The purpose of VR is to take you to a completely made-up place, and the purpose of AR is to change your experience of the place that you’re in.

Neal Stephenson

But Stephenson admits to not seeing the whole social-media bubble thing coming, and thinking that there would only be one Metaverse which everyone logs on to. It isn’t quite turning out that way. Every tech giant wants in, to create and own the narrative. Intuitively, VR seems closer to the metaverse, but in terms of adoption, I do think AR can play a role in easing users in.

Snap is a case in point. While they have released 3D Bitmojis and 3D full-body tracking, it is AR-driven Spectacles and the potential it offers² that makes its route to the metaverse interesting. Microsoft’s approach is more VR – to populate the metaverse with “digital twins” of any physical object and use technology like IoT, 5G, cloud computing etc to monitor, simulate and even make interactions possible without being physically near the object. (via)

Back in 2007, there was a rumour about Google turning Google Earth into a metaverse. It didn’t go anywhere, just like Google Lively. Since then we’ve had everything from Cardboard to Glass to Niantic (remember the Pokemon craze), but nothing that changed the world. Until (IMO) Darlene and Chi-Chi showed us what’s possible, with Project Starline earlier this year.

But as Ben Thompson pithily pointed out in Metaverses, no one cares unless Facebook is involved. Unlike Snow Crash, Facebook is planning a more immersive (and invasive, I reckon) version of the internet that is absolutely connected to reality. VR-rebranded as Ben Thompson calls it. They began lightly with Ray-Ban Stories , and stepped it up with the Horizon Workrooms app, which uses Oculus Quest 2 headsets to help people hold VR meetings in their avatar versions, with collaborations on shared whiteboards or documents. More recently, and ironically, they have decided to invest $50 million to “responsibly” build the metaverse.

I think that long before we inhabit the meta verse, we will start experimenting with world building using proxies. Several examples exist across fiction and reality. In Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, the novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects has the protagonist Ana trying to train digital pets which are designed to have a learning capacity similar to children. It’s a fantastic story of what happens to their existence when platforms go defunct. It’s probably inspired by Neopets, which was launched back in 1999. Users could buy digital pets and are responsible for taking care of them, using Neopoints and Neocash as virtual currencies. Even before that, in 1996, was Creatures – artificial life simulation, in a video game. (it actually inspired Amazon’s game plan – via) Given how these days NFTs also play a social status/ self esteem role using things that are purely digital, it’s a route digital pets could take. Entire digital worlds built for them, with humans vicariously living through them in a metaverse. The next step could possibly be a mixed reality. It could start with AR (see this short film) and then move to VR. Remember the Holodeck in Star Trek? After all, we’re already buying virtual estate in Decentraland! Pretty soon, we’ll be building houses. After all, we need to show off those NFTs.

But the “multiverse” in the title of this post comes from a fully loaded version of the metaverse. In $ocial Validation, I had ended with the question of how humans could cope with the “always on stage” and efficiency mandates of “the great online game”. Though I had a clue in In Code we Trust on what the combination of deepfakes and GPT-3 could achieve, the controversy around the use of AI to simulate the voice of Anthony Bourdain in the documentary Roadrunner really brought it to life in the real world. While we don’t know whether he would have wanted it, the more recent deepfake-led promotions of Reminiscence that allowed users to appear in the movie trailer, and Bruce Willis agreeing to the use of his deepfake in a Russian commercial are both examples of voluntary “fake” presence. These are still only media being passively consumed, but extrapolated, this means you could simulate your presence using technology – either something like Project Starline or deepfakes with consent. In the latter, you could actually be doing something else. In a metaverse context, the platform could bring to life people who have passed away (heard about the guy who chats with his dead girlfriend?), and your deepfake armed with GPT-3 could be chatting with someone while you go about your daily life in reality (meatspace) or in a different metaverse. Say, listening to an artist who doesn’t really exist in a place that doesn’t actually exist. We have also created a hologram system that uses jets of air known as “aerohaptics” to replicate the sensation of touch.

