It is often misunderstood that managing social media is easy for brands. I mean, we all do Facebook. So what can be the big deal about managing a brand presence on Social Media.

Well, for one, going from a comfortable, many times edited broadcast mode communication, to a real time, interactive space, where responses go out on the fly, is a huge bridge to cross. That is where the challenge begins. And then, it can get bigger!

Let’s look at this example, where perhaps, on behalf of the brand, someone with lack of understanding, lack of language skills, or both, decided to respond to comments on a Facebook post:

The disaster that can happen is for all to see.

Maybe English was not the primary language for the person replying. And she did not get the word ‘shameful’. What if it was a one-time unfortunate accident. But by the fact that this screen shot has gone around the world, many times over, the damage to the brand has been done. And badly.

Let’s look at another example. This was in fact, a well-intentioned effort, from a global leader and a household name, McDonald’s.

They’re been very active on social media, have done interesting activations, and have engaged their fans.

So it was not surprising that they initiated a hashtag #McDStories, where they hoped and expected that customers may share fun stories linked with McDonald’s.

But the campaign backfired and how.

Check out the detailed story which shows how the #McDStories hashtag became instead a bashtag. While there may have been consumers who had genuine, interesting McDonald’s stories to share, there were others who used the opportunity to bring out the horror stories of their McDonald’s experiences, from unhealthy food, to poor working conditions, and everything else in between.

Clearly a well intentioned effort that went horribly wrong.

There have been other cases where brands have had trouble, while engaging with consumers on social media. A case closer to home in India was about Cafe Coffee Day, when a fairly active social media brand had a trending hashtag in the form of #ccdsucks.

All of these cases show that:

1. Social media is clearly a double-edged sword for brands.

2. There is extreme participation of consumers around brands. Good and bad experiences can get quickly amplified. Whether the brands like it or not.

3. Brands need to have a sense of preparation, for things that could go wrong. While a #CCDSucks or a #McDStories cannot be necessarily foreseen, a fundamental awareness that things can go wrong, and a broad strategic approach for such situations, is something that brands need to have in place. Typically, before an incident occurs.

4. Often the understanding to manage such crisis is not internal, within organizations. This is due to a lack of experience in real time interactive spaces, and the eagerness to be “in control” always. The latter eagerness can often get brands to take impulsive steps that may not be the wisest ones after all! The Vodafone case when the brand tried to sue a consumer who was complaining about their services on social media, is an example of this.

Simple pointers for brands at this point are:

1. Your consumers are present and talking on social media. Whether the brand is present there or not. So just because there are challenges, to not be present on social media, is not even an option for brands.

2. Brands need to prepare themselves well. They cannot trivialize social media and relegate it to a lower level, in the corporate hierarchy. Senior management must participate in decisions related to social media.

3. Being prepared for eventualities helps in not being totally surprised.

4. Adequate budgets need to be apportioned. Just because Facebook or Twitter are free to use does not mean that brand budgets for social media should be peanuts!

5. And brands should really engage with agencies or consultants who “get” the medium. There are cheap ad film makers, but brands still go for the best in the business. Because stakes are high. The same kind of thought must prevail while making choices in selection of a social media agency!

With all that, social media’s an exciting space. One just needs to work harder, on a 24×7 basis!

I have received more than my share of “critical feedback” suggesting that my blog posts are often a little too long. The feedback has come first, from my teenage daughters (I am glad for their candidness!). Unfortunately, there is a risk that this post may also not be “short”.

But then, for this, I have to blame Mrs. Hansotia. Who Mrs. Hansotia? Oh, she was my English teacher from class VI to X. And like most English schools, ours too suffered from the now-exasperating British legacy of being extremely verbose.

Till today’s teenagers do not go and completely take over all English language teaching in schools, we may still suffer this excess for some more time. The rest of us have too much of a hangover from our school times, and end up being flowery length by default!

Then there is the radio legacy.

