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VOLUME 4- ISSUE 1 www.informationmatters.in The Journal of Information in Business
THE JOURNAL OF INFORMATION IN BUSINESS
Information Matters Volume 4 | Issue 1
Publisher
Gourav Jaswal
Editor
Gulnar Joshi
Layout
Raghu Fasalkar
Monte Carlo, La Citadel Complex, Dona Paula, Goa, India 403 004 Telephone: (+91 - 832) 245 3230, 245 3328
BRAND
4 WONDER WALLS
Dressing up Mumbai office of the Kotak Group
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SIMPLY THE BEST Creating an online identity for PcWorld India Magazine
17 QUBE ROUTE
Branding a building to give it a distinct personality
MARKET
20 WHEN TIMES GET TOUGH...
Microsoft India encourages enterprise customers to ‘Control Costs’
28 MANAGING THE GREAT OUTDOORS Dashboards that track Navia Asia’s OOH campaigns
31 SIMPLE, CLEAR, TRANSPARENT
Aligning Cleartrip’s brand communication with the philosophy of the site
36 Same Stuff, Different Format... 30 videos, 30 eDMs, 30 different ways of selling the same idea
39 LANDING PAGES THAT DELIVER How to make landing pages into an informative experience
44 HYPE MARKETING
Making your products and concepts sell themselves, a case study involving Zapak
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THE JOURNAL OF INFORMATION IN BUSINESS VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1
ENGAGE
74 THE MORE, THE MERRIER 79 EMGuage-ing Direct Marketing
Using social media to engage your audience Edms that just don’t infrom but engage you audience
84 Re-creating Buzz
BUZZ—The internal newsletter for Tata Communications gets a new life
DESIGN
62 MAGIC OF MOSAIC
India headquarters of Tata Communications gets new interiors
BUSINESSES, ONE 69 MANY GATEWAY
Redesign of www.Kotak.com and other business sites of the Group
COMMUNICATE
48 A CASE FOR STORY-TELLING
Making public stories of CRY India’s impact on children
52 THE ‘NEW’ MEDIA GRAPEVINE Digital newsletters help connect employees at different locations
55 STRAIGHT TALKS WORKS 58 MAKING A POWERPOINT
No Frills, effective communication Using PowerPoint to add impact to your communication
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Happily Enough, Still Learning Most of us in Business live with a singular pretension. We assume we’re part of the great pantheon of Sciences. That Business Management has taken its rightful place next to Physics, Chemistry, Medicine or Geology. And we implicitly believe that our education in it is no less than the professional training of a Doctor or an Engineer. However, this belief in the strength of our knowledge is a delusion. We incorrectly assume that the ascendancy of Business has been accompanied by the development of a systematic body of knowledge about it. There’s little doubt that commerce evolved lock-step with civilisation, as Sumerians from Mesopotamia traded with the Harappans of the Indus Valley. But while Business and trade are several thousand years old, the discipline of Management is still in its infancy. In Medicine, the Greek physician Herophilos of Chalcedon carried out systematic dissections of human cadavers three hundred years before Christ. But in Business, the first investigations about why we buy things started only a few decades ago. The faster we recognise the primitive stage of our knowledge about Business, the quicker we are likely to develop a studentlike attitude in our practice of it. Information Matters has a few lessons we’ve learnt and would like to share. From one Learner to another. Gourav Jaswal Director
Gourav Jaswal +91 98231 11661 GJ@PrivateUnlimited.com
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BRAND | INTERNAL BRANDING
IN
January 2009, Khushnum Ichhaporia, AVP Kotak Group Marketing, asked Synapse to create graphics for glass walls of some conference rooms. We had to provide privacy to the conference room, yet retain the open office look. The designs also had to echo the Kotak Group brand imagery. While working on these we discovered that the Kotak Group was in the process of setting up a one million sq. feet office in Goregaon, North Mumbai. This new six-floored office was to have a capacity of 10,000 people. We saw this as a perfect opportunity to use internal branding to make the office space bright, colourful and more appealing and to create a sense of belonging among employees. We pitched, and were awarded the task of translating the wall spaces of the building into a showcase of Kotak Group’s identity and its achievements. We started by listing the attributes that define the Kotak Group as a company and a brand. They are:
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1. We are Indian: Kotak is a home grown company. While they have had international partnerships, the ownership is Indian and the area of operation is largely the domestic market. 2. We are Entrepreneurial: Starting with one product in 1985, Kotak Group now spans all areas of the BFSI sector. Most of the key growth areas were a result of the recognition of the spirit of entrepreneurship within the employees of the company. Top talent is encouraged to develop independent business units. An artistic interpretation of the brand’s logo [6 ft x 4ft, Acrylic on Canvas] INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
walls
Using brand attributes to dress up the Kotak Group Head-office in Goregaon, Mumbai
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‘Infinite infinite’ —Two symbolic explorations of the logo, both 6” by 4” , Acrylic on Canvas. Created by Studio Zaki
Kotak Group’s logo is a multi-layered design, incorporating “Ka” which represents Kotak in Hindi as well as cleverly contains an infinity symbol to depict the endless ambition of their venture. We took the ‘Infinity’ symbol and ventured into its most pure artistic interpretation. Studio Zaki, an initiative to create affordable art, contributed to this piece. They created many interpretations of the symbol ranging from the literal (infinite infinites) to the figurative (roller-coaster, shown in the previous page). The final designs were executed in acrylic on canvas. They are placed in the Board Room and two large conference room within the premises. Taken by freshness of the designs, the international offices of Kotak have been requesting the prints of the paintings to adorn their key walls. So, we shot highresolution pictures of the paintings to create printable versions, which can be made into prints.
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3. We are ambitious: The Kotak Group has an enviable position among the Top 5 Large Financial Services conglomerates in India. A trail blazed by pure ambition, backed by hard work and intelligence. For the purpose of internal branding, we added a fourth attribute:
the architectural blueprints, which kept on evolving as the construction project went ahead. The process of scanning the architectural blueprints and converting them into PowerPoint slides enabled both us and the client to effectively plan our work.
4. We belong here: In addition to communicating three core values of Kotak, the new office also had to make employees feel at home. Sense of ownership is integral to the Professional Entrepreneurship model followed by Kotak.
We also explored options in terms of artistic treatment. Though the original brief stated using only graphics, we expanded it to include painted art, caricatures, cartoons and photographs. In fact, one deliverable centered on using photographs of employees, to create a large wall unit.
These four attributes were the starting point of our ideation. In parallel, we undertook an exercise to map the branding opportunities within the new building using
Specific deliverables that we created for the Kotak office in Goregaon, fall within the following categories: Transition Spaces, Work Spaces and Common Areas.
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transition spaces
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Business Timelines Two ‘timeline’ units were created, for the large walls available on a couple of floors. a: EVOLUTION: This timeline featured the evolution of various businesses from 1985 to 2009, including the momentous Joint Ventures and Partnerships with international companies. b: GROWTH: This timeline highlighted the growth of Kotak Mahindra Bank, using key business indicators like Customers, Branches, People and Market Capitalisation.
2 Kotak In Numbers Kotak Group is a not one company but many ventures rolled into one. Depicting the State of the Corporation, the key business indicators of the Group as well as the collective strength of the Group on one wall was a challenge. Typography was used as a device to artistically capture this. Despite the multiplicity and complexity of the content elements, the final output is pleasing to the eye.
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1b
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Journey of Uday Kotak This unit (a section shown above) captures the story of the individual behind the Group. Illustrations were used to highlight key influences on Uday Kotak, leading up to the setting up the first venture. Illustrations provided a nostalgic air to the unit.
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Employees Wall: Infinite Ambitions
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We used make-believe binoculars as a device to portray the Group’s ambitions. Employees were asked to create an ‘Infinity Mask’ or make-believe binoculars by using their hands. Their photos were then used to create a photo mosaic, that was overlaid with a large infinity watermark to align with the brand image.
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Library Walls
The new office of Kotak contains a large library area. Two large walls here were dressed with memorable quotes from famous personalities and authors in a hope to trigger a desire to delve deeper into books.
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WORK spaces
These panels are updated as and when a new campaign comes into the market
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Marketing Wall An insight shared by the Group Marketing team triggered the idea for two walls which feature customer-facing communication. Called ‘Marketing Walls’ these showcase for both print and television commercials of Kotak Group.
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Business Specific Walls The new Group Office houses multiple businesses operating in various segments of the BFSI sector. We translated the key aspect of each business unit into interesting artistic units. Wall graphics and art were custom-created to complement the physical area they were situated in. Eight unique designs were created for businesses like Insurance, Mutual Funds, Cash Management Services and functions like Human Resources, Facilities Management, etc. Each wall perfectly depicts the work carried on in its vicinity.
The form of a Credit Card is used as a visual device in this graphic Artistic representations of some businesses
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Conference Room Glass Frosting
This internal branding project had started with the design of the glass walls of the conference rooms. However, it was in the middle of the project that we thought of an interesting way to do this. We decided to use graphics that depict what actually happens inside the conference room. Line drawings were used to create repetitive patterns and type clusters with messages like: “Caution: Opinions Flying”, “The Thought Pot”, “Food for Thought” were used to give a purposeful, yet light identity to the rooms.
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The constraint of a single colour determined the visual style for Conference Room glass walls
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Insights into the Kotak culture, from the people who helped build it
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Kotak Entrepreneurs
The key pillar of the Kotak story have been its ‘Professional Entrepreneurs’ or employees who have taken ownership of a segment of the company and grown it with the backing of the organisation. These old timers are currently at various CXO posts within the Group. We interviewed these Professional Entrepreneurs to record their ideas and their journey within the company. We then created interesting wall units around these people. Intended to be inspirational for the newer employees, they are also an interesting way to relate to the growth of employees who have grown as ‘Professional Entrepreneurs’.
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Common AREAS 10a
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Food Stories - Cafeteria
Large spaces in between food counters were used to highlight Indian entrepreneurs who have stamped their imprint on specific food items. Case studies covering sweets, pickles, fast food and fine dining were converted into attractive graphic units. All featured familiar names, presented in the hue of entrepreneurship.
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10c
Conversation Panels
For the cafeteria we also custom-designed table tops with units that illustrate a typical office “conversation� setting. The speech bubbles were left blank. Each such as three women gossiping and the boss wondering what they are talking about or a quick conversation between a boss and a subordinate. Ten unique designs were created to allow employees to give a free rein to the creative thoughts and fill up the empty speech bubbles with examples of live humour.
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Break Out Areas
To provide respite from the work environments, the building plan incorporated a few “Break Out” areas. These spaces needed brighter and more exciting wall design as compared to the work spaces. Some themes we explored included: 1. A vibrant backdrop for the basketball hoop 2. Events that could potentaily bug a person were used as the backdrop for the Dartboard, to help people let off some steam 3. A series of music album covers was in the space which had listening booths for employees. 4. A fun wall showcased famous ‘money’ quotes from Hollywood and Bollywood films. All themes, except 2 shown here.
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[Project Team: Shyam Bhandekar, Kumar Chiplunkar, Sirish Nimmagadda, Kasturee Kailash, and Sunil Mahajan, Sofia Badyari from Studio Zaki]
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BEST
BRAND | IDENTITY/ DESIGN
Simply the
In this information-heavy world, PCWorld.in stands out as a minimalist site where only the best products make the cut
PCWORLD
India is a magazine that provides wellresearched, reliable and easily understandable information on different gadgets in the market. The publisher, IDG India, wanted to replicate the success of the magazine on their online property www.pcworld.in. Their brief to DotAhead was to create a site distinct from others in the same space, a site that readers would turn to for decision making. The publisher also wanted their online presence to bring in advertising revenue. To establish pcworld.in as a trustworthy online advisor on gadgets, we decided that to make the site ‘opinionated’. Innumerable choices confuse, rather than help a buyer decide. For instance, browsing through a large number of
options for a digital camera slows down the decision. When inundated with choices, one often leans towards the advice of a tech-savvy friend who has been through the same decision-making process and as a result is seen an ‘expert’ . We decided to position PCWorld as a well-informed dependable friend who guides the visitor through the process of making a choice and finally helps them buy a product suited to their needs. In its new avtaar, PCWorld. in would perform the filtration function for the user and select for them only the Top 5 gadgets in each category! PCWorld magazine has a specialised laboratory that tests gadgets and rates them based on performance, features
PCWorld India’s minimalistic website showcasing top five latest stories
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Top 5 DSLR camera product reviews (top) and detailed product review (bottom) with the top five still visible in the left bar
New Advertising Spaces The management at IDG was keen that the website sustains itself with advertising. And our design philosophy had just reduced the screen real estate to one fourth. We worked around this by creating new ways to advertise online. Regular advertisement spots have become blind spots. They fail to attract attention and have a reduced possibility of a click-through. So we decided to experiment with new, more relevant and usable advertisement formats. We created sponsor spaces in the form of paid tickers on the website. Advertising-specific services like a toll free number or a service centre number were also included. These plain text ads come without embellishments and appear across the site, wherever relevant to the user.
and price. The editorial provides an unbiased opinion on the product to their readers, who in the absence of the Lab have to rely only on the information given by the advertiser. We used the output of the Lab as a USP to make PCWorld.in different and opinionated.
Placed Upfront
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Our belief in ‘Only the Best’ philosophy was firm and this needed expression in the website design too. To amplify our stand of being ‘opinionated’ and trustworthy in this information-heavy world, we made a radical design decision: pcworld.in WILL NOT SCROLL! Though research has established that users of the web today do not mind scrolling, our choice to not scroll was not a usability driven decision, but a brand decision. The layout gave prominence to the top five gadgets in every category and that made the site look uncluttered. With less content on a page, the amount of time spent on the page or ‘engagement’ increased. The urge to see everything available on an information-heavy page translates to a cursory glance all over the site. This was now converted into quality time spent on reading about the best 5 products in each category. We put the customer in the front seat and give them only the information needed at that point. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
The PCWorld shop is a logical extension of the site. It allows manufacturers to put up their product page on PCWorld to help the visitors buy a particular gadget. This is a critical part of the informationpurchase process.
