How can you build up long-lasting relationships with dialogue partners and use social media to attract and engage quality customers? By Jaydip Chowdhury

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A dialogue
manager
in a
converged
world
How can you build up long-lasting
relationships with dialogue partners
and use social media to attract and
engage quality customers?
B y J ay d i p C h o w d h u r y
IIt was not Omar Al Mukhtar who intro-
duced the Arab Spring to Egypt but a
Google executive, Wael Ghonim, whose
campaign on Facebook and the famous
#Jan25 tweet that undermined Hosni
Mubarak’s political regime in Egypt. Sim-
ilarly, it was not a management consult-
ant who shaped customer service bench-
marks at United Airlines but a YouTube
video released by Dave Carol and his
band, earning more than 150,000 views
for his song about how United Airlines
broke his guitar during a transit from
Chicago to Omaha.
SocialmovementsliketheFrenchrev-
olutionorAmericanwarofIndependence
were the result of intellectuals indulging
inmeaningfuldialogue.Today,inthe20th
century, we are seeing digital Darwinism
– where opinion is shaped through social
media discussion and results in revolu-
tion. Whether those revolutions are riot
for good or bad, the fact remains that
social media has taken over as central
axis of socio-geo-politico- economic and
business diplomacy in the world.
Dialogue model
Dialogue and the way communica-
tions is driven across industry – or for
that matter in society – is not the same
as it used to be. Today, publicists, equity
analysts, advertisers or even lobbyists or
policy change advocates have all taken
refuge to social or digital media.
In their book Positioning: The Battle for
Your Mind, Al Rice and Jack Trout wrote
that “in PR we pray, and in advertising
we pay.” With the confluence of social
and digital media, perhaps we have to
write a new book, one that talks about
a converged smart world, where cus-
tomers in a crowd-shared model build
communication dialogues for the brand,
not the other way round. Today, news

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breaks over social media, followed by the
conventional media. It is believed that 25
per cent of Twitter users are journalists.
So, once you have built the right message
in the right context you have won half
the battle, as this story will surely trav-
el across the multitude of social media
word-of-mouth to land up as a big story
in print press.
To reach out to either a normative
audience such as government and policy
makers, or formative such as customers,
or even diffusive stakeholders such as
media or market analysts, you don’t need
to pray but be prudent enough to devise
effectivemessagingontherightsocialtool.
Celebrities and top rated equity re-
search analysts are paid heavily or used
as influencers to tweet about a beauty
product or a company’s stock valuation.
Opinion building and social media activ-
ism on important policy matters have
started affecting an organisation and its
services in the oil, gas, infrastructure, and
telecom sectors.
Gone is the supremacy of television:
a YouTube video is preferred over tele-
vision commercials. A Facebook post is
more effective than an in-house news-
letter as mode of employee communica-
tions. Press releases are optimised and
the popularity of online press like Huff-
ington Post over the 'pink' press is ever
increasing. These facts point to the same
conclusion: the age of social media has
arrived, wherein conventional media will
stay with us but won’t enjoy its tradi-
tional monopoly. And as that monopoly
ends, communications structures and
models change from indirect to direct
influence. Here, the network can follow
its customers, wherever and whichev-
er platform he or she visits. The good
part of this story is that both dialogue
managers and their customers are in a
win-win situation, weeding out many un-
wantedintruderswhooftendiluteanddi-
gress, misinterpreting core messages dur-
ing the dialogue process as its flows from
organisation to customers and stake-
holders through conventional print or
electronic media.
A change in
dialogue
With the influx of social media core to
dialogue tools, the way communications
is driven has evolved altogether to a new
platform and model:
• Word-of-mouth, which used to
be the most influential mode of
communications, is today seen as
social media conversation.
• Advertising (second most influen-
tial) has evolved as digital strategy.
• In public relations, dialogue man-
agers are no longer praying to
media houses but opening up ave-
nues of dialogue over a plethora of
social media, and pushing custom-
ized publication over these tools
and channels reaching directly to
the target audience.
• With these evolutions, market
research is shifting to online big
data; real time data mining and
instant feedback to change a cam-
paign is the name of the game now.
• Customers today can view, give
feedback as well as buy content
or products simultaneously-
opening up new opportunities
and higher levels of transparency,
trust as information moves from
dialogue managers to customers.
The binary code of social
media
Instead of zeros and ones, the binary
code of social media is ‘like’ and ‘share’:
these two ‘codes’ are behind any complex
online social media campaign or digital
strategy. Built on these two codes, social
media strategy revolves around either
success or failure. What looks simple can
be decisive, making or breaking a brand
in the marketplace with things going aw-
fully wrong and/or going viral.
On the other hand, a positive wave
can change the mindset of your custom-
ers, and result in overnight success of
a brand or campaign. Up until yester-
day, brand owners were not sure if their
product was liked by customers while
the campaign was running, unless it was
reflected in the increase or stagnation of
sales volume. Today, we live in a real time
world, where instant feedback is factored
to change the plot of a movie or features
of a new product. The rule of thumb is
simple: if they like, they will share, and
if they share, it will go viral. So, it all de-
pends upon ‘likeability’ and ‘shareability’
of a product or its campaign over social
media.
A strategy to increase
reach
Link your Pinterest pin to your Face-
book post, which links to your blog, which
in turn features a video from your You-
Tube channel…. This could be one out of
many tactics to increase your reach but,
again, the bottom line is simple: content
has to be liked and shared. According-
ly, choose your medium or tools, which
can be interconnected to create a chain
reaction.
“Today, we live in
a real time world,
where instant
feedback is factored
to change the plot of
a movie or features
of a new product.”