Do we then transcend meatspace reality? Does it splinter now into various realities that a person inhabits? In a metaverse like the Holodeck, maybe we could even change our past. Will we have multiple metaverses where we will live out our many real life what-if scenarios even as we follow a singular path in meatspace reality? Or maybe we just slowly build out a simulated reality for ourselves. Or perhaps the future is a combination of real and simulated lives in a combination of reality and metaverses. Maybe the freedom that the metaverse can provide will in time, take us completely out of reality into a digital multiverse. How would it feel? Would our definitions of self and consciousness still hold? One person, many worlds, many timelines. In a way, we are already living that on digital platforms.

1 The Metaverse Primer

² The Worlds to Come

Two events happened in the last fortnight that made me reflect more on this. The first was Apple’s power move on Facebook and Google. The second one was here in India – FDI regulations affecting Amazon and Flipkart. Both were shows of influence, and involved distribution.

It made me realise that the shelf life of this entire distribution-product-brand cycle is shrinking. Disruption is happening far before organisations can take advantage of wins at a previous level.

Distribution: Let’s take Apple as an example. While it might be powerful ostensibly on the strength of its products, I believe the play is as much distribution – App Store. The recent example (above) is proof of that strength. In fact, all the GAFA battles have the same theme. Distribution strength goes hand in hand with exclusive touchpoints, which serve as a medium to deliver and build more trust.

But that distribution has been disrupted! Spotify, and now Netflix and Epic (Fortnite) are examples of companies which are moving out of paying the App/Play Stores’ toll tax.

Product: The moves by Spotify/Netflix/Epic are all on the strength of the product. I am not really clued in on the music and game contexts, so let me take the Netflix narrative forward. Apple and Amazon recognise this threat, the latter is already showing examples of trying to play catch up using Prime. Amazon can indeed subsidise this play for longer, thanks to advantages accrued by other plays primarily in distribution. Netflix, on the other hand, is continually trying to keep its head above water. But despite no original advantages in distribution, it continues to be the dominant player in the domain. Just a small note on music though – in the first weekend of February, Marshmello’s concert on Fortnite had 10 million folks tuning in. Around the same time, Superbowl had a 98.2 million viewership. Tencent holds a 40% stake in Fortnite.

A more visible play can be found in the other kind of product – physical ones to extend and enhance the ecosystem. Add “smart” to watches, speakers, home, car, and you get the picture of what’s happening. The goal is ecosystem stickiness. But I cannot remember a non-GAFA product here that scores on differentiation and success.

The best examples of product disruption, however, would be direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. The rush from CPG majors to acquire them is proof of that. More on DTC in a bit.

Brand: This is the final act, and the prize is consumer trust. By bringing the hammer down on Facebook and Google, Apple (again) underlined its worldview on privacy. As I have written before, a worldview is bound to be polarising. As a non-fan, I felt it was extreme. An Apple follower would applaud it.

On the strength of its product, Netflix is also a brand with a worldview. It is too early for me to see how this will pan out. So, at the risk of an incoherent narrative, let me switch tracks here.

DTC. The number of  brands that have been built on the back of a differentiated product is rising. Bonobos, Warby Parker, Casper have all built their brands on the internet, based on pricing and sometimes, a stated social mission. They have then extended themselves offline, thereby smartly disrupting product and distribution in one fell swoop.

The overall trend can be seen in many places. For instance, IMO, AirBnB has disrupted all three aspects above. Maybe Tesla too.

What next? It is still early stages. But my thinking is this – if I take the original frame and apply it to the consumer market at large, the internet worked as a distribution disruptor. In the early stages, it was truly a medium that surfaced the long tail. In a time-scarce world, they increasingly delivered choice, convenience and consumption seamlessness. Those who cracked this early eliminated offline incumbents and became the new gatekeepers. Amazon for products, Facebook for social connections, Google for well, anything, and even Netflix – for content. Through some great bundling of distribution, product and brand, they built consumer trust for an ecosystem. From a business perspective, the strength of that bundling is what lowers acquisition cost and increases lifetime value.

But as Netflix and DTC have shown, the shelf life of that advantage is already proving to be small. Apply the distribution-product-brand frame to a newspaper chain (vs HuffPo) /television network (vs Netflix) /education institution (vs Coursera) /restaurant chain (vs Swiggy) and so on, and the shelf life they enjoyed, and you’ll see what I mean. Now, the chokehold can be broken faster.