Success=More ‘Engaged’ Users IDG Media’s premise of showing select content on the site led to an extended and highly focused engagement online. The average page views per visitor reached a high of 4.5 pages and the average time spent by a visitor became more than 4 minutes. The new format also created an interest among the manufacturers who wanted their products to be featured amongst the top five products on PCWorld.in website. However, a re-alignment of interests within IDG Media meant the fate of print for the PCWorld India magazine was to change. The management decided to discontinue the print version of the magazine in order to concentrate their efforts completely on the web. This shift in focus meant another big change for PCWorld.in.
Version 2 of the Redesign was a contrast to the minimalistic design of the earlier version. This new design allowed IDG to show all the magazine content online
Version 2.0: Bettering the Best The redesign version 1 of PCWorld created by DotAhead showcase limited and featured content. With the new direction came new requirements. Now that the magazine was moving online, the website now needed to showcase all the editorial content. Now instead of limiting content to the Top 5 products, content ranging from product and software reviews, feature articles, how –to’s, news and videos and more were all to be shown in their entirety reaching far back into the archives. The client also wanted to include a forum that gave their ardent fans a discussion area to ask questions and share idea, concerns and feedback. A second redesign was planned. As before, standing out from the crowd was a necessity. This meant having a unique design direction. Some lessons and observations from the previous design were carried forward—the popularity of the Top Five inspired us to maintain it as a section on the new website as well. Our team responded to the new requirements set out by the publisher and turned out a live site fairly quickly. With bigger and better content, this time the adoption of the site by visitors was even more enthusiastic. The site traffic doubled within the first month of the launch. [Project Team: Gurpreet Singh, Piyush Goel, Dileepan Ramanan]
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BRAND | IDENTITY/ DESIGN
ROUTE At Synapse, we are often entrusted with a job of building a brand. This assignment was different—it entailed branding a building
Kotak
Realty Funds Group (KRFG), a division of Kotak Investment Advisors Ltd (KIAL), focuses on Real Estate investment opportunities. Established in May 2005, it is one of India’s earliest private equity funds. One of the investments made by KRFG is in a large (One million sq feet) office building in the Northern Mumbai suburb of Goregaon—an emerging business hub for corporates moving out of South Mumbai in search of cost-effective work spaces. This suburb is expected to attract Technology and BPO services companies in large numbers. This building in question was, at that point called ‘Building No.4’ and was one amongst a cluster of similar buildings being developed by ‘The Raheja Group’. Amit Mathur, a Senior Advisor in KRFG decided to give the building a distinctive branding.
Jaimit Doshi, the marketing lead of KIAL, briefed us that he wanted the name of the building to ‘mean’ something to the type of a people likely to dwell in it—young 20-plus executives working in well-paying back-office operations ranging from call centres to animation studios. A demographic that has grown up on a diet of satellite TV and is highly ‘social’—so much so, that they see their “friends circle” as their key anchor.
Name Game Begins We studied the architectural details of the building, considered the lifestyle it was meant to espouse, and the amenities it provided. Based on that, we decided to retain the name ‘Building No.4’. By using this ‘alphanumeric’ name we were aspiring to a certain matter-of-fact coolness. We expected this combination of letters and numbers to go well with the prospective audience who are used to the alphanumeric combinations that are commonly used as Internet passwords.
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early ese is n death”, n i h c n ord “ r4i numbe nous to the w o ky homoph idered unluc ns so is co
At our end, such a combo also meant multiple design possibilities. Keeping the young demographic in mind we worked on three distinct options for the name Building No 4. The first one was a hand-drawn option; another option we did was inspired by the kind of typography one associates with music albums. We peppered this with elements from the office space. Finally we created a design option using young hip typographic style. The client approved the first two options and we extended them into signage for the building. After we had completely developed the design style and signages, the client dropped a bomb. KRFG was in advanced discussions with a Chinese investment company and in China, the number ‘4’ is considered ‘unlucky’. So we were asked to work on a new ‘proper’ name for the building.
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Logo options and signage styles for ‘Building no. 4’ : a) Hand-drawn option, b) Pop Album Style, c) Young Typography Style
Taking the ‘Qube’ Route Back to the drawing board. Only this time we were armed with heightened sensitivity. We were once again looking for a name that will appeal to prospective buyers, will not offend anyone and will also stay fresh.
Various logo options for ‘qube’
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The final design that the client liked
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For inspiration we went back to the architectural details of the building and found that the silhouette of the building resembled a ‘cube’ or rather a cuboid. That worked, and we decided to call the building just that. Letter ‘Q’ is used much less than the others and has a distinctive shape to it, so to make the name stand out we proposed the name ‘Qube’. From there our logo and signage flowed pretty easily. Our initial approach was to use a single cube image and place text alongside it. But while playing with the letter forms on paper, our designers eventually came up with something which could not only incorporate the cubic form, but also spell the characters clearly.
“We wanted the building to have a personality that was neither too funky nor too formal. The name, Qube, gives the building a matter-of-fact personality that resonates well with the demographic we had in mind. The unique logo and signage further strengthen the differentiated personality.” Jaimit Doshi, Vice-President Marketing, Kotak Mahindra Bank
The cuboidal form was also carried over into the signage form factor
Proposed signage for the entrance of building (outside) and inside near the elevator
The challenge in creating a cube form in 2D is essentially about how to distinguish between different faces of the cube. Using lines to demarcate would clutter up the logo unit. Instead we resorted to using a light shade of grey to create an image of a cube in each of the letters of the logo unit. Look closely and you will find that there are not one, but 4 cubes in the logo unit. The next step was to extend this into signage design for the building. Here again we took a break from the usual. We incorporated the form factor of the cube into the signages. All the signs in the building were to be carried on a black cube, along with “icon” style images for support. The monochrome icons which were initially designed were felt to be too weak, so we added the colour red to make them more distinctive. This red is the sole connection to Kotak as red also happens to be their brand colour. Red, the Kotak brand colour was added in the final signage to make the icons more distinctive
[Project Team: Shyam Bhandekar, Kumar Chiplunkar, Sirish Nimmagadda]
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MARKET | 3600 CAMPAIGN
Unfazed by the economic downturn, Microsoft India reaches out to CEOs, CFOs and CIOs with 10 cost-effective technology ‘solutions’
For
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Microsoft India, the recent economic downturn was a big challenge. In a drive to cut costs, most businesses were pushing upgrading of existing software to a ‘better’ time in the future. Some were not even renewing existing licenses! In these strained times Microsoft saw an interesting business opportunity— that of positioning its software products as ‘solutions’ that bring efficiency to the workplace and reduce costs, thereby improving bottomlines. Within Microsoft, as early as October 2008, Kevin Turner, the worldwide COO had triggered the thought: “Reach out to customers and talk to them about how our solutions can help control costs.” “We wanted Microsoft India to take a lead in this drive to showcase how our products can reduce costs,” explains Vineet Durani, then Director, Brand and Marketing Strategy, Microsoft India.
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The time, though fraught with difficulties, was right to communicate the benefits of Microsoft software to enterprise customers. Companies slashing costs across the board was one problem. Lack of awareness about Microsoft’s line of products was another. Most customers associated Microsoft with the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office and were not aware that Microsoft had a number of products and solutions that answered business needs of corporate clients. Many potential and existing enterprise customers were also not aware of the entire line up of Microsoft products. Our brief specified positioning Microsoft’s Enterprise offerings—Office Communications Server, SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics—not as ‘standalone products’ but collectively as ‘solutions’ to drive growth and control costs. One of the Print ads for the ‘Controls Cost’ Campaign
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Trim. But Grow Armed with this brief, Synapse first worked on creating a branding unit for the campaign. The idea was to create a name that resonates the most pressing concerns of an enterprise customer. ‘CutDownCost’ was one of the first names proposed for the campaign and we intended to highlight real-life scenarios and customer quotes to bring out the superiority of Microsoft products.
Logo options created for the umbrella brand for the 10 solutions
However, it was later felt that this approach did not directly address the Enterprise credibility issue and was more productcentric rather than solution-centric. So this was abandoned in favour of a more proactive-sounding name, ‘Control Costs’. Next, we built the campaign on the premise of a business dilemma—all businesses are in a dilemma, they need to reduce costs without compromising on growth. This thought was incorporated into the campaign advertisement ‘headline’ and a unit called ‘Business Dilemma’ was designed. We also decided to showcase how existing Microsoft India customers had cut costs using various solutions. Familiar names in the industry—CXOs from clients of Microsoft like Star (India), Lilliput Kidswear, Lavasa Corporation, MakeMyTrip, etc—were short-listed to lend credibility to the campaign. The customers were asked to talk about the business benefits they had accrued from using Microsoft solutions. Ten Enterprise Solutions were showcased in this campaign. Throughout the campaign, extracts from Analyst and Industry Reports were used to show that targeted IT investments can actually help businesses control costs in the slowdown.
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“Providing quantifiable evidence about our solutions was the main aim of the ‘Control Costs’ campaign. However, we also wanted the campaign to have a human touch where customers can SMS or phone a number to call someone for a discussion and demo.” Alka Kaul, Marketing Manager, Microsoft India.
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Final name and logo design approved by the client
Launching Project 10 The ‘Control Costs’ campaign (internally called ‘Project 10’) was launched as a 360-degree integrated nation-wide campaign covering print, television and the web.
PRINT The print advertisements centered on testimonials by high-profile customers. Different client CXOs were asked for their consent to feature in the campaign, following which an initial set of five customers and tentative quotes were drawn up. To ensure credibility, we proposed doing a photo-shoot with the customer in an environment that was most representative of the client’s business. For instance, the Star (India) shoot was set against the background of their television sets, for Lavasa against their city map, and for Lilliput we showed the CXO in his retail environment. To educate potential customers, the print advertisement listed out all the 10 cost-effective solutions offered by Microsoft.
A brochure for services targeted at Retail Customers
A brochure for services targeted at Retail Customers
These full-page print advertisements were released in leading general interest magazines such as India Today, Outlook, Business Today and BusinessWorld and niche publications like ‘The Economist’ and ‘Fortune India’. Each ad featured a link to the ‘Control Costs’ website.
The print campaign featured testimonials from Microsoft customers
Special for Harvard Business Review readers Select Harvard Business Review subscribers got a personalised copy of the journal with a cover-on-cover featuring the Control Costs campaign. The Front Cover had an open letter from Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft India, addressed to the subscribers. The Inside Cover enumerated 10 Microsoft solutions that would help businesses control costs. The Inside Back Cover featured testimonials of Microsoft customers who were using the solutions and the Back Cover offered details of five solutions out of the 10. These subscribers also received a condensed version of the Control Cost Toolkit Booklet (shown on page 25).
INFORMATION MATTERS Brochure | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1 The Control Costs Toolkit and Customer-Ready
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WEBSITE We created www.controlcosts.com, a dedicated website to accompany the print advertisements. It elaborated on the customer testimonials featured in the print ads and described in detail the benefits of the 10 Microsoft Enterprise solutions. Customer case studies, analyst quotes, etc. were used to support the benefits. Some of the unique features of the website were: 1) Focus on ‘solutions’ not products: One of the main features of the website was a ‘Solution Finder’—an interactive tool that helped customers find answers to their specific problems. Customers could select from a set of specific problems (such as reduce travel or phone bills, reduce energy consumption). They were then presented with different Microsoft solutions which they could deploy to control costs. Each problem area was written from the customer’s perspective, and presentation on each solution was comprehensive. By clicking on any suggested solution, a customer could view details about the products, read about other customers who had benefited from it, know specific RoI metrics, find out what other analysts were saying about the solution and so on. Instead of being a site that fed company information, www.controlcosts.com viewed problems from a customer’s perspective.
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2) Call-to-Action Units: In the next phase, to extend personalisation, we wanted the customers to have the ability to get more information on each of the solutions. “We wanted to give the whole campaign a personal touch, where customers can just pick up the phone to call or SMS to call someone for a discussion and demo. At the same time, we wanted to provide quantifiable evidence about our solutions,” informs Alka Kaul, Integrated Marketing Manager, Microsoft India. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Website homepage (Top); An example of a solution page (above). Both pages feature the two Call-to-Action units ‘Start a Control Costs Discussion’ and ‘Pre-order the CFOToolkit’
To do this, the Website incorporated two Call-to-Action Units: Start a Control Costs Discussion and Pre-order a Control Cost Toolkit. With the Control Costs Discussion, a Microsoft account manager would visit the customer and give a detailed discussion about the solution. At this discussion, the account manager would also hand over a brochure about the 10 solutions and give a detailed presentation on the solutions relevant to the customer. The Control Costs Toolkit was a booklet that gave a detailed explanation on each of the solutions. It was distributed free to all customers who registered on the website and asked for it, and served as an engaging conversation starter in the decision-making process.
DIGITAL MEDIA To promote the campaign, digital media spanning banners, eDMs and viral videos was extensively used. Web banners highlighted the benefits of the different Microsoft solutions. We created a generic banner for the overall campaign and four solution-specific banners. These were displayed on select online properties that target CXOs. Along with the Web banners, solution-specific eDMs were created. These eDMs played upon the business dilemma, and suggested that with Microsoft solutions customers no longer needed to choose between reducing costs and growing the business.
Online banners and eDMs leading to the website
A banner and landing page environment created for Business Today
The Control Costs Toolkit and Customer-Ready Brochure The CFO’s Toolkit highlighted 10 specific solutions that would help control costs in a business environment. The accompanying brochure described these solutions in greater detail.
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ope, from rotosc e m a n s it glass panel, ets Rotoscopy g consisting of a frosted ge equipment rows an ima h n t io r o ct ct je je ro p ro the the movie p onto which film frame of a single
Innovations in Video Apart from the print and web campaign, two 30-second television commercials were aired on news channels. The TVCs featured a CFO voicing aloud his ‘business dilemma’. What made the TVCs stand out was the innovative treatment given to the commercial. The production used the technique of Rotoscopy, a video treatment method that involves creating an animated feel with real characters. Real people were shot and then an animation effect was created using different video techniques. “By using a treatment not previously used in India, we were able to make our commercial stand out through the clutter,” adds Vineet.