Back when live TV had not come, we had to depend on the adjectives of our poetic commentators (think Suresh Saraiya, for example) to visualize how the ground was, and how exquisitely Vishwanath had cut the ball to the cover fence for four (before getting out the next ball), and things of that nature.

Live television came, and we did not need to be “told” many of these things, as we could see them. And yet, our commentators, brought up in radio days, continued to tell us what we could plainly see!

So you get the point? I am talking about the long, long text that we write and speak. Instead of cutting to the chase. And instead of sometimes, cutting out the crap!

My grouse is not just about the longer blog post or the verbal diarrhea of our commentators, but in general, about the legacy to write too many words, and which even shows up on Facebook at times. Thankfully, Twitter does not give you that option at all.

At a recent event where I was a speaker, the topic of my talk was ‘How to be relevant to your audience in 140 characters’.

Before the event, once the organizers announced the topic, there was a whole lot of interest seen in Twitter, etc. I have not seen so much buzz around a speech topic. While part of this may be attributed to the organizers promoting the talk and the event, that the topic fascinated and intrigued a lot of people, was undeniable. In fact, there was a lot of questions post the talk and many of the folks also came and chatted individually, later.

So where are the real challenges in our habits, and especially in context of social media updates for brands?

You want to make a product update.

You have written brochures of web content for the product before this.

You are greedy. You want to get all of your details out, in that one update itself!

You want to use the opportunity of having to make a Facebook post about the product, to cover more or less everything about the product!

So your post could well read like:

“This exciting new <product> from <brand>, model number <abc> comes with it’s own remote control and a child proof lock as well. Made of stainless steel, you could see your own reflection on the <product>, and it is lightweight as well. So you can enjoy your day, with this <product> even as you bask in the sunshine.”

Or words of this kind.

This is clearly brochure-ware, and not good for a Facebook post.

If I had to constrain the writer to write the same post for Twitter, she’d find a way, wouldn’t she?

She’d probably write this as “Our new <product> <model> has a child proof lock, so your kid will not get accidentally hurt. Check it out at bit.ly/abc.”

Why could this not have been done on Facebook as well? Just because Facebook gave her more characters to post, she let her flowery language loose?

Here’s another example from recent times.

I had this really weird experience at a recent pitch where 6-7 people from the client’s end were sitting and my colleague was presenting. And at a point where he was explaining a point in depth, the client (almost) rudely interrupted him and said, “Yes, we get it. It’s a good idea. Now let’s move on!”

Whoa! That took us by surprise, although the client meant well.

We are all busy. Our attention spans are low. So get to the point. And get there fast. ANY word that does not add real value ought not to be present. If I can say it in one word, I don’t want to use two.

In a twitter conversation, often a single word tweet can have impact, e.g. “Epic!” or “OMG”. And if you want to give the liberty of an additional word, then there could be “Life sucks!”, or “Go Federer..”, etc. The story is told. In those 1-2 words!

So guys, as the title to the post suggests, “Cut the crap. And cut to the chase!”

Here’s an ad, that drives home the point..

For some reason, December gets your mind working in this manner. Thinking about what went by, thinking about what’s coming up. Though this is something you can potentially do any time of the year, there are these December triggers.

You’ll take this kind of a stock for yourself, and then perhaps larger issues, like the world at large!!

So I got afflicted too. And rather than look backward (more of an analysis and research task), I choose to look ahead. Crystal ball gazing on where the digital space in India is going, in 2012.

The good part about this effort is that you can only prove me wrong, after 12 months, by which time, if I have gone horribly wrong, you’ll not remember, and if I have struck gold with my predictions, I will ensure that you don’t forget that ‘I told you so’! So it is a win-win for me, and hence, here goes.. my 10 predictions for the digital space in India, in 2012:

1. E-commerce or more specifically, online retail of goods, will continue to show fabulous growth: the hockey stick curve has started, perhaps 12 months back. This will continue on a sharp, upward trajectory, right through 2012. The growth is on account of various factors:

• Internet user base growth
• Better bandwidths
• Mobile penetration
• More focused online stores doing awesome job of merchandising, logistics, etc.
• COD and other easy payment options

But besides all of these, I believe that there is one very significant factor here. I believe that a new consumer generation has come into the marketplace at this time, and they are shopping online. And they are digital natives. And not digital migrants. Like the folks who shopped before.