As the internet matures, choice, convenience and consumption seamlessness will be taken for granted. In fact, as Scott Galloway points out, in a world of infinite choice, a consumer would prefer confidence in the (fewer) choices presented to them. Ecosystems of distribution-product-brand will be built faster and likely not in that order either. In a post-internet era, victory looks possible only if all three aspects are secured simultaneously, and continuously.

In this era of abundant choice, a device I use when fighting battles with myself on personal consumption is the can-want-need framework. ‘Can’ is made increasingly easier now because of convenience, ‘want’ by the choices around, and sticking to ‘need’ is a very difficult task! I read a really good post which has mirrored this in the (consumer) technology space – “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds…“.

It has a series of ‘hijack’ explanations, but it was the first one I found most interesting – “If you control the menu, you control the choices“. The point that’s brought up in this is whether we are actually being given an ‘illusion of choice’ because most of these choices don’t really match our actual needs. In the consumption context, I immediately compared Amazon, Facebook and Google. (Apple is restricted to its device/s) From a ‘menu’ perspective, I think that both Amazon and Facebook are quite restricted because ‘recommendations’ in both cases are largely based on my stated interests, conversations, social connections, and behaviour patterns of ‘people like me’. On the other hand, Google’s data has many more layers of contexts – search (including YouTube), mail, maps, Android and so on, and is thus relatively less of an echo chamber. The ‘menu’ in Google is arguably much bigger.

In terms of information, it isn’t as though it is one versus another. Social connections, behaviour of others like me all help me in discovery. However, as choice and convenience become even more abundant, the premium will be on time, because that (at this stage) is the most finite factor. As a user, I’d seek more of the service which offers me the solution that is contextually most relevant. Simply because of the kind of data Google has on me, I think it is the best placed to offer me what I need. (not can/want)

The other way of looking at it is through interfaces. I feel that Echo, as I had already mentioned in the earlier post, is a great start by Amazon to make its way into multiple interfaces. While FB has quite the stranglehold on mobile devices, beyond VR, I am uncertain about future interfaces. Here too, I find Google very well placed in its ability to use its AI to provide a ‘skin’ to various interfaces – at home, in automobiles and probably in the street too. While I do see some value in ‘social’ as a context in these interfaces, I also feel that the potential of other contexts might collectively outweigh it.

Meanwhile, in this context, take a look at this fantastic video whose title is self explanatory!

But all that is only context setting. Something that has been occupying a lot of my mind space these days is the impact of these continuing developments on brand communication and distribution. For years, the limitations of traditional media have forced brands to communicate to lumpy masses of ‘target audiences’. As the internet transitions into a much more ambient an ubiquitous form, all of brand marketing will be digital either overtly or under the hood. But even digital’s early versions have been on the same path, with incremental changes based on intent/interest. That, I think, is about to change fast. This superb article on the same subject puts it really well – we need not simply digital strategies but strategies for a digital world. It also explores the technological and platform advances that will allow frictionless experiences for consumers and what it means for brands. 

While the consumer end of tech is racing ahead, ad tech is still (largely) learning to navigate programmatic on digital, arguably the flag bearer of digital marketing omnipresence. There are already challenges – for example, trust between publishers, advertisers, and the layers between, on what really is being delivered. We haven’t even gotten to a level where we can debate or negotiate trust between consumers, advertisers and brands. The potential is absolutely clear. Data and advanced tech/interfaces will allow brands even more opportunities to build a cohesive narrative that’s equal parts consumer and brand centric. But that requires some fundamental rethinking, incremental may not cut it anymore. Not just in terms of understanding and deploying the gazillion tools that ad tech has to offer, but also, far more importantly, figuring out how to create interventions in terms of communication and experiences and deliver them in relevant contexts. There’s no time like now to get started, and as one of my favourite lines go,

And that’s where I’m headed.