Internal eDM showcasing the 2 TVCs and the channels they would be broadcast on
Screenshot from the one of the TVCs
Internal Readiness
The ‘Control Costs’ campaign did not end at just creating awareness and generating leads. We also ensured that the internal sales team, account managers and partners were in sync with the launch messaging. Internal readiness was critical as this was the first time that Microsoft India was moving towards a solution-specific approach.
One of the posters created to familiarise employees with the 10 solution owners
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A brochure for services targeted at Retail Customers INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Internal Presentation featuring all the 10 solutions Sample of an eDM sent internally
Teaser eDM (Top) and an interactive ‘Know Your Solutions’ crossword contest
To educate internal customers, Synapse created a buzz about the campaign using teaser eDMs. Presentations on the 10 solutions and internal webcasts were also created. The internal team was tested on their knowledge of the solutions using an interactive crossword. The first person to solve the crossword got exciting gifts. Likewise, for partners, specific mailers were created to explain how they could leverage the campaign and customer testimonials to engage better with prospective customers.
Example of a Partner-ready Resource, a Pitch card
Visible Impact Apart from the clear revenue benefit that accrued to Microsoft India, there were other visible benefits of the campaign as well. A postcampaign study found that not only had Microsoft India achieved its objective of building credibility in the enterprise space, the perception of customers had visibly changed on many counts. At the same time, Microsoft India got accolades for its efforts within the Microsoft subsidiaries. A case study of the success of this integrated 360O campaign was presented at their Global Annual Meet, and many other subsidiaries looked to replicate this ‘solutioncentric’ model. [Project Team: Mohan Krishnan, Umesh Chavan, Arun Mota, Advait Ubhayakar]
“We wanted to take a lead in this drive to showcase how Microsoft products can reduce cost and increase efficiency. The ‘Control Costs’ project was a great success and our other global subsidiaries are looking at replicating it.” Vineet Durani, CMG Director, Microsoft India
Related Article: ‘Straight Talk Works’ on Page 55
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MARKET | BI DASHBOARDS
Dygnos helps Navia Asia use business intelligence dashboards to differentiate their out-of-home (OOH) media advertising service
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Asia (formerly StarSight India), Starcom MediaVest’s out-of-home (OOH) media arm, manages outdoor advertising campaigns for their clients in India and the Far East. Today, with the boom in outdoor advertising, managing an OOH campaign has multiple challenges: 1. The marketplace for outdoor media space is extremely disorganised. Display spaces have multiplied beyond old-time billboards to modern ones like gantries, shelters, wall-wraps, monopoles and mobile vans. New and innovative display spaces are created everyday and old ones become obsolete due to rapidly shifting urban spaces and urban habitat regulations. Managing a constantly diversifying inventory of media vehicles in such a situation is therefore increasingly difficult.
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2. The business model of OOH agencies relies on space provided by a single unorganised market. Hire or lease prices as well as terms of service for these spaces are capricious and sometimes without any logical foundation. In such a disorganised marketplace, rational planning techniques become the first casualty. Estimation of cost, value or even availability is extremely error prone. The key to building a system that can bring some order in this chaos is adaptation and speed. 3. Business effectiveness metrics are extremely difficult to come by. There are no standards for measuring the impact of a display space. There is some attempt to use parameters like volume and direction of traffic flow, angle and size of the hoarding, the shifting urban landscape can quickly add unforeseen parameters to any measurement.
Dygnos worked with Navia Asia to solve two of these central challenges: First, can we create a rich inventory management tool to manage assets in the OOH media sector? Second, how can information differentiate our services from our competition?
A Database of Media Vehicles Navia Asia is an experienced player in the OOH market. It has several large enterprise clients like Reliance Telecom, Western Union, Singapore Tourism, ING, Uninor and Videocon among others. Over the years, Navia had evolved a scoring system based on 12 parameters that characterise an outdoor media vehicle. These parameters include type of media space, its area, the direction of traffic around the space, the quality of illumination and previous campaigns hosted on the same space, and allow Navia to select a combination of vehicles most appropriate for a campaign. Navia used this home-grown scoring system to customise an outdoor campaign and get the maximum exposure for their clients.
Dashboard showing parameters evaluating ongoing campaigns. The visuals on the left span months and the visuals on the right span campaigns*
One of the first tasks that Dygnos carried out for Navia was to quantify this home-grown system into a structured digital database. In this database, each media space or vehicle was assigned a unique score based on parameters. Navia would constantly update this database as new spaces came up and old ones went down or whenever its urban microenvironment changed. To these parameters, Dygnos also added two more—the history of campaigns run on the same space and the geographical coordinates of its location. With this done, Navia and their clients could quickly see the history of a vehicle and analyse how the new campaign would be received at this location and view this information on a map. Dygnos also provided a structured ‘Search’ function that would allow a campaign planner to quickly check for spaces with a given set of parameters. For example a search for ‘backlit vehicles of a particular size at Mahim Junction’ would quickly bring up available spaces and show them on a map. Planning a campaign, thus, became a scientific process backed by data. Navia customers could now get a solid logicallyargued basis for the choice of vehicles that would carry their message.
Dashboards showing distribution of media vehicles. The client can zoom and hover over a city to see the status of campaigns in any particular area*
What Navia Gained The first dashboard that Dygnos built for Navia allows a campaign planner to add locations to a campaign while simultaneously keeping track of the effectiveness as well as its geographical reach on a map (see screenshots above). Viewing any cluster of pins on a map can quickly tell the planner how well-distributed his campaign is going to be, how many eyeballs pass the location in either direction as well as the campaigns running on the neighbouring locations. To accomplish this, we used a zero-cost mapping service provided by Google. Distribution of media types was shown alongside with charts that Dygnos built from its assets database. With this tool, Navia could now communicate its plan to the client and tweak it with him to optimise cost and reach. The database was also enriched by photographs of each site tagged to the database entry. This provided instant visual confirmation of a particular site’s value and appropriateness in a campaign.
* [The visuals have been blurred to protect client confidentiality]
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What Navia’s Clients Gained While the internal tool definitely provided value by systematising the campaign design process, Navia was looking for opportunities to give their clients a view into a slice of this information. Once the campaign was designed, the required media spaces hired and the client’s campaign creatives mounted on the location, Navia saw a great opportunity to “close the loop”. We did this by building a second dashboard—this time specifically targeted at Navia’s clientele. This client-facing dashboard allows an authorised Navia Asia client to view all vehicles that comprise his campaign. Navia’s client can also browse the status of their campaign by cities. Every site that carried the client’s message is listed and can be viewed by its location, its vehicle type and other important characteristics of that vehicle. Each site is also hyperlinked to a date-stamped photograph of the site with the campaign creative. Navia’s clients, now have a comprehensive integrated view of the campaign with this dashboard. The navigation is driven by maps and hyperlinks to attached date-stamped photographs. This tool has hugely amplified their clients’ trust and confidence in Navia’s ability to not only design and deploy a campaign in a time that is shortened by weeks, but also provide simple-to-use tools to their clients to monitor their campaigns.
Dashboard showing detail of vehicles across a city on a zoomable map. Clicking a particular location shows the photograph of the vehicle with a time stamp*
“The client-facing Dashboard has helped us add differentiating value to our customer service and gives us a competitive advantage. Sanjay Shah CEO, Navia Asia
The Recurring Challenges for Navia Any data related project depends critically on a few factors and Navia Asia’s handling of these challenges will decide the longevity and success of their USP:
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1) The database needs to be constantly and accurately kept up to date: Navia has a small two-person team that manages this. They rely on easily available records like invoices raised to space providers to keep track of new spaces. Campaign managers also use informal ground intelligence (though this is rare). Dygnos is working with Navia to make these challenges easy to deal with. 2) Newer advertising vehicles come up every week: With the rapidly evolving use of urban spaces to deliver advertising messages, Navia must nimbly incorporate newer advertising vehicles and the unique parameters that they offer into their ‘scoring system’. How quickly and efficiently Navia Asia handles these challenges will decide whether the management dashboards outlasts the realities of their business. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
This project provided Dygnos a wonderful opportunity to work with a leading player in the outdoor media sector and address their challenges in a simple low-cost solution. With this tool as a part of their branded service offering, Navia Asia has clearly differentiated themselves from their competitors. Navia’s clients value this difference and Navia also values the difference that Dygnos was able to make to their business. [Project Team: Gurunandan Bhat, Manasi Kakodkar]
*[The visual has been blurred to protect client confidentiality]
MARKET | ONLINE CAMPAIGN
Simple Clear Transparent Extending product experience into brand communication
in On
a wet monsoon afternoon in late June, Cleartrip.com made its appearance as our client. As avid users of the service and admirers of their design philosophy, we were excited to have an opportunity to shape the brand’s communication. The brief was simple: Help Cleartrip.com compete with brands like MakeMyTrip.com, Yatra.com et al that were in the same space. A closer look at the assignment made us realise that, as usual, ‘simple’ was the most difficult thing to do. However, what really helped was our unshakable belief that Cleartrip.com is actually a better product. While the ‘better’ adjective is something that competitors can debate on, no one can argue that Cleartrip is indeed and definitely ‘different’. The distinctive, uncluttered interface and simple navigation stand out as the USP of the product. This distinctly different look and customer-friendly
features made the Cleartrip experience a unique one for most users. An assumption that was soon confirmed by research: More than 75% of Cleartrip’s air ticket sales come from repeat customers.
Leveraging the Brand Personality While the loyal customers intuitively knew what appealed to them about the product, Cleartrip.com’s communication had not managed to leverage the differentiating factors which emerged from the unique product experience. The communication amongst the category of Online Travel Agents is relatively undifferentiated. Despite some ‘brand’ messages being present in the media mix, the predominant voice in the space has been that of promotions. Wherein each company promotes the products of others—the companies lure potential customers through discounts and offers. Thus, the primary proposition being put forward is that of ease-of-use, cheaper prices and instant gratification. INFORMATION MATTERS
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With this as the category background, the founders of Cleartrip articulated for us what their brand needs to stand for: Simplicity, Reliability and Transparency. It was clear that, as a brand as well as a product, Cleartrip had enough substance for us to create communication centered only around the brand’s attributes.
Brand Approach The core of the approach we suggested was to build tangible evidence-based communication, evidence which establishes Cleartrip.com’s unique product advantages. We wanted to create activities that would engage customers and build the necessary evidence. We called this approach ‘Live Evidence’. We also outlined other communication attributes right at the beginning. The language used would be simple and direct with few words. The visual style would mirror the clean elegance of the website. The overall tone of the communication would be ‘Quietly Confident’. Leveraging one of the basic strong points of the website, a clutter-free and simple-to-use interface, the Live Evidence project would attempt to create a real proposition, defining the claim of a ‘fast booking interface’ and therefore give us factual data that would be used in communication. The Live Evidence ‘fast booking interface’ chapter would be promoted at various touchpoints of the Cleartrip
Cleartrip on Facebook Cleartrip already had an established presence in the social networking scene. We helped further this presence by creating compelling ‘trigger’ ads for Facebook.
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Given the very limited creative parameters that Facebook has for advertising, the challenge was to create ads that would drive traffic to the website, a tough task given the fact that most people on Facebook aren’t inclined to go ‘away’ from the site.
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experience (the webpage, at the end of the booking process and on the e-ticket) with an objective of communicating the fact that Cleartrip is a faster option for online bookings.
Using Banners One of the key communication strategies we devised, was furthering the look and feel of the actual product in all its communication. Banners were broadly divided into two categories, those which promoted the USP of the brand and those which promoted specific deals/offers on the website. Both categories stayed true to our core design of keeping the communication and the look simple. We carried forward the colour palette of the main site as well. The language used in the banners was simple but clever, ensuring that the message was conveyed intelligently. Even in the banners promoting tie-ups/partners, the design made sure that the Cleartrip branding remained strong and very ‘obvious’. The banners worked so well that the client wanted to use the same approach in television commercials. Three 15-seconder TV commercials were produced, out of which only one went on-air. All the commercials echoed the minimalist design of the brand communication..
Cleartrip Banner Advertisements: a few examples 1
Not often do we find clients who are bold enough to buy communication that tells consumers to not spend too much time with their brand. These two examples of flash banners (1) and (2) did.
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We used internal data to showcase customer loyalty. Cleartrip has a very high rate of repeat usage. Customers keep coming back to use its services
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The first series of banners promoted the unique user interface. Not offers. Not promotions. But pure brand building.
We designed specialised creatives for specific online properties. This one was for MoneyControl.com, a financial services news portal. And one of our best performing banners to boot, with clickthrough rates 3 times that of our average numbers.
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Project Fatafat The first Live Evidence project we proposed was a speed ticket booking challenge. Titled the Cleartrip Fatafat Challenge, this 4-week exercise encouraged users to book their tickets on the website. The promise was that the person booking a ticket the fastest would win free travel for a year. That would translate to 12 return tickets to any destination, one return ticket per month. Banners were designed specifically promoting this contest. Since the promotion of such a contest demanded a few rules to be broken, as a tactical activity for this contest, we moved away from Cleartrip’s core tone of communication. While the tonality changed, the look and feel of the contest promotions remained within the ‘brand family’. The microsite and all the other communication related to this contest followed this route— of changed tonality while remaining true to the design elements of Cleartrip.com.
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A microsite for the contest had its own challenges. It needed to cater to first time visitors as well as participants who frequented the site to check their contest results. To do this, we created sections that spoke about the contest, sections that had lists of daily winners, weekly winners, etc. We also created a space that showed interesting trivia about browser speeds and other fun facts.