Those who are 20-21 now, on their first jobs, earning their first salaries, and having disposable incomes, these guys never wrote letters, only emailed. They used computers at schools and shared homework with their friends on email. For them, texting and tweeting are like air and water. They were just there. They did not migrate into these from some other planet of letters or faxes! So for this new consumer generation, shopping online’s also as natural a step.

It is my belief that the coming of this new generation has been the biggest contributor in this significant upward swing in online retail. And that being the case, this will only continue to grow, in 2012.

Because Flipkart and Infibeam and few others, are investing so well into logistics and other fundamentals, they will continue to establish themselves as leaders here. But the space is very very young still. These are no permanent leadership positions. You could see challenges, especially in specific categories, emerge in 2012. Perhaps a different brand for lifestyle products, another for household items, something else for motherhood, and a different one for kids maybe.. watch the space. It is about to change!

Amazon should be entering India for sure, in 2012. And even while they are building their own team, and deny rumors of acquisition plans, they WILL acquire. But it may not be Flipkart. Flipkart on the other hand, will use the large sums of money it has raised to make 1-2 niche acquisitions of its own. And most certainly, amongst the rest of the pack, some consolidation will happen. Perhaps driven by the common VC investor!

India’s retail majors will NOT acquire yet. They will continue to be in huge debt burden, and FDI will only reduce their debt, but the economy will not allow them to venture into online retail via acquisition routes, especially at a time, when VCs have driven up the valuation of online retail, and they will not sell cheap. At least not so soon!

2. The Group Buying / Daily Deals space will crack: Yes, while e-commerce / online retail will be hot, some of the ventures which have pretended to be e-retail, but were actually deals’ sites only, will have challenges to face. I have been a verbal critic of the group buying model. I have been a believer that group buying is good for certain categories only, and for certain times (like for liquidating perishable / excess inventory), but the direction that the industry took, and the way everything was being sold at deep discounts, was a dangerous trend. And not sustainable, in any case. And the valuations that these sites have commanded have been a function of numbers, that are unsustainable too. So we will see the model crack. We will see some Deals Snap, and some Groups On fire.

3. Media Buy Spends for digital will increase: Well, the marketers have been talking the talk for a while now. Check out one marketing conference after another, and all they want to talk about is, how digital is becoming big and exciting. And yet, on the ground, the talk has not been walked. Enough. And we still see fat cheques written out to television, and loose change dropping the digital way. Multiple things are happening that will make for big shifts here.

First of all, a lot of marketing is getting integrated now. So while the bulk money may be spent on traditional media, because a contest or some call to action is integrated into digital, there is digital spend too (perhaps an application on Facebook, say). Then again, due to the slow economy, larger mainline budgets may be hard to come by. And yet, the brand has to reach the consumer, and at a lower outlay, digital may be the way for a brand to do so. And the marketer can finally walk his talk then, no matter if it was forced to him, due to his budget constraints.

One way or the other, digital agencies will see increased billings as a consequence.

4. Marketing will get more integrated: We are already seeing a lot of this. Like a TVC having a call to action that goes to a Facebook link. Or when bloggers are invited to brand events, along with press, and there is amplification of the communication sought to happen on social media spaces too. Some of these are already here. 2012 will see a lot more of these happening, and in fact, integrated marketing will become commonplace.

So if there is an iconic TVC campaign, and you have run out your television media budgets, you could create a set of sequele, to continue to ride the popularity, on YouTube maybe. Or where more and more flash mobs are seen (God help us.. !) just to create content that a brand may expect (“hope”?) to viral thereafter. Live tweeting of your on-ground event, a story that begins on Twitter and takes wings on mainline media, etc. are all examples of media merging. So from media spaces like television, print, digital, social, mobile, to Above-the-line, Below-the-line, etc. all combining, are realities that we will see more in 2012.