Google’s presence in the graphic above is only an indication of its IoT strategy, and I’d think that Android might be a great thread to connect it all together in the short run. Two words – Google Now. There’s been a lot of talk recently about Google losing its prime position. (example) Stagnating search advertising growth, Facebook’s strong showing in mobile advertising, Apple’s profitability from devices etc being the reasons. I am wondering if IoT will be a key to Google’s renaissance. (along with AI) Our interactions with the connected devices will result in a treasure trove of ‘intimate’ data that can be used for some excellent targeted advertising. Given its play in multiple verticals, Google will be in a great place to access the data. Arguably Glass was their big play at hardware beyond mobile. In any case, that didn’t seem to work. Yet. But with Nest, Dropcam and beyond (check out the patents including a smart doorknob!) Google does have quite some ammunition.

Samsung states that by 2020 all of the devices it sells will be connected to the IoT. For now, SmartThings, their recent acquisition, will serve as the connection between devices. (via) Apple, with HomeKit, is poised to become a key player as well. Quite possible that the combination of Apple Watch, Beacons and Apple Pay will bring in a completely new play on IoT. Even Amazon’s Echo is in the game. (read)

In the near and medium time frame, one of the things that I think will play a key role in converting the IoT into a WoT is the mobile device, mostly thanks to them being the common interface. The guys whom I’ve seen doing a great job with that right now is Xiaomi. The entire strategy seems to be use the very economical smartphone as the central device in their IoT plans. Recently they released a Smart Home Suite with four components –  a human motion sensor, a couple of door and window sensors and a wireless switching device for controlling appliances. They already have a connected air purifier and a bulb. (via) TVs and water purifiers are on their way. [Incidentally, they are not the only Chinese brands in the IoT game]

As is evident, there are many companies creating their own navigation paths in the IoT ecosystem. Hardware, software, infrastructure, services, consumer identities and how it can all be made to work together. To me, this is looking to be a play even more significant than the web was. That makes it a very interesting battle indeed.

P.S. For some hilarious IoT ideas, check The Internet of Useless Things

I am finding it impossible to wrap my head around what all of  this would mean to our concept of life. In the meanwhile, I do know that everything is changing at breakneck speed, and in order to survive, we need to be cognizant of things that can impact our lives – as individuals, and as organisations.  I have deliberately avoided the word ‘disruption’ because it gives me a sense of suddenness and it is a furiously debated topic these days. Rather, to quote John Green (said in another context) I think we’re in the first state of “Slowly, and then all at once”.  This, is my take on ‘Change’.

(Thanks Nikhil for helping on a couple of alphabets and Amit for Unsplash, the source of many images used)

I think I used ‘dis-aggregated social network‘ on this blog for the first time in 2009, referring to Google’s basket of services that were connected relatively flimsily then. IMO, Google has always been that way, even including Google+. (read) I remembered it when I tweeted this about Facebook – around the time news of their Fan Audience Network started trickling in.

FB’s move to disaggregate apps, now seen in conjunction with FAN makes magnificent strategic sense. #digital Oh, it’s a Saturday. Laters.

— manu prasad (@manuscrypts) April 26, 2014

It got me thinking (again) on ‘scale’, a recurring theme here. In a less complicated world, where the trends in the business landscape were significantly more linear, (growth, competition, consumption, economy) scale was a powerful weapon to wield. But it’s a different world now. Artificial Intelligence, 3D Printing, Internet of Things, Wearables  and a hundred other things might completely disrupt the status quo and the need an incumbent brand satisfies. These are the known ones, and then there are the conceptually invisible (at this point) ones. Surviving (let alone thriving) in this shifting scenario requires agility, and it is difficult (though not impossible) to see scale and agility together. I looked to Google and Facebook for an approach towards this because not only are they surviving, they seem to be thriving. Yes, we’ll get to Amazon in a while.

What does it take to be agile at scale? I can think of four ingredients, the last three repurposed from the title of this post by JP Rangaswami.