“Cleartrip Fatafat Challenge helped us drive the core branding message in an engaging, fun and memorable manner. Instead of simply claiming Cleartrip’s usability and smooth transaction process, we invited the user to come and experience it. ” An icon was created for the project and was used on all the communication
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Saurabh Nanda Head, Online Marketing, Cleartrip
FLASH Banners for the Fatafat Project 1
Instead of focusing on boring stats, the launch communication of the Fatafat project used simple, familiar stories as creative devices. 1. This banner uses the story of The Hare and the Tortoise as a hook. 2. The Second banner in the series plays up on the legend of the Flying Carpet
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Simple interactive games were also explored as a route, to drive the initial excitement. This banner got us a very high clickthrough rate
After the runaway success of the Fatafat Challenge, to ensure that the contest remains attractive, we created a simple promotion called ‘90-second barrier’. All users booking a ticket within 90 seconds got Rs 500 off on their next purchase. The creative device here was an interactive quiz.
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Apart from attracting traffic to the website, the basic premise of this entire exercise was to leverage the ‘Live Evidence’ proposition. We intended to use the statistical data generated by this contest, (fast booking times, statistics about different groups, like cities, gender, etc) to further the Cleartrip promise of being a fast, uncluttered online booking site. [Project Team: Rohit Kulkarni, Kasturee Kailash, Shyam Bhandekar, Kumar Chiplunkar, Sirish Nimmagadda, Shaalini Srinivasan]
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MARKET | INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
The brief was simple: Inform the employees about Intranet updates every week, for 30 weeks,without making the message boring
The
Internal Communications team at Tata Communications had created a set of videos that featured key company leaders elaborating their business focus areas for the Financial Year 2010. The HR team wanted to put up these videos on the office intranet for all employees to see and get informed and inspired.
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They approached Synapse to help package the videos, which were to be displayed prominently on the company Intranet homepage and refreshed every week. The second part of the brief required that we craft interesting communication messages to drive the employees to regularly view these videos.
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein
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The Challenge: Changing the videos every week was easy to manage. The difficult part, however, was to inform the employees that a new video was up on the homepage and get them to go watch it. Every week.
The Channel: Given the global nature of the audience (6,500 employees spread across 40 countries), our communication channel was restricted to the email inbox.
The Connect: A total of about 30 ‘leader videos’ had to be edited and packaged. Since this was to be a medium-term activity (lasting about 30 weeks) we branded the videos as ‘The Leadership Legion’ to aid recall and establish connect.
The Plot: We had to plan for about 30 emailers to be sent once-a-week or twicea-week. The message was essentially the same every time: “There’s a new video on the Intranet. Go take a look.”
We realised that if we used the same design template and subject line for each update, the target audience will lose interest along the way and start deleting the mailers as ‘Junk’ from the third time onwards. And we had 30 such mailers to send! To make the mailers seem interesting and fresh each time, we decided to use the following tools: a) a common design theme: We opted for movies, videos and related visual imagery that are universal. b) multiple design templates: We decided to refresh the mailer template after every 4 mailers c) different subject lines for each mailer: We retained the program title “The Leadership Legion” but changed the subject lines for each mailer. This ensured that the mailers do not read boringly same every time, but are fresh.
“First season of the ‘Leadership Legion’ was received well. The idea of packaging them as a series and sending new ‘promo’ mailers every week helped get people interested and resulted in increased hits on the intranet. We plan to run the second season of Leadership Legion this year” Jyoti Arora, Global Internal Communications Manager, Tata Communications
37 The Impact: Increase in traffic: Hits rose by roughly 2,000, each time a mailer was sent Positive feedback: The client (Internal Communications team) was delighted at the positive feedback they got from the leaders and the other employees. . n
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[Project Team: Rohit Kulkarni, Kasturee Kailash, Shyam Bhandekar, Kumar Chiplunkar, Sirish Nimmagadda, Shaalini Srinivasan]
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MARKET | ONLINE MARKETING
Online landing environments that provide a rich online experience result in quick conversions and better quality leads
Search
engine marketing has created the need for a destination webpage that can inform users about your products, create interest about them and finally convert interest into a sales lead. A landing or destination page, where a user lands after he clicks on an online ad or banner, is thus optimised to capture lead information. It acts as the first and the final point of sale, inviting the user to sign up for a product trial at the very least. The two main elements of such a page are: Product Information text (to educate the user) and a Sign-up Form (to capture user information). DotAhead realised that such ‘transactional’ landing pages were a far cry from the information-rich sources available all over the internet. To any online user, every offer is just one ‘search’ away. For the landing page to become valuable, we had to spruce it up to engage the user in more than one way. Also the user experience of pages had to be improved and made more effective to ensure a greater rate of conversion.
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Old-style transactional landing page for Kotak Car Finance
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Case Study 1
Better Leads for Sharekhan TradeTiger
Sharekhan’s TradeTiger offers online trading tools to stock traders. We used search engine marketing to communicate the benefits of these tools. Instead of creating a traditional landing page which just exhorts users to sign up, we upgraded the function of the landing page by integrating within, a process that collects user information. We then used this information to engage the user and offer him personalised messages even after he has left the page.
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The features that enhanced the usability of the TradeTiger landing page for the client and the target audience were:
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1) Product Upfront: The top banner of the landing page showed images of the actual product (an online trading tool in this instance) to kick off the selling process by actually demonstrating the usability of the product to the user. A few screens that highlighted key features of TradeTiger were organised into a slideshow lower on the page. Product features were enumerated as pithy text and arranged with visual cues. The text was kept minimal and links were embedded in the content to allow users to get more information if desired. 2) Questionnaire after Sign-up: Once the users clicked on ‘Submit’, they were prompted to answer a few questions to validate their interest in the product. This indicated the depth of their interest in the product. 3) Thank You Email and Referral Request: Upon signing up for the product, a formal confirmation page indicated the completion of the process. We also added a page that enabled the users to recommend the product to others. 4) Customised Emailer with additional information: The next step was to engage the user and open communication beyond the landing page. A customised eDM with concise information from the landing page was sent to build further interest. To this, we also added links to a few free documents that elaborated on good trade practices.
Improved landing pages with product information shown upfront
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Questionnaire to gauge the prospects’ level of interest
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The Result: 1) Higher conversion rate, better quality of leads: After we added this process to the landing pages, our average rate of conversion doubled. It also generated high quality sales leads requiring less validation. 2) More branding opportunities: The new landing page allowed the brand to reach the users at many points. The banner, the colours and the emailer each became brand INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Thank you email with Referral Request from the user
Customised follow up emailer with additional information
touchpoints through the landing page. Creating these multiple contact points exposed the user to the service and created a brand affinity by engaging his interest.
Case Study 2
High Quality Traffic for Kotak.com
Landing pages for the Kotak Group involved translating their range of products and services into single page brochures. Simplifying complex financial information into layman language, with zero loss in translation, was one challenge. Understanding the information needs of web users was another. Here, our research into the reading habits of internet users came into play (see box). An online user reads quickly with fleeting glances as compared to the concentrated gaze of a print reader. This calls for a more effective method of presenting information, which meant we had to put the message in precise, visually attractive and easy-to-grasp capsules. Here is how made the landing page for promos on Kotak.com more effective: 1. Banners that present a 10-second Product Case We used banner spaces to visually explain the product or communicate its benefits. The header area was also used for the top three product highlights with the same purpose.
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Flash screens for the Kotak Twin Advantages product Banner with the Kotak Super Multiple product highlights
RESEARCH: Reading Patterns on the Web Information design on the web is a new and unknown territory for many marketers, and has resulted in various myths about the way users experience the Internet. MYTH 1: Users do not Read online. They Skim. Scanning or skimming is in the nature of the online medium. A study by Jakob Neilsen1 shows that “people read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.” They spend more time on pages with more words and more information by navigating and absorbing visual elements on the page. The heatmap (see picture) shows that users spent most time on visuals and read content in patches. MYTH 2: Users do not Scroll beyond the first fold. The section of the webpage appearing when the site loads is called above-the-fold. It is believed that information should ideally be exactly at this place. Users however do scroll out of curiosity, habit or plain interest on a web pages with a linear content flow. A report by ClickTale.com2 shows that “76% of users scrolled all the way to the bottom, despite the height of the screen.” The horizontal red lines in the heatmap here mark the places where users scrolled right down to the bottom of the page. The research shows why highlighting and condensing content visually and textually makes sense on the web. The right mix of visual cues and compelling content is sure to make users scroll to the bottom of the page. Introducing a contextual link or activity at the bottom of the page is one more opportunity for users to interact with a web product. 1. Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, May 6, 2008: How Little Do Users Read? http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html 2. ClickTale’s Research Blog, December 23, 2006: Unfolding the Fold http://blog.clicktale.com/2006/12/23/unfolding-the-fold/ 3. Image of email from eyetracking report on http://blog.eyetools.com/
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1. We started with a ‘number’ to pace the user for skimming or reading in detail
2. Action oriented headlines were used to draw attention
2. Content that is ‘Skimmable’ Product features were made easier to understand with the use of various visual elements. Introducing headlines, icons and highlighting important chunks of text created a contrast between the areas the user could concentrate on or skim with ease.
3. Icons explained and summarised the benefit visually
The information also became easier to retain when sectioned logically. Each section answered user questions like: What is this product, why buy this product, what will it do for me, how can I use it and finally, where can I get it, etc. 3. Demystifying Complex Information Wherever possible, we used illustrations to convey complex data or procedures. These allowed us to ‘show’ instead of ‘explain’ to the user. It was also more involving for the user to play out the process of a fee break up for a Securities Trading account or the loan offer terms for a Property loan.
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4. Content layout allowed the user the option of skimming or reading in detail depending upon his information needs
Infographics explaining trading account benefits
4. Links to Useful information Including links to useful information through the landing page was another way to prompt active trial of the product. Our aim was to provide product interaction as it is crucial for landing pages to layer user experience by offering links to free downloads and samples of the product online. This creates a chain of activities allowing users to interact with the product beyond the landing page.
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Links embedded within content
Links to further information
Long Tail Theory is a statistical property which states that a high-frequency or high-amplitude distribtion is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually “tails off” asymptotically 5. Multiple landing Pages Multiple instances of landing pages work in favour of the product. We revisited the Long Tail theory by submitting different landing pages about the same product to gain a stronger foothold online. As the pages were linked through ad units on Kotak.com, users see them by searching on engines like Google or the group site itself. The objective was to showcase a product from every use context it is searched for online.
Netcard promotion highlighting use for travel bookings; and a landing page for the same
Conclusion For most products, if the website acts like shelf-space in shopping malls, then landing pages become the equivalent of the on-ground kiosk. Landing pages with a kiosk-like sales focus deliver better quality leads. Taking insights from current innovations in kiosk sales to the online area, we can greatly improve upon conversions made on the Landing Page. Netcard promotion addressing online shopping fears; and a landing page leading from it
[Project Team: Gurpreet Singh, Piyush Goel, Udaya Lakshmi, Yshana Periera]
The Results Launched as part of the new Kotak.com, 31 landing pages across 5 types of Kotak financial products went live. We saw 1448 sign-ups within the first month itself from the high quality traffic on the Kotak Group site.
Related Article: ‘Many Businesses, One Gateway’ on Page 69
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MARKET | CREATING A COMMUNITY
Designing a ‘buzz’ campaign that spreads by word-of-mouth
Zapak
invited Synapse to participate in a pitch for the launch of a portal for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), a fast-gaining genre among Indian gamers. The brief was simple—To design and market a website that attracts young gamers, creates a community of gamers and ensures game plays.
Buzz marketing can be broadly classified into two kinds of campaigns: In the first, the product markets itself in a self-amplifying cycle, i.e., the more the people use these products, more people end up seeing the product and the more people see the product, the more people end up using them. Popular examples include–Hotmail, YouTube and Facebook.
This was a perfect chance to create a 3600 ‘Buzz marketing’ campaign—a campaign that would run on little fuel and yet accumulate phenomenal mileage.
The second kind is a marketing campaign that spreads due to some inherent quirkiness (timeliness, catchy idea, etc) and as it spreads it helps sell the product or the cause.
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An example of this is Shepard Fairey’s poster of Barack Obama, which was spread by the people, thus making it a ‘viral’ and it was marketing because it ‘sold’ Barack Obama (visually). The MMOG website that we were invited to market was a case of the former kind and hence we had to focus on creating the first user-community.
While working on a solution we took into consideration the following factors: 1. Contagious Product: MMOG is a community product, i.e., it feeds off a community of gamers. The bigger the community, more the fun 2. Captive User Base: The company already had a captive database of 6 million gamers, out of which about 4 million were active gamers 3. Excitable Audience: The audience is usually between ages 12 and 15 4. Physical Touch-points: Physical touchpoints in the form of gaming zones were available for conducting BTL activities The next challenge was to construct a buzz campaign stage by stage. Here is how we went about it:
STAGE 1: Identify Network Hubs People link to others like them. Brands that get good ‘buzz’ also accelerate the natural contagion. To achieve leapfrogging, a marketer needs to locate and approach people who are central to a community forming the audience group–thus establishing a network. However, network hubs are invisible; they do not present themselves readily. Finding them can be a challenge and usually involves multiple steps like marking out people with inquisitive behavior about the product/service, identify categories of network hubs like forums, social groups, categories by interest etc, looking for opinion leaders, etc.
A loyalty plus trial card for the Zapak Gameplex audience Brand name and logo recommendation
What we proposed: The client had a captive base of 6 million gamers and a physical touchpoint where the brand could interact with the gamers in real time.
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STAGE 2: Activate the Hubs People are programmed to talk because they need to connect. Talking also helps them relieve tension and share excitement. A ‘buzz’ is generated when connected audiences are given something to talk about. At this point, seeding a conversation is important. Information spreads easily within a cluster. A seed unit can be an actual product or a representative sampling from the product you are trying to promote. This is placed in the hands of the seed customers. Posters and eDMs promoting MMOGs to a select test audience
What we proposed:
The next step was to activate the hubs. We suggested that the client should do one-one communication with the network hubs, thus creating an exclusive, community and allow them an exclusive experience of the product, making them the first among equals and giving them an edge over their friends that they can flaunt.
STAGE 3: Activating Mega Hubs Mega Hubs are hubs such as the press, celebrities, analysts, events , etc who have the connection with many thousands. In this case, the flow of communication often tends to be one-way, but is very persuasive and influential. Mega Hubs need to be used carefully and at the right juncture, as they eventually end up usurping the role of the smaller network hubs.