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J ay d i p C h o w d h u r y
Head of Corporate
Communication and
Advocacy, Bilcare Research
Jaydip Chowdhury is head of
corporate communication and
advocacy at Bilcare Research,
the pharma packaging compa-
ny with operations across Asia,
Europe and the US. In addition
to public affairs, Jaydip also
oversees investor relations for
the company.
Social commerce
The rules of social commerce are clear:
if you are not buying any product, you
are the target product yourself. As you
like and pass on product-related content
to your network, it finally lands up in
sales. But in the process, it creates a circle
of social commerce. Interestingly, in this
circle strangers become promoters of the
product. Unlike the old advertising mod-
el, here you attract>convert>close>de-
light (see right), transforming strangers
to promoters. What starts as simple blog
may end up in brand sale with call-to-
action button. Such is the beauty of social
commerce.
Social media dialogue is changing
customer relationship management
(CRM) as well. Social CRM is the use of so-
cial media services, techniques and tech-
nology to enable organisations to engage
with their customers (see table below).
What we see today is a tectonic shift
in which customers are reached with
specific tailor-made, bespoke commu-
nications. The key takeaways for social
CRM are:
• Engagement replaces advertising
• Community recommendations
outpaces company assertions
• Instant feedback leaves no room
for carelessness
• Open business ecosystem intensi-
fies competition
This results in transparent, timely
and truthful communications by dia-
logue managers
Spices for social
media success:
Most successful social media cam-
paigns will have certain spices added up
to make its recipe delectable, palatable
and electric to its eclectic audience. It is
often said in this context that social me-
dia is a cocktail party and not a sit down,
fine dining event. The key features are:
• Like and share is central
to going viral
• Real time engagement of contest
and other activities
• Crowd sharing is the new
normal of engagement and
content creation
• Conversation boast over
social influencers
• Content-driven strategy: short
content with info-graphics
or AV is preferred
• YouTube, short video replacing
television commercial
How CRM Evolved into social CRM
WHO  CRM Specific departments  SOCIAL CRM Everyone
WHat  CRM Company-centric process  SOCIAL CRM Customer-centric process
Where  CRM Defined channels  SOCIAL CRM Customer-driven dynamic channels
WheN  CRM Set business hours  SOCIAL CRM Customer-set hours
WhY  CRM Transaction  SOCIAL CRM Interaction
HOW  CRM Message flow outside  SOCIAL CRM Message come inside
Blog
Social Media
Keywords
Pages
Calls to Action
Landing pages
Forms
Contacts
Email
Workflows
Lead Scoring
CRM Integrations
Social Media
Smart Calls to Action
Email
Workflows
  VisitorsStrangers Leads PromotersCustomers
Attract Convert cLOSE dELIGHT
Transforming strangers to
promoters in advertising

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Ford Figo Aspire
#WhatDrivesYou
Ford started their What Drives
You? campaign during the launch of
Figo Aspire, a compact sedan. With this
campaign, Ford roped in actor Farhan
Akhtar as anchor for conducting drive-
by interviews in Ford Figo Aspire with
real life achievers, such as the founder
of RedBus.in, co-founders of Happily-
unmarried.com and so on. Through the
passionate stories shared by the young
achievers, the campaign aimed to reflect
on the needs of the young consumer in
modern India.
Let me conclude by giving few case
studies to substantiate my point-of-view;
incidentally, these are amongst some of
last year’s best social campaigns:
#RiceBucketChallenge
#RiceBucketChallenge is the Indian
desi twist to #IceBucketChallenge on So-
cial Media. Manju Latha Kalanidihi, a
journalist from the city of Hyderabad,
came up with the idea. Rather than wash-
ing down the water in a country with
scarce water supply, her train of thought
was to feed the hungry for the inception
of this challenge.. The reach of all com-
bined social networks gave impetus to
this cause. The initiative witnessed a rise
of 192 per cent in social media popularity
in a span of just two days.
Pepsi #CrashThePepsiIPL
CrashthePepsiIPLwasacrowd-sourc-
ing campaign that Pepsi launched in
IPL8. In this disruptive campaign, fans
were invited to make commercials that
showcased their love for Pepsi. Pepsi
promised that the best ads of 30-second
duration would be aired during the IPL
matches. In addition to the fame, the win-
ners would also receive cash prize of one
lakh rupees. With this campaign, Pepsi
was able to leverage the creativity of con-
tent creation communities, such as You-
Tube users and bloggers on the internet
and promote the Pepsi brand.
#TheAwesomeJob
Premium whisky maker, William
Grant & Sons has launched a digital
campaign titled The Awesome Job to
find Grant’s India Brand Ambassador.
Instead of using a celebrity to endorse
the brand, this people-backed campaign
helped to promote the brand’s ideolo-
gy of Stand Together. The campaign
reinforced the ideology of the brand as
only friends could nominate one for this
contest. All information and updates re-
garding the contest are communicated
through a microsite launched for this
purpose. With this campaign, the brand
has set its eyes on India as a lucrative
market and is gearing up to introduce
more brands in the country. A microsite
served to contain the progress and up-
dates on the contest.
Reliance General Insurance
#DarkTravelTale
In order to generate interest in its travel
insurance plans among the Indian youth,
Reliance General Insurance devised this
campaign where they gave fans a starting
point of a story and invited fans to come
up with a suspense story. Fans need-
ed to imagine the worst scenarios that
one could face while traveling abroad.
With a suspense storytelling effect, the
brand attempted to co-create a graphic
novel with its fan community. This novel
was called Dark Travel Tale and it be-
came the world’s first Twitter-curated
graphic novel. •
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