Purpose

I remember talking about re-defining of scale at the Dachis Social Business Summit. The thrust of the presentation was that brands could engage consumers at scale only if they use currencies that create value for the user in the context of a shared purpose. I have elaborated it in this post at Medianama. Recently, I saw that Hugh MacLeod has brought it out beautifully here. Simply put

(via)

Possibilities

The purpose need not have one constant rendition. As the landscape changes, a business will need to adapt it to suit changing circumstances. For that, a business needs to understand the possibilities. I saw a very good line in this post about being a maker – the more you work in the future, the less competition you will have. How much into the future a business needs to be working is subjective and depends on its dynamics, but if it doesn’t disrupt itself, someone else will gladly do it for them. (“The Jeff Bezos School of Long-Term Thinking” is a good read in this context)

Platforms

While purpose and possibilities are all good at high altitudes, a business also needs strong operational  platforms to back it up. As organisations scale, I have seen two things that affect agility. One, the processes that are introduced to create efficiency @ scale more often than not, become the goal instead of a means, slowing things down and taking away from actual goals. Two, as processes and manpower increase, silos are created. The good news is that it is easy to see technology platforms bringing more efficiency into processes as well as an iterative way of thinking in the near future. It is already happening in marketing. This, and many other factors are also dictating a consumer experience driven approach and are forcing organisations to break silos. As the entire brand/organisation becomes a platform (read) that regularly revisits its context and purpose in the life of a consumer, ‘everything becomes a node on the network‘

People

HuffPo had a post sometime back, citing Zappos, calling 2014 the year of workplace reinvention. It is interesting to note that parent company Amazon has apparently aped Zappos’ ‘pay to quit’ policy, even as more and more stories about working there being a ‘soul crushing experience‘ are coming out. Meanwhile, the two points it mentioned for this to happen are purpose and trust. These I’d say are the bedrock of culture. It’s intuitive that a workforce mindful of the organisation’s purpose and their role in it would keep an eye out for the business’ possibilities, be ready to work beyond silos towards a great consumer experience, and bring in others who would help the business scale. This, along with purpose, has to be the glue that holds it all together, enabling the organisation to move fast without cracking.

While different sectors are at disparate distances from a radical shift necessitated by technological developments, it is, I think, inevitable. In this fantastic post titled ‘Knowledge is faster than mortar‘, which looks at scale through a different lens, the author makes the point that ‘the old mechanisms don’t fit the new social structure.‘ Old mechanisms were built to scale stability, new ones will have to be built to scale despite instability. Anti-fragile, so to speak. Indeed, we will see many manifestations as existing structures try to adapt – internal mechanisms like Amazon’s 2 pizza rule, consumer facing disaggregation like Facebook that have a corresponding internal wiring, or brands tweaking their 4Ps even further for different contexts. But whatever paths businesses choose, this will hold true

until next time, the fast and the curious

Creating, correcting and maintaining brand perception and resolving customer issues were fundamentally the objectives when operating in the customer care and brand domains respectively. But this was not an end in itself. The end objective of the business is revenue, and that makes up the remaining story.

3. Product: In this context, it includes the website itself, and the various features/enhancements/new products (eg. gift cards) that get introduced on a regular basis. Including social buttons on the home page and product pages were a given, though getting them above the fold was a mission I lost! The first major change was switching from FB Connect to the Open Graph. The potential applications, using social and interest graphs, are phenomenal, but we never progressed that far. At a basic level, I had slotted activities in this domain under acquisition and retention, and we have only implemented a small portion of the former. The easiest application of the social graph was using it for social proof. Kuliza’s Echo made that job relatively easy for us. It not only helped seamlessly amplify word-of-mouth, but also gave us a lot of data on consumption. One of the plans was to integrate this with Elevate, another Kuliza app – but inside Facebook, to try and beat FB’s throttling of organic reach. Another application of Echo, which should soon see the light of day, is a Fab-like social feed. If a user has registered on Myntra using Facebook, he/she would see the actions (Likes, Purchases, Wishlist additions) of his/her friends on a separate feed inside Myntra. Our expectation is that this would prompt more social actions inside Myntra and accelerate word-of-mouth inside FB further. This was actually a Phase 1 of a larger plan I had in mind. Let me explain.