What we proposed: Media overkill could easily spoil the exclusivity that was being built. We needed to use the Mega Hubs only to heighten the excitement and the buzz about the product, hence, mass media was kept away from the plan and we focused on creating BTL activities.
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Ambient ideas for promoting MMOGs at crowded locations
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Deconstructing Buzz MArketing When does Buzz play a role in your business? The role of buzz in your business depends on 4 factors 1. The nature of your product a. Innovative products b. Personal experience products/services c. Complex products, software or medical devices d. Expensive products e. Observable products 2. People you are trying to reach 3. How connected are your customers to each other 4. Your marketing strategy What kind of Products Buzz? Contagious products are those that have the best possibility of creating and capitalizing on buzz. Some such products are: 1. Products that evoke an emotional response (movies, books, games) 2. Products that advertise themselves (cameras in the early 19th century, Hotmail in the 20th century, iPhone) 3. Products that leave traces of usage (iZone camera, Hotmail)
4. Products that become more useful as more people use them (ICQ, Cell-phones, MMOGs) 5. Products that are compatible (Palm compatible with PC ) 6. Products that ‘do the rest’ (point and shoot cameras, cell phones) How can we stimulate buzz? 1. Find networks 2. Target the hubs first 3. Give them something to talk about 4. Stimulate them to teach others 5. Give them facts (bring endorsement reviews to their attention) 6. Do not abuse the relationship 7. Make sure people see the hubs using your product 8. Seed actively at the grassroots 9. Make a good story 10. Use the mega hubs to spread the story Source: Anatomy of Buzz, Emanuel Rosen Emanuel Rosen’s work in his book, ‘The Anatomy of Buzz’, was of immense help in deconstructing this buzz marketing campaign. The author has also been liberally quoted in this article.
STAGE 4: Launch Stimulating a buzz is like a story telling process. A good story designed to tantalize with scarcity and mystery, build anticipation and take people behind the scenes. It also helps if the brand can be a little outrageous. However, like any good story, the denouement needs to be timed right. Failure to do relegates the story to the bins of human memory, killing all the excitement generated early on. Hence, the product or brand launch needs to be timed right to capitalise on all the buzz generated initially,
Advertisements announcing the launch of the Zapak MMOG portal
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What we proposed: Once the time was ripe for launch, i.e, after the first community of gamers had taken on to the product and there was a clamour to become a part of the community, the product was to be launched, making it open for all gamers.
This proposal was presented as a pitch to the client, which was not carried out as initially planned. Since then Synapse has been engaged with them, helping them take their proposition to advertisers and media buyers. [Project Team: Ravishankar, Anurashi Shetty, Fatema Barot, Kaustubh Kamat] INFORMATION MATTERS
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COMMUNICATE | CASE STUDIES
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Making content engaging to communicate stories of CRY India’s impact
Perceptions
of an organisation are built on ‘what it says’ (communication) or ‘what it does’ (nature of work). But a successful organisation is one that says what it does, well. More so, when it has to tackle existing misconceptions, and educate the audience about the complexity of its work approach. The NGO, Child Rights and You (CRY), is one such example. CRY’s predicament has been to shake off public perception of it being a Charity that doles out relief to hapless children, as against being a Rights-centric Organisation that empowers marginalised communities and children to win back their rights.
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
One way to spread awareness was to make public CRY’s on-ground work, showcase its real stories and real results. Bulk of CRY’s work is documented in the form of project reports and backgrounders bursting at the seams with hard data and facts. But as is known, bulk in any form is difficult to digest. And so was born the saga of ‘Case Stories’. And with each sequel we refined the art of telling the story of the impact of various projects.
STAGE 1: Aesthetic Redesign The first CRY Case Story involved a basic presentation redesign. Along with the NGO partners, Kalapandhari Magasvargiya & Adivasi Gramin Vikas (KMGAVS), CRY India had carried out a successful project in Beed district, Maharashtra.
Stage 1: We redesigned the original presentation given by the client Stage 2: The second Case Story was presented like a photo essay
Readying the presentation for the web involved a complete aesthetic re-haul. The content was edited to make the information more presentable.
STAGE 2: A Photo Essay Post-facto, we realised that no matter how appealing the information, a data-rich, slide heavy presentation will not get viewer traction on the web. So we began trimming the fat. Using the ‘Show, don’t tell’ principle we converted the next Case Story into a photo essay. This Story highlighted the work done by two CRY NGO partners Gram Swaraj Sangh and Maldharis Rural Action Group (MARG) in the Kutch region. To tell the story of the indomitable resilience of nomadic tribes of Rann of Kutch, and their struggle to obtain better facilities and opportunities for their children, we used pictures that evoked the peculiarity of the region.
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Text was kept minimal and the presentation template too was so designed. The result was an essay that stayed relevant, light and clear without taxing the viewer with too much information. After paring the essays down to essentials, the next step was to find a way to hook viewer interest in an online environment. INFORMATION MATTERS
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STAGE 3: Adding Context In India, whether in the form of mythological epics, moralistic fables, a pot-boiler Hindi film or grand-old uncle yarns, nothing engages people like a good story. It is a land that has thrived on the narrative since time began. A narrative not only breaks down a complex issue into simple parts; it also ties a coherent thread that readers are curious to follow up till the very end. To give life to the story of the Jago (a project that promotes selfsufficiency in tribal communities of Jharkhand and also campaigns for health, education and child rights) we opted for a narrative that used charcoal sketches (a device to reflect coal-mining in that region) to create a dramatic summation of their problems. The introduction compelled the viewer to seek ‘what happened next’. The answer to this, lay in the photo essay that followed. To add more impact, we bunched the pictures in the photo essay to create an illusion of action and motion. An indigenous soundtrack was added to heighten the highs and lows of the story.
Stage 3: Context was added to the third Case Story to pique audience interest in the region and to set a background for CRY’s work in Jharkhand
STORIES in other Media Increasingly, CRY’s communication veers towards showcasing its work in all possible media or forums. Sometimes using a volunteer’s perspective, sometime a donor’s or even a CRY employee talking of their experience with change, we created case-lets that can be used in print or as eDMs (an example shown on the left).
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These case-lets serve as an important bridge in the yawning gap between what CRY does and the people it impacts.
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
STAGE 4. Using Video Having worked on several case stories for CRY India, we found a common thread of what CRY does and achieves in villages and slums across India and how their work impacts children. We used this knowledge to create an animation video titled ‘Change Reaction’. Intended to be an internet viral, this short movie outlined CRY’s work, connecting it to a donor’s simple action of support. The ‘viral’ stated CRY’s overall process and its impact without resorting to academic explanations.
“Synapse helped communicate how CRY works with its partners in a simple and engaging way. The viral was received well and was passed on by our supporters to help spread the cause of child rights. It also got us monetary support for our projects. Steshia Monserrate Manager - Communications, CRY India
Visuals from the video ‘ The Change Reaction’
Videos on view CRY CASE stories can be viewed at the following URLs: 1) Projects KMGAVS: http://america.cry.org/site//downloads/photoessay/pessay.html
2) Projects JAGO: http://www.cry.org/whatwedo/CRY_India_Jago.swf
3) Change Reaction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu7YDnyWpM
Select visuals from the video ‘ The Change Reaction’ . This video outlined CRY’s work process and its impact
4) Projects MARAG: http://www.cry.org/resources/photoessay/kutch/pessay.html [Project Team: K. Ravishankar, Anurashi Shetty, Fatema Barot, Kaustubh Kamat] INFORMATION MATTERS
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COMMUNICATE | NEWSLETTERS
The
new media
grapevine
Companies are increasingly using new media to bridge the information divide between employees based in different locations. A look at how Microsoft and Sharekhan engage their employees
Many
large organisations operate at a global level and have teams spread across various time zones. While email and phone are the preferred tools for communication for everyday work, the larger challenges for these companies are: Making the employees in different parts of the world feel that they are part of the same organisation Recognising initiatives from one branch as ‘best practices’ and replicating them at other locations Communicating the company goals and objectives to all employees in an involving and interesting manner
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Digital media with its benefits of instant communication, interactive content formats (like videos, hyperlinks, etc) is an effective way to bridge the locational divide between employees and keep everyone on the same page.
2. Pick an interesting Format: The format of communication should be involving and engaging. Look into the working environment and daily habits of your employees for inspiration! Use elements from their life to add impact. 3. Simplify the Process: Given their busy work schedules, asking for monthly updates from employees can be a hindrance. Ready-to-use document templates, clear deadlines and a step-by-step process will ensure regular updates while reducing role-based effort from individual contributors.
How to Create Engaging Communication
4. Make it Inclusive: To sustain interest, invite contributions from employees. Rather than being there for the sake of feedback, two way communication should be a central part of the communication—sharing best practices, recognising top performing employees, etc.
1. Keep it Human: Personalise the communication to reflect the personality and essence of the company. Use real pictures of people and anecdotes to strike a chord.
5. Talk in One Voice: Finally, ensure that every piece of communication speaks in a consistent voice of the company and brand.
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
1: BMO Newsletter for Microsoft Background: Microsoft India has around 5,000 employees in its 16 offices in different cities of India. The Business, Marketing and Operations teams (BMO) spearhead the sales, distribution and marketing efforts of Microsoft in India. Due to its diverse structure working across audiences like Enterprise, SMEs and the Public Sector, employees are grouped into product-specific verticals and Audience segments. To engage the BMO team, it was decided to create a newsletter that showcased the initiatives taking place across sectors and highlight shared goals of the team.
Design Elements of the BMO Newsletter* The Masthead Draws out the India location The Editorial from Tarun Gulati, GM - BMO gives an overview of the performance and future targets The side navigation with top Highlights at Microsoft, State of the Nation with the latest news in India and Compete News about what the competition is doing Revenue Update with the Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Revenues by Business Group and Segments
Format: Given the wide usage of email within the organisation, we decided to create an eNewsletter delivered to the inbox every month. The six distinct sections of the newsletter were placed as distinct clickable tabs right under the masthead. The HTML format also allowed us to edit text and images within the Outlook email body.
Business Update with the Highlights and Lowlights of different Business Groups
Subsidiary Scorecard lists Performance on various metrics
Process: To ensure that the information that goes into the newsletters is available on time every month, a step-wise process was designed to ensure timelines. Vineet Durani (Director, Brand and Marketing Strategy, Microsoft India) sends an update to all the Business Heads in the first week of every month with 2 ready-made Word document templates. This template allows the business group heads to easily add pictures and content (with a set word count), and also ensures a standard format across all groups. Synapse collates the information, cross-checks the content and updates the graphics every month and sends it back to Microsoft. The newsletter is then dispatched to all the employees of the Sales and Marketing divisions in Microsoft India and select senior employees in Redmond, USA.
Marketing Update gives an overview of the key marketing activities
People shows the new recruits at Microsoft SMSG that month
53 IMPACT: The BMO Newsletter is currently in its second year of circulation. In May 2009, the BMO Quarterly Awards were initiated to recognise employees who have made a difference in the 3 categories represented by BMO (see picture on the right).
*[The visual has been blurred to protect client confidentiality]
An example of an eDM showing the three winners
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2: The Tiger TV Video for Sharekhan Background: Sharekhan, a leading providers of investment services, has about 3000 employees working in 1200 share shops across India. Communication from the Head Office based in Mumbai consisted of daily updates on markets and business. The need was felt for a more interactive format to engage and communicate with the branch network on a larger context.
Elements of the SHAREKHAN Video Newsletter
The Tiger TV logo unit, Tiger Tips strip Ticker format were some unique elements designed for the newsletter
Format: For inspiration, we looked at the employees’ work environment and found that ‘TV’ played a huge part in their working day. In fact, TV tuned into CNBC is a familiar sight at all Sharekhan branches. To establish a connect, we decided on a ‘News Show format’ for the newsletter and ‘Tiger TV’, Sharekhan’s very own TV show started! Five segments of about 10 to 12 minutes, presented by an anchor in the style of ‘Walk the Talk’ and a few Sharekhan commercials were planned for the show.
Process: To emphasise a
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hands-on approach, a pilot was shot with Sharekhan employees at Sharekhan office locations. R. Kalyanaramanthe Vice-President, Sales proved to be exceptionally gifted in front of the camera and agreed to host the show. Yatin Padia, head of Corporate Communication and PR was inducted as the onground reporter going to various branches.
Delivery: The newsletter in streaming video was hosted on the Intranet. Physical CDs were sent to Shareshops for a collective broadcast. Impact: The newsletter was wellreceived. The format allowed all INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
TigerTrip: Video Walkthrough of a branch with the Branch Manager
In The Tiger’s Den: News of Sharekhan staff occasions, branch openings and people news like marriages, births, picnics / poojas
TigerSpots: Recent awards, press mentions and industry news
employees from a single branch to view it together. The ‘Tiger TV’ newsletter represents a hands-on approach where video is effectively used with an in-house team with minimum editing work. [Project Team: Mohan Krishnan, Advait Ubhayakar, Arun Mota]
Related Article: ‘Recreating BUZZ’ on Page 84
COMMUNICATE | VIDEOS
Straight Talk
Works Using innovative treatment to add impact to your communication messages
In ALMOST
all types of communication, the focus is on the central message and how creatively that message can be portrayed. However, in many instances (and Hindi films are prime examples of this) it is not often the message (the same old filmi formula) but the treatment that makes the creative stand out and be differentiated.
