign. This has resulted in a unique situation where, on a single page, there are multiple ads where both BJP and Congress are vying for space from each other.
• Congress has gone for 720x80 positioning and text-ads compared to BJP’s wide range of ads. Also it looks like Congress is offering a higher bid price, because, most ads are now showing Congress in the 720x80 positioning.
• Mr. Advani’s blog http://blog.lkadvani.in/ has shaped up very well. His posts are frequent and well written. On the other hand, Congress’s blog http://votecongress2009.blogspot.com/ looks like an initiative gone wrong – bad formatting, errors, uneven fonts and the list goes on…
• On YouTube, Congress seems to have got it right. The channel http://www.youtube.com/user/congressindia has 31 videos. The party’s Jai Ho Film is very popular with views as many as 40000. The BJP uploader http://www.youtube.com/user/bjpuploader?gl=IN&hl=en-GB  on YouTube is also very popular and has 260 videos.
• Congress’s presence on Facebook and Orkut also leaves much to desire, when compared with BJP.

From whatever we have observed, BJP comes out a clear winner so far as the digital marketing strategy and execution is concerned. Partly because BJP had started its online campaign long before Congress. Now what remains to be seen is who eventually wins the elections.

Here’s something to cheer about in a recession hit economy. 

A new report by Forrester called “Social Media Playtime Is Over", indicates that companies are optimistic about the role of social media marketing in the face of recession. Over half (53%) of the 145 interactive marketing professionals surveyed intend to increase their social media marketing budgets. Only 5% of the respondents plan to decrease the spending.

The report goes on to reveal that the fastest growing categories in the social media bouquet are social networking, blogging and user generated content. The general opinion is that these are relatively inexpensive and more effective tactics to communicate marketing messages.  

Another interesting, but not so heartening revelation is that three fourth of the marketers surveyed are spending a miniscule $100,000 or less per year on social media. And, social media is not an integrated part of their overall marketing strategies. They are just experimenting with social media tactics in isolation.  

This report strengthens our already firm belief that Social Media Marketing is the way to go. However, what needs to be kept in mind is that social media can’t be looked at in isolation. It has to be in synergy with a company’s overall marketing strategy. Only a focussed, consistent social media approach can deliver measurable results in the long run.