While brand and customer connect can provide a strategic advantage on social, I’ve always felt that it was in the product domain that social could provide a sustainable strategic advantage. This came from my notion that ‘loyalty’ existed when the exit barrier for a customer to leave Myntra was high enough to beat any sustainable offering from a competitor. ‘Brand’ is one standard way to achieve it, but it is relatively less tangible, and in a commoditised marketplace, it would take more time. Generic discounting is not sustainable. I think, in this context, ‘Product’ can reach this ‘barrier’ in lesser time, and at lower costs. An ideal in my mind was using the social, intent and interest graphs of users from across various platforms to build a personalised experience, and through that, a gamified customer acquisition and retention architecture inside Myntra, (thereby minimising dependencies on other platforms) and then using social media to amplify relevant actions to further drive acquisition. But this approach has a high dependency on changes in the existing product and every new product/feature having relevant social features baked in (or at have it in the vicinity on its roadmap) to contribute to the larger agenda of the architecture. It also takes a mindset and backing. I did have a rough blueprint, but at this point in the e-commerce wars, this approach probably seemed a nice-to-have.

4. Sales: Conventional notions claim that social media should not be used for sales pitches, but from my humble experience, I’d beg to differ. It’s just a matter of what-when-how, and how much. From generic product pitches on the Facebook Page as part of the larger content strategy, to custom links on Twitter, we have consistently shown and tracked revenue from social channels. Even Pinterest and Google+ are contributors! I must admit that in the larger scheme of Myntra’s monthly revenue, these are insignificant, but let’s just say that the total contribution are in double digit lakhs every month. In fact, it reached a point where we were given a budget to see if we could scale it. In this context, I have to mention this brilliant idea by S – she used customer generated product images from our Pinterest ‘Shopped from Us’ board every week to make sales pitches on Facebook! Works like a charm.

The area where there were a few attempts, but didn’t really pick up was enterprise collaboration. We managed to build a fairly large community on Yammer, but what I’ve realised is that it needs champions at the highest level in all parts of the organisation using it on a consistent basis for it to be sustainable. I also had this grandiose vision of using Google+ and circles to connect customers, Customer Connect teams, Partner brands and employees in general, but this one was limited to a word document! This is an area that I believe to be a must-have as we evolve towards social business, but in the larger list of priorities, is still a few steps away.

That gives a broad view of what I’ve been up to for two years. The generic point I’m trying to make through the two posts is that from basic business outcomes like customer satisfaction and sales to more nuanced ones like brand perception and sustainable strategic advantage, social can and should play an integral part. There will be differences in terms of scale, strategy, resources etc depending on the domain, maturity of the industry/organisation, target audience and so on, but the important part is to begin because the brand/organisation needs to evolve as well. Social media has shortcuts, I’m inclined to think that social does not. These are days of nascence, and social will continue to evolve – enterprise social networks, social business, big data, the Internet of Things (add buzzwords to taste) and more will all have their hype cycles and age of maturity. By all means, measure ROI, but remember, we spend on movie tickets, we invest in mutual funds. I think we’re clear on the expected time frame of returns in both cases.

(via)

Myntra will remain dear to me, like all the other brands I have worked on, but it will probably have a more lasting signature, because not since my days at GIM have I experienced such a rewiring of my worldview. This stint has given me oodles of confidence, friends whom I hope will last a lifetime, and relationships of trust that I will cherish.

Before I end, the last hat tip – to the super S, who joined the team mid last year and has since then, proven time and again that she’s the best social ‘investment’ we made, and made this little social adventure a total joy! “I used to believe that we are here to teach what we know. Now I know that we are here to teach what we are meant to discover“

until next time, </ head – social media>

Over and out @myntra

— manu prasad (@manuscrypts) September 30, 2013

[The intent in writing this is manifold – primarily my obsession for chronicling, and it being my way of expressing gratitude. But since this might be useful to other social practitioners, I have uncharacteristically added text highlighting and such, and also sought to bring some semblance of order as opposed to the regular free flowing text ]

Almost exactly a couple of years back – Autumn Winter 2011 – the blog had an update on a new assignment. I can only vaguely remember writing the post, but what I have not forgotten is the excitement at the opportunity – to experiment with concepts, ideas and hypotheses. I have been blessed with great bosses, they have wanted to hire me again. So the first hat tip is to S, not just for believing I could chart a social agenda for Myntra, but for using his auctoritas in the organisation to ensure I got a runway good enough to attempt a flight. The second hat tip is to Mukesh, Myntra’s founder-CEO, who nearly stumped me with his first question as I was about to begin my huge social roadmap presentation (towards the end of Oct 2011) – why does Myntra need ‘social’? It was a very fundamental question – it not only underlined what I had in mind, but also served as a subconscious beacon during my stint.