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When communicating messages in specialised areas like technology or finance, the communication message sometimes assumes that the target audience has a previous knowledge of the field. In such cases the treatment becomes even more crucial to grab attention. The following examples show how Visual Juju used innovative treatment to add impact to the message. INFORMATION MATTERS
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1) ROTOSCOPY offers a low-cost animation effect The recent recession reinstated ‘Tight cost management’ as the touchstone of effective business management and budgets got slashed worldwide. It was in this strained time that Microsoft India planned to market its Enterprise Solution package to CFOs and CTOs of enterprise companies. Microsoft offering was more competitively priced and more efficient than similar products in the market, but that fact that Microsoft is seen more as an end-user technology brand went against the company. An entire campaign was crafted to address this and other business challenges (see related story ‘Control Costs’ on page 20). A significant part of the campaign consisted of online and TV promotions, however, limited budgets imposed a restriction on a long drawn campaign. After much deliberation, considering the tight budget, we opted for a simple straight message that spoke to the target audience [CFO/CTO who takes technology buying decisions] in his language and approach the problem as he sees it. We steered clear of singing platitudes of the products, but instead highlighted Microsoft products as ‘solutions’ that are easy to implement and more cost-effective for the cash-strapped CXO. Now the challenge was—how to get noticed amongst the ads that came with the bells and whistles made possible by slick productions backed by obscenely big budgets!
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Enter Rotoscopy Animation. We used a variant of this production technique in which a live video is given an ‘image’ effect. We stylised the real-life videos to have an ‘image’ type of effect. Using a precise and short script, we went ahead and shot the film and then ‘rotoscoped’ it. The final result was unusual and memorable.
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
2) Kinetic typography bring life to numbers The second project involved a consumer product— Home and Student version of Microsoft Office. The brief was to reach out to the parents who are concerned about the future of their children and want to equip them to make successful career choices. We developed the brief and the core message we zeroed on was: Your child is growing up in a highly competitive world. Help him improve in all the ways you can.’ We found that the one piece of information that parents relate to is an incredibly high number of applicants who apply to any good educational institute these days, and how that lowers the probability of their child getting the coveted seat. We used this fact and showed that Microsoft Office will make their child’s work stand out.
Actual examples were shown to highlight the benefits of Office
But the challenge was how to share this figure in an interesting manner that would make people get up and take notice, without diluting the single-mindedness of the product. We opted for the magic of Typography. ‘Kinetic Typography’ was used to bring words to life using design, effects, audio and time. This technique helped the viewer read the message in a way that led to the impact being enhanced. Inspite of limited budget, this film (in combination with other elements in the campaign—digital and retail promotions), went on to generate the maximum number of leads and also got the highest quality of leads-tocustomer conversion for Microsoft India ever!
Kinetic Typography was used to illustrate interesting facts
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LESSONS for Visual JUJU The lessons from these two case studies are crystal clear: a) Creativity need not be restricted to clever play of words or catchy slogans. b) Many elements go into making a message interesting—production technique is just one of them c) Just because ‘animation’ is involved does not mean that your have to have an obscenely high budget.
You can view both these films online at www.visualjuju.com
[Project Team: Maneesha Singh, Mohan Krishnan, Umesh Chavan, Arun Mota] INFORMATION MATTERS
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COMMUNICATE | PRESENTATIONS
Making a
Power
Point!
Microsoft India and Sharekhan.com use interactive presentations as an effective awareness and sales tool
PREsentation
software, PowerPoint is one of the most-used tools in offices world over. In fact, in a few situations, working knowledge of Microsoft Office PowerPoint is synonymous with ‘knowing computers’. At a time when reduced printing costs and slashed marketing budgets are looming large, interactive presentations can be a very cost-effective and easy-to-use and easy-to-modify tool for a winning sales pitch.
How to Create a Powerful Presentation:
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1. Start well: Before you start working on a presentation, evaluate the following: a. Objectives: Why am I making this presentation? b. Topic / Subject: What is it all about? c. Viewers / Target Audience: Who is this for? d. Key Messages: Why will they really care? 2. Prepare a Narrative: Create a narrative that is illuminating, engaging and memorable, and makes for honest persuasion. 3. Design as function, not decoration: Design can be used to effectively highlight the points being told. Think of content as included in the design. Start with ‘design’ in mind, do not just use it as a cosmetic layer. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
4. Establish your objectives at the start: Tell your audience the broad structure and steps of the presentation to prepare them for what is to come 5. Logical Navigation: Use ‘break’ slides that allow for non-linear presentation. If required, you should be able to jump sections or interim slides depending on the interestlevel of the audience and the time at hand. 6. Outline the stages: Have a ‘breadcrumb’ trail in one corner of the screen area (preferably on the top right corner) which indicates the stage of presentation 7. Pay attention to Aesthetics: Have only One Single Point per slide. Preferably use less than 10 words, never more than 20 words per slide. Use visuals, graphics and animation only to drive home your point. 8. Mode of Delivery: Change the structure and design of a presentation depending on the presenter. Use bullets and point-wise explanation for sales executives, but highly visual slides for more confident presenters.
“The principles and techniques of creating a presentation have more in common with those of a good film or a comic book than with a document.” Garr Reynolds in ‘Presentation Zen’
Case 1: Interpreting India’s Potential in One Language Objective: Reaching out to senior Central and State-level Government officials and creating awareness about the initiatives taken by Microsoft India under the ‘Unlimited Potential’ program Background: Microsoft India runs multiple Public Sector initiatives in areas like education, creating employment skills, eGovernance, etc, under the sub-brand ‘Unlimited Potential’. These projects center on using Microsoft software and innovations to create Information and Communications Technology tools that benefit under-privileged citizens. Audience: While the ultimate choice of which technology to be implemented in various pubic sector initiatives rests with the IT department of every state, senior Government officials and politicians act as key influencers of the decision. Parameters: Given the diversity in languages and a limited time available to connect with this senior-level audience, Microsoft India decided to opt for a comprehensive, design-rich presentation that presents a quick overview of all the activities under Microsoft Unlimited Potential. Design: To maximise impact and to overcome the hurdle caused by only a few amongst the audience being comfortable in English, we made the presentation more visually rich. Some of the elements used were: 1. Icons: These allowed us to connect with our target audience spanning multiple geographies and languages. 2. ‘India’ theme: The narrative theme of ‘Unleashing India’s Potential’ used the photos of Microsoft’s work done in India to establish Microsoft India as a company having a formidable Indian presence to counter the possibility of ‘it-is-an-MNC’ block in the mind of the target audience. 3. Impact-centric: We collated the impact of the Microsoft ‘Unlimited Potential’ project and presented the data as factoids on each and every slide. 4. Practical: The presentation was divided into sections based on four key areas: education, easy access, economy and egovernance. Each section featured demos, impact figures and stories.
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Impact The presentation message was memorable and helped create a mindspace for Microsoft India with a very small budget. Moreover, it helped spread awareness in the very short time that a government official could easily spare. INFORMATION MATTERS
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Case 2: Action through Awareness Objective: Reach out to prospects/existing customers and increase the number of accounts / trading Background: Sharekhan’s online investment portal Sharekhan.com contributes 50% of its total business revenues. In 2009, when the stock market was teetering under the economic volatility, Sharekhan wanted a lowcost activity to reach out to prospective customers at a local level. The client decided to use presentation-based awareness seminars at a local level to do this. Parameters: We established four objectives for this sales presentation: 1. To help drive customer foot-falls into branches (called Share Shops) with a genuine information service 2. To relate the generic benefits of investing and using web as a medium to buy shares as an investment on Sharekhan’s online trading portal.
3. Keep information and tone neutral and not make the presentation sound like an outright sales pitch. 4. Engage first-time investors with a 30 to 45 minute presentation that explains the benefits of investing. Design and Process: To ensure customer engagement, we designed the presentation using inputs from the Sharekhan Central Research Team and some branch heads. The pilot of the presentation was tested at the Mumbai head office. And after that multiple copies of the presentation (branded as ‘InvestiGo’ seminars) were handed over to the branch managers of various Share Shops. The InvestiGo seminars were promoted on the Sharekhan. com homepage and through eDMs, leading to a landing page where a prospect could register for a seminar. Branch managers then led the small groups of prospects though these seminars at the Share Shops.
Anatomy of a Successful Presentation In the book ‘Presentation Zen’, Garr Reynolds mentions the Japanese principle of Hara hachi bu or eating till 80% full and no more. An effective presentation, similarly, should leave the audience satisfied and yearning for a bit more – leading to a productive interactive session following the presentation rather than leaving them stuffed and feeling they have had more than enough! The accompanying visual features some essential elements of a PowerPoint presentation.
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‘What they see’: 1 Presentation (pinpoint title, breadcrumb, single point)
‘What they take’ 2 Leave-behind summary of Key Takeaways of the Seminar (Public Sector infographic slide)
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
3 ‘What you see’ Notes
section with Explanation per Slide (notes at bottom of slide)
The presentation was divided into clear sections (top slide) and the concepts were explained using rich visuals (the next two slides)
Impact: This method was effective at driving awareness and closing sales at a local level. Rajiv Prabhakar of Sharekhan says, “There was atleast one registration for an SIP account or a new account opening with Sharekhan at every seminar, making this a low-cost but highly effective marketing tool for us.”
Seminar Presentations for Online Trading, Currency Trading and Commodities Trading. All used rich visuals to capture the audience interest
Following the success of the InvestiGo seminars, we created a series of educative presentations on topics like ‘Technical Analysis’, ‘Currency Futures and Commodities’, and many more for existing customers. These seminars were also used to promote newer product categories and increase cross-selling opportunities. [Project Team: Mohan Krishnan, Umesh Chavan, Arun Mota, Advait Ubhayakar,] INFORMATION MATTERS
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Magicof
DESIGN | INTERNAL BRANDING
mosaic Using brand elements to design a distinct look for the Tata Communications Global Headquarters in Mumbai
TATA
Communications is a 6500+ people global company, spread out in over 40 countries. It is truly a modern corporation, where often, the same team works across different geographies and time zones. Since July 2009, Synapse has been working with the Tata Communications HR team (based out of Singapore and Mumbai) to help build a cohesive, tightly-knit organisation through effective internal communication.
1a
Hardly a month into the engagement, the Corporate Marketing team briefed us to work on Internal Graphics for their new Global Headquarters coming up in the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai.
Creative themes
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We started by listing out key ‘attributes’ around which the communication could be based: 1. World Leader in Communications: Tata Communications is a world leader in the enterprise telecom space. The creative units needed to reflect the leadership position. 2. Global Size and Scale: With presence in over 40 countries, Tata Communications is a global corporation—a fact that we had to communicate in our designs. 3. Values and Culture: The Tata Group has exacting standards that define the culture of the company. These are reflected in all their actions and deeds, and this also had to be spelled out in the new wall designs. 4. Corporate Responsibility: As a global leader, Tata Communications takes its corporate responsibilities very seriously. A few creative units needed to illustrate how as corporate citizens, the company and employees can contribute towards a better planet. 5. Lively Workspace: A few creative units needed to have ‘Respite and Relaxation’ theme to enliven the work space. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
1b
Tata Communications’ brand identity is built around the concept of a ‘Mosaic’. A mandatory component of their visual identity, the mosaic depicts the way many elements of Tata Communications come together to create the solutions that take their customers farther. From being used as a design element in various external facing communications, we now extended the use of mosaic into internal branding elements and signage. The triangular elements of the mosaic, in differing styles and patterns, were extensively used in the creatives we designed for the TATA Communications office space.
wall Graphics 1. decode-it walls
Tata Communications propagates the New World of Communications, driven on IP networks. However, communication systems have been evolving for many centuries. The Decode-it walls, are wall graphic units themed on communication media other than the written word. Each unit spells out ‘Tata Communications’ in the specified sign “language”. (Two examples of these walls shown below)
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2. glass walls
2a
Glass walls within the office were also branded by using different mosaic elements in interesting forms. Some styles (like the world map shown here) were used on glass panels in conference rooms and were also adapted for wall spaces.
2b
We also used typography to portray interesting company stats, awards and recognitions on the glass panels around the office.
2c
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3a 3. farther wall A simple graphic rendition of the corporate baseline was made into a wall unit for utilisation in multiple spaces. The ‘mosaic’ element was integrated within to make the visual interesting and instill in it a spatial sense of going farther. Another rendition of the same concept used quotes by famous personalities that used the word “farther” and gave new interpretations to the baseline. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
PILLAR Graphics 1. company values One of the key differentiators of the Tata Group is their commitment to society. Using ‘hands’ as a metaphor to communicate this, we created multiple creative interpretations that graphically represent each value.
1a
1b
1c
1d
2b
2c
‘Hands’ emphasise the ‘responsibility’ of each individual to carry forward the values of the Group when engaging with the external world of customers, partners and vendors. (visuals shown on the right)
2. green friendliness One of the key issues facing our planet is its sustainability. These set of posters aim to educate the employees about taking small steps to contribute towards a more sustainable world. One series of creatives focus on delivering one single message such as restricting the use of tissue paper and recycling plastic bottles. For contextual messaging, these posters were placed adjacent to common areas that typically hold the printers and copiers, coffee and tea machines, etc. (visuals below)
2a
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Pillar Graphics with a Global focus 3a 3. country greetings Being a global company present in six continents, TCL speaks in many languages. Very often people work remotely with colleagues in far off locations. Being the global No.1 in voice traffic, their networks carry conversations in many languages. The creative units depict this by calling out the most common form of greetings in various countries. And while interacting with a colleague from one those countries, greeting them in their own language does have its charm.
4. signage We attempted to make even boring utility signage interesting. Using the same route as that of the Country Greetings, we incorporated the text in multiple languages along with English, to once again underline the global nature of the company.
4a
4b
5a
5. country landmark These creatives once again derive from the mosaic pattern of Tata Communications’ visual identity.
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Each unit depicts a famous landmark of countries such as France, Italy, Russia, UK, China, Malaysia, US, etc. which have key Tata Communications offices. This series depicts the reach and network of Tata Communications and is a reminder about the Global scale of the company.
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
8a
8b
5b
5c
GRaphics specific to a location 1b
1a
9a
1. lenticular posters for staircase landings Communication technology and its applications are revolutionising how we live, interact, consume and buy. These creative units leverage the innovative lenticular printing technology to compare the pre- and the post-technology way of various aspects of life, in one single poster unit. Depending on the viewing angle, the viewer sees two different images, in the same physical space. We placed these units on the landings of staircases which provide the viewer a natural opportunity to view the same poster from different angles.