We began with stating objectives. The idea was not to create a silo out of social, but to tie its objectives and strategy to various existing domains, and therefore business outcomes. This would ensure that social could create a strategic business advantage in the long run, and also meant that we could use domain specific metrics to track the progress of social investments.

The best advice I got, again from Mukesh after the first presentation, was to prioritise, because there was so much we could do. Thus began the planning – focus areas, time frames, strategy, resources, measurable outcomes. Our focus areas were primarily four – Customer Connect, Brand, Product, and Sales, and everything we did had a link with business metrics in these.

1. Customer Connect: Before anything else, this domain had to be addressed. The rationale was simple – until we resolved the issues that customers were sharing, there could be no conversation on any other topic. We began with a shared Google doc, taking complaints from Facebook and Twitter, getting them resolved internally, and then communicating back on the relevant channel. The objective of solving customer issues quickly could easily be measured by standard Customer Satisfaction indices around the number of issues resolved and average turn-around-time. By April 2012, the excel sheet process became crazy enough for us to opt for a more robust approach. After evaluating social CRM options at varying levels of complexity, we began using Get Satisfaction in April 2011, one of the first e-commerce companies in India to do so. It allowed us to seamlessly integrate with Facebook, and later Twitter, via Hootsuite. The metrics began looking much better since then!

2. Brand: In the absence of consistent brand campaigns, social automatically becomes one of the few media platforms available to create a perception about the brand. There are many aspects to this, and among all focus areas, this is the domain which is evolving most rapidly, and in which there’s always something to do.

Listening: Unlike broadcast media, social platforms have conversations – about the brand, to the brand. The best example in the Myntra context is the reaction to our first Lisa Haydon ad. (details) Before ORM became a buzzword and a zillion tools were spawned, the choice was simple for frugal social folks – Hootsuite vs Tweetdeck. We chose the former, and continue to use it even now. Though we did try out many tools, we couldn’t really reconcile the amount we would have to pay with the value we could derive from them. Finally, Unmetric has been brought on board because they manage to give a view of the brand vis-a-vis competition, and also actionable insights.

Branded Content: I had been a blogger for 8 years when I joined Myntra, and have always considered it the original social platform. Style Mynt was my first major project at Myntra. (details) Born on December 1st 2011, with no further investments in manpower, (because there were people in various departments who were interested in, and could write well about fashion)  and costs that only included theme and hosting charges. It not only gave Myntra a platform to express fashion thought leadership and style advice with utilitarian value, but also provided content for social networks and served as a good medium to build relationships with partner brands. (eg. with behind-the-scenes brand focus posts) . End-to-end project management was fun, especially content planning and tweaking themes, and I was even de facto editor until April, when we saw that this kind of content creation had tremendous potential, and hired a full time editor. Later, the activities on Style Mynt also resulted in video content. On Twitter, we created lists and constantly curated them – one of the applications is the Myntra #LookGood Daily. The objective in all these efforts is to create a strong association between Myntra and fashion/style. There are many ways to measure this – blog subscriptions and visits generated to Myntra from the blog, questions in the brand track for evolved brands, and for others, the share of voice in relevant keywords which can be tracked using monitoring tools. Though not the primary objective, Style Mynt has been a contributor to revenue as well, and Thinglink needs to be mentioned in this context. (details)

Social Media: Or rather, social as media. In 2011, Facebook and Twitter were the only platforms that were considered serious enough to be active on. We tracked platform metrics (Likes, PTAT, Followers) because they were surrogates that gave us an idea of the reach of our content and even brand salience to an extent, all the while conscious that they were a means, not an end. The content strategy on both were in a constant state of evolution, until it found its current version which aims to balance infotainment, (with creatives made specially for social) content marketing and selling pitches. Facebook Insights, though by no means perfect, gave us indicators of the efficacy of the content we were sharing. ‘Social as media’ is also where the much vilified hashtags on Twitter can play a part. All our hashtags have had a clear objective – to create some buzz around a tactical or strategic initiative. (examples) Their reach can be measured using free/paid tools. Also to be mentioned in this context – we are connected to over 60 of our partner brands on Twitter.

We tried out an interesting Foursquare experiment as well, to emphasise the fashion destination positioning – leaving tips at retail outlets of partner brands on seasonal trends. Being a fashion brand, we got active on Pinterest and Instagram early too. We’re probably the first Indian e-com/fashion brand to have season collection videos on Instagram. We were present on Google+ because it had a rub off on SEO as well, but in addition, there is much potential for creating excellent branded content using Hangouts. (and its On Air version) On YouTube, we began with content curation until we got our own videos. But even given that, at this stage, I’d have to say that it is an under exploited channel.

The value for the original two can now be measured in terms of reach metrics (brand) as well as revenue. The others are in a nascent stage, and will evolve rapidly, I’m sure. Earlier this year, Franchisee India gave us an award for the Best Use of Social Media & Communication Strategy. In terms of ‘vanity metrics’, when I started out, we had 5.8L Likes and 984 followers, and were non existent on the other platforms! Now, we have over 1.5m Likes, 13000+ followers on Twitter, more than a 1000 followers on Pinterest, 500+ on Instagram, 400+ on Foursquare, 600+ subscribers on YouTube and 3000+ on Google+.

Corporate Brand: Style Mynt had taken off very well, and blogs were in tremendous favour within Myntra. I pitched that a corporate blog would allow us to showcase values, culture, and build trust, within the organisation and among consumers. Myntra’s corporate blog is now a year old and continues to do exactly what I wrote it aimed to do in its About page.  The benchmark continues to be the Cleartrip blog, but this one is a labour of love at this point. I’m confident though, that having a place to air the brand’s side of the story can only do good in the long run. I’d also recommend the use of Quora – you cannot be present as the brand, but if you can get 2-3 management team members to be active, it could do a lot for you.

Blogger Outreach: Fashion is a domain of specialisation for many bloggers, and we began associating with them pretty early. From guest posts to sponsored contest giveaways in the initial days to a more organised and rigorous blogger outreach program for reviews more recently, we have tried a lot of stuff. They’re invited to our events, their posts get promoted via twitter, we have a board exclusively with their posts on Pinterest, and they even get #fridayfollow tweets from us. We have built relationships and there are plans in the pipeline that for more concrete ways to take this further – providing value to both parties. These efforts help in associating Myntra with fashion, catering to the bloggers’ niche audiences, and generating positive buzz about Myntra.

This has proven to be longer than I expected! Therefore, to be continued..

Media and advertising have had a very intertwined life, unless of course the publication/channel has been on solely a subscription based model. I think the magic of Facebook (and Google, before it) and those that followed is that they have democratised advertising by not just making it something any small business could spend on according to their means, but also giving them the ability to advertise according to contexts – intent, interest, social etc.  Though Google, Facebook etc are still intermediaries, they never flashed their powers, though the latter has begun to, recently. As brands move away from a one-size-fits-all mode of advertising, these platforms give them more options of form and function, and changing the face of advertising. (Google’s exploits are known, here’s a pertinent read on Facebook)

In such a scenario, what really does a traditional media channel have to offer to its consumers and clients? I’m not saying that they’re all going bankrupt next Sunday, but it’s clear which way the wind is blowing. One way, of course, is to use their brand value, and replicate (and grow) their audience on devices and platforms which better serve advertising interests. They can hone their value offerings by offering various contexts and their combinations – local, social, interests, and so on, and build business models for each. The early movers are already making big deals. But that is the red ocean that everyone is fighting for. How really can a player differentiate?

I had a vague thought. Media’s original strength was its relationship with users and the trust involved. In the social media era, how can that be leveraged? Flipboard has already allowed users to become curators and create their own magazines. Is that the future, along with shared revenue on advertising? What if users can also curate the advertising their ‘subscribers’ can see? After all advertising is also news/information and has a certain value depending on the source. Traditionally, media  has been the middle man between advertisers and users, but what happens when everyone is media? Can media start aggregating influencers in every domain, including niches, provide them the material for curation, negotiate on their behalf to relevant advertisers, and share the revenue? Perhaps the next  disruption will be the platform that can handle the complexities involved. What do you think?

until next time, mediator