2. residents of the floor series
2a
2b
ClichĂŠs about people in specific work profiles abound. The creative units shown on the right were designed to capture the unique quirks of HR, Finance, Customer Service and Marketing & Sales professionals.
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These creative units were placed on floors and areas where these specific verticals were present.
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3. posters for the cafeteria A comic approach on health and nutrition was used on pillar graphics to create an ambience of relaxation and light-heartedness. We used text as a visual device with only a few images.
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4. table games for the cafeteria Cafeteria tables were embedded with common board games. Apart from Chess and Snakes & Ladders, we recommended the use of Tangrams (a board game perfectly aligned to the visual identity of a company) extensively.
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[Project Team: Shyam Bhandekar, Kumar Chiplunkar, Kasturee Kailash, Sirish Nimmagadda, Rohit Kulkarni]
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DESIGN | IDENTITY/ DESIGN
One Gateway
Multiple Businesses,
Redesign of www.kotak.com as the gateway site for the multiple businesses, products and services of the Kotak Group
AS KOTAK
Mahindra Group celebrates its silver anniversary, it has grown from being a capital management company in its early years to becoming a leading financial conglomerate in India offering services ranging from commercial banking to stock broking, from mutual funds to life insurance and investment banking and so on.
websites, products and services offered by all the different companies under the Kotak umbrella. The gateway website also needed to reflect the change and growth taking place within the Group.
The Kotak Group today has a network of branches, franchisees, representative offices and satellite offices in 370 cities and towns in India. It also has offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Dubai, Mauritius and Singapore.
There was also a need to have a mechanism that would allow a visitor to quickly skim through the many new offers and services if he had time only for browsing. On the other hand, the site also had to satisfy visitors who were seeking specific information.
1: Building the Gateway For an organisation as widespread and varied in services as the Kotak Group, it is imperative to have a website that portrays the complete scope of its activities to its over 6.4 million customers from India and overseas. The brief required www.kotak.com to be a gateway website that led visitors to all the different business
This site was also expected to serve as a destination that provided answers to common customer queries like “How do I open an account”?
DotAhead proposed an interesting solution for organising and serving the information to the user—A Skimmer. The homepage was designed as a collection of latest offerings from Kotak Group of companies. The user could filter these based on the nature of service he required or directly enter his query in a prominent ‘Search’ box. We called this grid arrangement the Skimmer (shown on next page). INFORMATION MATTERS
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Primary Navigation Primary navigation allowed access to the entire Kotak universe
Kotak.com Homepage The Skimmer allows the visitor to see 12 offerings at a glance, customisable according to the customer need
Kotak.com footer sitemap Secondary navigation offered access according to the product types, business types and user types
At any time the Skimmer shows 12 customised offerings out of a total of 150 to 200 current offerings from the Group. The customisation is driven by an engine that prioritises the offers based on chronology and relevance to the visitor. In addition to this, we proposed having a comprehensive menu system in the primary navigation at the top of the page. This would allow a single click access to most parts of the Kotak universe from Kotak.com, establishing it truly as a gateway page. We also recommended having an exhaustive footer sitemap where the Group companies would be organised according to the product types, business types and user types (see alongside).
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After initial wireframing, we engaged in a process of rapid prototyping (explained on the next page) with the client to arrive at a final design that became the new face of Kotak Group at Kotak.com. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Rapid Prototyping
2: Moving beyond the Gateway
Rapid Prototyping is a process that DotAhead has successfully used across many of its projects. This process allows us to evolve user interfaces quickly while working very closely with our clients. In a time frame of 3 to 4 days our UI designers and project managers work from the client’s facility.
To impress upon the audience that the many varied Kotak brands were all the part of the Kotak Group, it was decided to redesign the other Group site home pages with some of the elements from the new design of Kotak.com.
During the early part of the day, we present the UI to the client’s team and gather feedback. In the second half of the day we implement these changes. This cycle is repeated for 3 to 4 days leading to the finalisation of the UI design. The same approach was used to arrive at the final UI for the Kotak Group homepage.
However, we faced one challenge: Despite being a single brand, Kotak Group is in fact an agglomeration of many independent businesses. All of them subsidaries of the Bank, yet operationally untethered.
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Its functioning is very similar to the Japanese concept of Keiretsu—a classical way of management where different group businesses act autonomously, each empowered to run their own operations, and offering help and support to one another wherever necessary. Similarly all the Kotak Group companies operate with the autonomous entrepreneurial spirit under the Kotak umbrella. Thus, a critical part of our redesign exercise was to respect and understand this spirit of unity in diversity. Websites for each business unit had to have their own unique identity, yet be integrated with the other Group companies. To accomplish this, we designed some key elements and defined colours that would remain consistent across all sites of the Group. These included: 1) The ‘Centered’ page layout with shadowed edges, 2) Consistent Logo positioning and background, 3) The top Red navigation bar with white links 4) Login unit in the top right corner with the standard login links. Businesses had the flexibility of content and layout on the homepage, below the main navigation. The inside pages on the sites were designed around a 3-column layout template.
Various stages of evolution of the Kotak Group home page (6 is closest to the final look)
The second level navigation was placed in the left hand column, main content in the centre with a relevant page banner on top. Auxiliary links, forms and promotions were to go in the right-hand column. INFORMATION MATTERS
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Examples of home pages of individual companies: Each company made its own interpretation of the design, yet managed to retain the broad look for the Kotak brand. Kotak Bank Homepage (1) and NRI Banking Home page (2)
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Inside page design: Each Kotak Group company created their own versions based on the template. Kotak Bank inside page (3) and NRI Banking inside pages (4)
“Surfing is passé, searching is it. This insight directed our efforts at creating a radical, non-brochure approach to our website’s doorway. It helped that DotAhead’s approach was driven by functionality, user experience and aesthetics. Another radical shift was made by giving non-IT and non-marketing personnel the power to create their own content and promote it in an openly competitive environment.” Karthi Kumar Marshan Head, Group Marketing, Kotak Mahindra Group
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Creating these design guidelines allowed various independent Kotak businesses to have a tailor-made website best suited to their requirements, while maintaining a thread of uniformity which connects all the disparate entities within the parent brand.
3: Improved Post-login Experience A majority of daily visitors to Kotak.com also visit the transactional areas of online banking, where they can carry out daily functions such as checking balances, paying bills, transferring money among other things. Hence, the initiative was not to be limited to the challenge of elevating and scaling informational areas on Kotak’s online properties but was also to be extended to such login areas. A customer would have the same fresh and rich experience on these postlogin transactional areas as he would have on the new and upgraded pre-login informational fractions. Rising up to this challenge led us to initiate parallel efforts for improvising on Kotak’s online banking portal (screenshot on the right) along with Kotak’s Home Loan (screenshot on the right) online applications. In order to create a seamless transition from the pre-login to post-login areas, we followed the same web guidelines that we had set out for the sister sites. This included maintaining the brand colours, page template, logo placement, navigational elements and overall page look and feel.
Since we first discussed the brief for Kotak’s rebranding exercise, we have delivered seven portals, including both pre- and post-login areas. By the time the entire online rebranding exercise ends, Kotak Group will not only be a conglomerate of successful financial services firms, it will also be a proud conglomerate of entirely new network of interconnected websites. [Project Team: Gurpreet Singh,
Post login areas maintained the same look and feel as the pre-login areas to create a seamless experience for the visitors - Netbanking post login screen (top) and Home Loans post login screen (above)
Related Article: ‘Landing Pages that Deliver’ on Page 39
Piyush Goel, Dileepan Ramanan] INFORMATION MATTERS
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ENGAGE | SOCIAL MEDIA
The
M
RE,
theMERRIER
A website is just one way to connect with your clients. Aim for a comprehensive web presence and connect with your customers through social media, search presence and content sharing tie-ups...
YOU
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are a bank and you have a branch at Hill Road, Bandra. Will you restrict your branding and communication to the billboard outside the branch facility or will you actively communicate your services in the neighbourhood to get the attention of prospects? A dumb question, isn’t it? But then, what seems so logically obvious in the physical world is something that businesses are just waking up to on the web. Customers, today, are very active on the Internet. When buying products and services, they increasingly turn to the Web for answers. Businesses need to plan their presence on the Internet much more comprehensively to include social media, search engines and content sharing tie-ups. Few customers today will buy a cell phone or a gadget, or even watch a movie without reading about it on the web. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
A comprehensive web presence is a necessity these days and can help your business to: 1. Find new customers in the places they visit on the Internet 2. Manage your online reputation to ensure that a prospective buyer finds positive reviews about you 3. Increase your findability, so that people searching for the category that your products or services fall in, automatically find you 4. Engage your customers on sites that they anyway visit, and use that to grow the quality of your organisation’s relationships with your customers. Following pages present a few examples of how some businesses are using social media in order to be more visible and responsive to their customers.* *This is not necessarily work we have done for our clients, but a compilation of great examples.
Trend 1: Using Social Media In the past 3 years, social media has become an integral channel for different types of users. An article on Facebook, claims that if Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest in the world in terms of population. Alexa ranks Facebook as the 4th most visited site from India with Orkut being a close 5th. Social media sites like Facebook can be used to meet various business objectives as the following examples will show. Example 1) Customer Contact Programs: ScotTrade Scottrade, a premium stock broking company in the US has been using social media very successfully for its customer contact programs. Their Twitter and Facebook pages are updated regularly and talk about various initiatives for their customers. They also run a series of ‘Scottrade User Summits’ in different cities which are primarily promoted via social media. Example 2) Brand Activity & Customer Acquisition: Vodafone UK and Hotel Intercontinental, Dubai Vodafone, UK unleashed a very successful campaign primarily through social media for Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook with built-in mobile broadband from Vodafone. The campaign centered around the Vodafone Live Guy (http://liveguy.vodafone.co.uk). A ‘Live Guy’ moved through various cities within UK posting blog entries and Twitter posts from his netbook. The blog posts gave out his location, but only after he had already moved on. People who guessed his next move and predicted his location won a netbook with the in-built mobile broadband connection. Another good example of this was a promotion by Hotel Intercontinental, Dubai in which the Chief Concierge of the hotel, Adam Keast, would present an exciting giveaway near any famous Dubai landmark, every Thursday (the weekend eve in Dubai). The location of the event would be communicated to followers through the Twitter account of the hotel.
Scottrade uses Twitter (top) for their customer contact programs and Facebook (above) talks about the Bank’s various initiatives for their customers
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Vodafone UK carried out an engaging brand activity using a blog
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Example 3) Reputation Management: Cleartrip A few months back, a customer and an avid blogger had a bad experience while booking on Cleatrip.com. He wrote about this bad experience on his blog and Twitter account. The Customer Service team at Cleartrip sprung into quick action to ensure that his problem was solved. But, what they did amazingly ‘right’ was to post a ‘step-by-step’ description of the incident on their blog as well as on their Twitter account.
The ‘Kiruba’ incident on Cleartrip’s blog
Just the fact that Cleartrip published more updates on the social media about this incident than the blogger, was an intelligent move. Anyone who happens to come across the customer’s post on the web was also sure to find Cleartrip’s solution to the problem and take back a positive impression of Cleartrip.com. Example 4) Using Video Sharing Sites: Google and Microsoft Google and Microsoft have been successfully using video sharing sites like YouTube for creating buzz around product launches. The famous (and long) Google Wave video helped Google create a lot of excitement around the Google Wave product. Of course, the product itself is revolutionary in its own way.
Microsoft uses Youtube to launch Bing
Microsoft followed a similar strategy during the launch of their search engine, Bing. The Bing introduction video that talks about its ‘Decision Engine’ capabilities received over 100,000 views in record time.
Get your business on Facebook, now ! Facebook Pages: FB allows businesses to setup their pages (PCWorld India Facebook page shown here). A business can create multiple pages and once any page is created, it acts much like an individual user. People on FB can become fans of a page, they can leave comments on status updates and other items on the page. It is easy to control the functionality and the look of these pages.
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Facebook Ads: Much like Google, FB also allows businesses to post contextual ads on the right side bar. These ads can be targeted using various means including keyword-based targeting and geo-targeting. Facebook Connect: FB Connect (shown on the right) allows site owners to link a users’ activity on their site to the users’ activity on FB. For example, consider you are a stock broking site and you have a user’s portfolio on your site. With FB Connect, the user can connect his account on your site with his FB account. You can then have users logged into FB displaying his stock watchlist on his FB profile page.
INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Trend 2: Content sharing and Widgets At the core of what is loosely described as Web 2.0 is a trend where websites open up their data and services. You would have noticed a YouTube video playing on someone’s blog or a Google Map integrated on a third party website. Website owners now need to think beyond the website and be clear about what is the core of their business.
Example 3: NYTimes.com has tied up with CNET.com to provide gadget reviews on NYTimes itself.
Example 1: Cleartrip.com has a widget that allows people to find out the lowest fare for a particular sector throughout the month
Example 2: Burrp.com, a restaurant review site has created widgets which allow any website to embed information from Burrp.com onto their site
Example 3: NYTimes.com has tied up with CNET.com to provide gadget reviews on NYTimes itself
Trend 3: Newsletter, SMS Updates and RSS Feeds Content-centered sites today need to make it easier for their customers to consume content. Proactively feeding interested users with fresh content on the site is on the rise. Newsletters have been around for many years, and modern services like SMS updates and RSS feeds are seeing increased consumption. 1) AlooTechie.com provides a service where you could register your mobile phone number with them and they send you an SMS update with the top 5 stories of the day. 2) Websites like Sharekhan.com, CIO.in and PCWorld.in have been helped by DotAhead to develop email-based newsletter properties. Apart from engaging the target audience, some of the newsletters have also proved to be great revenue opportunities for these websites. [Project Team: Gurpreet Singh, Piyush Goel, Dileepan Ramanan]
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ENGAGE | EMAIL MARKETING
‘EMGuage-ing’ Direct Marketing
Email marketing that knocks on your client’s inbox, and engages him in a conversation
is, arguably, the least expensive of all channels for communicating with your clients and prospects. A well designed campaign using “Electronic Direct Mailers”, popularly called eDMs, costs a fraction of every other channel and can be created and delivered in a matter of hours. While these two advantages have contributed to the explosive growth of eDMs in the last few years, there is a third compelling advantage, that makes this medium of communication every marketers and communicator’s dream—The ability to track the reach and impact of the message with clear and unambiguous metrics, and then create customised successive layers of messages based on the recipient’s reaction. EDM campaigns, therefore, are not only inexpensive and fast, they also make measured “marketing conversations” possible.
Yet, for all its clear advantages, very few eDM campaigns get everything right. Creatives are rarely delivered in a way that the message as it appears in the client/prospect’s Inbox, is clear. Recipient databases tend to be one large list of un-categorised email addresses. Successive communications rarely take into account the recipient’s response or even receipt of the earlier communication. And performance metrics are rarely taken into account in the design of a layered campaign. In effect, most organisations treat this inexpensive channel very cheaply.
Turning eDMs into Conversations For nearly a decade now, Synapse has been designing creatives for eDM campaigns for their clients. But we do not track a campaign once the creatives leave our studio. We, therefore, have little opportunity to learn and improve our next communication in a “conversation” with a prospect based on the performance of the earlier eDM.
1. HOW AN eDM CAmPAIGN IS PLANNEd I plan the the and m a c paign annels h c ry e deliv
I design the creative and give it to my HTML programmer
I create ht is lig M T H L that great s k o and lo everywhere
I maintain prospect databases and manage bulk delivery and collect opt-ins
I follow k trac d lea s and in s s re prog conversion
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Around six months ago, Dygnos, a business initiative that specialises in designing and developing Business Intelligence Dashboards took up the task of developing a system that would handle all aspects of running and tracking an eDM campaign. We divided the entire campaign management cycle into four reasonably autonomous components: 1. Tools to manage the creative cycle of EDM design and creation 2. Tools to maintain clean and richly-profiled recipient databases 3. A system to deliver the email reliably, track its receipt and actions called for in the communication 4. A Dashboard that tracks the performances of each EDM on several parameters (open rates by domains, subject lines, time of day, nature of images, length of message etc). This division mirrors the different entities that are involved—a design agency; information and database department; technology team and the campaign managers and the business development team that oversees the entire process. Each team essentially works autonomously. Once a campaign is planned, the database team can start cleanup and data uploading activities without bothering about the fact that the design iterations are in progress. The campaign managers can decide the metrics of a successful campaign while both the design and database teams are going about their respective tasks. We believe that facilitating concurrent tasks in different teams helps to keep timelines short—no team has to wait for the other to finish.
It took us about three months to build a system that implements best practices of email marketing—a system that allows different teams in a campaign to proceed autonomously as well as allow the campaign managers to review design, analyse list profiles and match a mailer to a recipient profile and schedule it for delivery. We then tested it using real-life mailers that Synapse has designed over the last few years. Finally, before deployment we christened the system. We choose the name EMGauge— an application that would allow you to track and measure performance of your marketing conversations with clients and prospects over email.
What makes EMGauge different 1. The Promise of a Clean Database: Most marketing databases are flawed in several ways: 1. Incomplete or invalid fields: Only one field in a marketing database is critical to our service—the email address and there are several things that can go wrong here. You can have expired accounts, invalid domains and syntax errors (no ‘@’ for example) that can cause the system to waste a lot of resources on trying to deliver to a bad email address. 2. Duplicates: In a large organisation, which sources databases from multiple agencies, a large number of addresses are needlessly duplicated. 3. Too few control fields: To track performance, we need to map responses with different characteristics of the prospect set—age, gender, education or even income parameters. Many databases provide only fragments of these details.
2. HOW ThE CAmPAIGN USUALLY TURNS oUT That’s not my creative! That’s a grey box!!
that What does my r fo n mea ?? campaign? Damn! I Why didn’t ? ? TEST this?
How did 60% of our mails bounce back??
I didn’t is spend all thet g to y e n o m 50 leads!!!
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gn I desi and give e v L reati the c to my HTMer it m am progr
ow We now kn our w o h y tl c a ex s mailer look
une I can fine-tsed on a b r e il a the m real data
I have a database that cleans itself
re a Our leads anow r e n lot clea
Counter-Clockwise starting from Top Left: With EMguage you can check how your email will look in different mail clients, and maintain a database that cleans itself with accurate responses. As a result your marketing team gets betters leads and can run targeted campaigns
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Most eDM campaign management tools take no responsibility for maintaining a clean database. We saw this as an opportunity to provide what others don’t—the promise of a clean database. EMGuage uses a fairly advanced pattern recognition method that analyses each field for validity and ensures that the database contains no duplicates. 2. HonoUring The Fine Legal Print: Unsolicited mail or SPAM is huge problem and most individuals take fairly consequent steps to ensure that their mailbox is clean. The top email services like Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail also have very strict policies to stop an unsolicited mail from touching their users’ mailboxes. INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
Again most email services assume that you have taken the prescribed precautions to keep your end of the ‘No-SPAM’ bargain. Another opportunity for us—we don’t. Here is what we do to make sure that you are on the right side of the Law: 1. We register and send mails through a related domain—never through your main business domain. Everything required to manage this process is taken care of by us. 2. We always and automatically provide ‘Unsubscribe’ links in every mail. This link takes the recipient to a landing page that we manage for you—a landing page that describes the advantages of continuing the subscription.
IMPLEMENTATION AT AIRTEL AND LESSONS A typical installation of EMGauge takes about 3-4 days and a few days more for testing. Very little training is required since the interface is simple and hides all complexity of the task of sending rich media emails. EMGauge is now operational at several places. We now have over five installations of our eDM management system. One of our regional clients is in the process of making this service available nationally. Another is considering using our system to generate newsletters automatically from a database of content and link back to his product website. One of the largest deployments of EMGauge is at Bharti Airtel. Over 1.5 million emails have been delivered and tracked through our application. The emails have been of various kinds—a single image with a link, a text newsletter style email and discount notifications. The most successful one has been a feedback form linked via an external application to solicit customers’ opinions about the Airtel service. We have learnt several things from this and other deployments. Here are the lessons: 1. Simple, cleanly laid-out text messages with a single image have a higher click-through rate over rich images-only emails that the recipient has to download from the server. In the latter case, all the recipient sees is the subject line and unless that is crafted brilliantly, he has no compelling reason to continue talking to you. 2. A Subject line that conveys an immediate advantage or an opportunity triples the chances that the recipient will open and click through an email. “Half Rates This Sunday” was opened by 56% of recipients. “Fast ______ to get your Work Done” on the other hand was opened by only 16%. 3. If you ask for feedback nicely, people will respond. We ran a campaign pointing recipients to a feedback form. Response was higher than any other ‘no-benefit’ communication—20%. Airtel followed up on every response and wrote back to users. More than 2/3rds of the
However once unsubscribed, an email address will receive no communication—even if his address is added through a list acquired later 3. We specifically monitor the email account “abuse@ yourdomain.com” to listen to any spam complaints and alert the appropriate managers including temporarily auto-unsubscribing the complainant until further action is taken. 4. We control delivery rates zealously—so that no receiving mail relay even suspects that it is under attack. This slows down the delivery process a bit, a consequence that is significantly more preferable to black-listing.
respondents who received follow-up communication wrote back to thank. 4. Whenever you send an email, make sure that you have records of the user agreeing to receive communication. Users complain when written to unsolicited. Email services will block your domains when they receive complaints from their users. When large services like Yahoo! do this, you have essentially lost the ability to communicate with 20-25% of any email database. When an email provider blocks your communication, contracts or agreements which the recipient or prospect “signed” or “I Agree”-d to are a huge help.
3. Dashboard that tracks performance: Performance Tracking is the most critical component of any campaign. It tells you how many people opened your email, how many clicked on links included in the email, how did opening rates depend on the nature of images included, did the subject line affect the opening rates and, how many who opened the email followed up with a similar response on other correlated communications. In short, almost every parameter that will help you finetune your communication and drive the recipient towards your own business goals. [Project Team: Gurunandan Bhat, Manasi Kakodkar] INFORMATION MATTERS
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ENGAGE| INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
a new in the
company Reinventing the internal e-newsletter for Tata Communications to engage and better connect its global profile of employees
THE
HR team at Tata Communications brings out an internal monthly e-newsletter called ‘The Buzz’. This newsletter connects 6500 odd employees of the company, spread across 40 locations and communicates to them company news and other significant developments.
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and sought our recommendations to breathe new life into ‘The Buzz’. They wanted an entirely new look and structure for the newsletter, a move that they hoped will ‘wow’ their employees and make them take an active part in creation of The Buzz.
However, after a year of managing the newsletter, their HR team, based in Mumbai, felt the need to revamp the newsletter to make the content and design richer, more relevant and more appealing to its global audience. They also felt the need to bring in greater employee participation and contributions from offices in various countries into the newsletter. Led by Jyoti Arora, Global Internal Communications Manager, the HR Team of Tata Communications shared with us their objectives for the revamp of the newsletter INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1
‘The Buzz’ before redesign
Synapse revamped the newsletter and accomplished the client’s objectives within five weeks, without once meeting the client face-toface. Here is how we went about it:
phase 1: evaluation of the audience and the content Understanding the Audience: We spent time to understand the readers of the newsletter, who in this case are also potential contributors. Tata Communications is a global company, with 6,500+ employees in 40 countries. Staff numbers in the offices vary—some offices are manned by a single employee who manages sales, a few have a small team of 12-15 people. In their larger offices, the headcount can run into hundreds of employees. Understanding the Content: We went through the newsletter archives to see what type of content was being covered and what people had liked to read. We found that content was largely India-specific and understandably so, since the largest employee numbers were from India.
understanding of one another’s job role and responsibilities. This section was envisioned as a key part of the newsletter and was expected to facilitate integration among teams spread across geographies. A highlight of this section was a dedicated space that focused on the smaller teams of the company, many of them in remote locations. This was also a place to showcase employees who do outstanding work. 4. AFTER HOURS: This lighter section invites contributions from employees. Also featured here are company’s CSR events, Employee Volunteer programs, office parties or semi-official events taking place around the world. Photographs play a key part in this section. Design changes that we proposed were: 1) Make iT look like a magazine: We gave the newsletter home page a magazine look in order to allow us to explore a fresh look every month. We hoped, in time, employees would come to look forward to the ‘cover story’ as one reaches out for one’s favourite magazine.
We realised that in order to give ‘The Buzz’ a global appeal, we would have to involve employees in other Tata Communications locations. We decided to create opportunities for contributions from the staff in other offices and we did this by creating separate content units that could only be filled in by employees from offices in remote locations. Content Restructuring: We completely overhauled the content structure of the newsletters and for the ease of the contributors and the users, divided the content into four broad sections: 1. INSIDE TCL: Company news, announcements and updates presented as snippets.
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2. BUSINESS: This section was expected to include business-specific features that highlighted new developments, initiatives or product/campaign launches. Media mentions of Tata Communications will also be included here 3. PEOPLE: A selection of features/interviews/ profiles of individuals or teams to aid better
Various masthead options we presented to the client. The client opted for the last one (shown at bottom right)
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The redesigned online newsletter with a ‘cover story’. Four different colour tabs were used to identify sections
2) Identify a focus for every issue: We considered having a main story for every issue and removing the focus away from ‘official news’ as that was already available to everyone through office mailers and the intranet. This main story would have an element of knowledge and learning.
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3) Innovative layouts for each Section: We wanted to take the magazine analogy further and design attractive layouts within the constraints of a grid.
Inside story pages were made alive with graphics and pictures
The masthead design was created and presented to the client (various options presented to the client are shown on the previous page). Next, we created dummy layouts for the proposed look and draft templates for the inside pages.
4) Engaging visual aids and imagery: Type clusters, infographics, illustrations and photographs were used to make the newsletter more interesting and appealing.
Once the stories started coming in, we categorised them under proposed content sections and gathered supporting material for each story. The stories were re-written in a fresher style that was more conversational and involving.
phase 2: content coordination and execution We discussed revamp suggestions with the client over a conference call, and after incorporating their feedback, we moved on to execution.
Within three weeks of starting work, we had finished rewriting/editing stories, designed each story page and packaged it in HTML.
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A print poster was specially created to announce the new look of ‘The Buzz’. It was put up in all the large branch offices
phase 3: marketing the newsletter To create excitement among the employees, an emailer announcing the redesign of ‘The Buzz’ was created. Key stories were highlighted in this mailer. At the client’s request, we also designed a print poster (shown on the right) that featured snippets and teasers directing people to go online to read complete stories. This poster was also put up in all the large offices of Tata Communications and it made people aware of the new design of ‘The Buzz’ and also drove traffic to the online issue.
phase 4: measurement of audience interest and constant improvement For the redesign issue, the number of hits doubled. While we were delighted to see the steady increase in page views, we believe that the true success of the redesign will be established when employees wait every month for a fresh issue of ‘The Buzz’ to hit their inbox. The new look of ‘The Buzz’ has certainly raised the bar for internal newsletters within the client’s organisation, but we are certain that it is not enough. The key is to sustain the momentum by introducing new story ideas, to constantly analyse what people prefer to read and balance design and content to keep alive the audience interest.
“The International HR team unanimously agrees that they like the new Buzz a lot. Restructured content and format has made the newsletter much more participative and interesting. Employees too have responded with great enthusiasm. ” Jyoti Arora
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Global Internal Communications Manager, Tata Communications, Singapore
[Project Team: Shaalini Srinivasan, Shyam Bhandekar, Rohit Kulkarni, Kumar Chiplunkar, Kasturee Kailash, Sirish Nimmagadda, Gulnar Joshi]
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What Makes Good Information Design? Meaningful Relevant New
INFORMATION
interestingness
Proof of Concept
Truth Consistency Honesty Accuracy
integrity
useless
Experiment ugly
Successful Information Design
rubbish
boring
Eye-candy
form
function
Easiness Usefulness Usability Fit
Sketch
DESIGN
88
Beauty Structure Appearance
Original Graphic by David McCandless Source: InformationIsBeautiful.net INFORMATION MATTERS | VOLUME 4-ISSUE 1