As Nikesh Arora of Google said, there is no online or offline, now there in just the one line!!

5. Brand Pages on Facebook will have to fight clutter: A Facebook page for my business, then one for my housing society, and then one for my Walking Group, and one also for my pet dog, and oh, one for my bonsai plant, etc. etc. Just because these are so easy to make, there will be tons of brand pages on Facebook. Everyone and their uncle will have one. And names will be misleading. Confusing. And brands that got excited by a Facebook presence, will now realize that the presence is only a starting point, and means nothing by itself.

Creativity will be at a huge premium, and brand pages that stand out for creativity, a unique approach, will emerge victorious.

6. Google+ will get an honorable mention in history: After Orkut, Wave, Buzz, Google+ was yet another effort by Google, to get into Social Networking. Perhaps Google’s best effort till date. Got a lot of initial buzz, many diehard Google fans swore by it, were happy to see competition to a dominating giant. But after a few months, we are already seeing a larger registered user base for G+ (curiosity got people to register) but very little traction in terms of usage. Yes, some of the geeks are there, and love their own private network. There are also some interesting features, like Hangouts, for example.

But it is no challenge to Facebook. Not now, and unlikely to get there. And because people only have so much time in a day, their ‘social media hours’ will most likely go to Facebook and LinkedIn, and not shift to G+ anytime soon. And that’s the reality, like it or not.

So while the fizz has already gone down, 2012 will see Google+ take its rightful place in history, as another commendable effort in the space, by Google. But an effort that was at best, a good also-ran!

7. Social Media embarrassments will happen: Inspired by Anand Mahindra and Ratan Tata, CEOs and other top management are getting tempted by Twitter. Except that they don’t always spend so much time to ‘get’ the medium. And they could make costly mistakes! Likewise there would be others in the organization, who could make some boo-boos. There are organizations who like to keep their social media efforts lean and mean in costs. “An intern could take care of this”, they figure. And they hand over their brand worth thousands of crores to that intern. And yes, they’d save a few thousand bucks each month. Except the intern could also mess up one day. Or for that matter, the social media agency could make a mistake too.

We have not heard so far, terribly embarrassing situations, but I suspect one will happen, in 2012. And the sooner we have it, the better, so that it draws everyone’s attention, and everyone gets a little more careful from that point onwards! Nothing like an incident to make people acknowledge the risk! Oh, and by the way, I hope that the embarrassment is not with any of OUR clients.. lol. I don’t mind learning this with someone ELSE’s experience, rather than mine!!

8. Online Reputation Management will be part of a brand’s budgets: People will cuss brands on social media. Why? Because brands are there, and because social media is there! And cribbing and cussing is so easy to do. Then there will be some mean competitors who think it is easy to use fake accounts and malign a competitor’s brand. OR a disgruntled employee wanting to run down his ex-company. Only because he reckons that he can do it, and get away with it.

So all this was already happening, and so how will 2012 be different? Well, for one, more people will discover how easy it is to malign brands. Secondly, as the base of users increases, and more people use the web and take decisions based on the inputs got from these media, the impact of such negativisms about a brand, will be larger.

For few brands it could be loss of market share. For others it could mean a loss of market cap! And for yet others, it could mean the filing of legal suits and / or a large PR budget to clean up the mess.

The later in the reputation loss that repair is initiated, the more difficult and more expensive it gets. Which is where Online Reputation Management (ORM) comes in. While ORM will also NOT prevent from bad news showing up for a brand, ORM will detect, and enable a fix faster, before more damage has happened.

With that consideration, I’d expect more and more companies to make ORM a nORM in their business!

9. A killer case study will happen, on Social Media, in India: While India has got some brands with very large Facebook fan bases, and there have been some moderate YouTube views, we have not yet seen a thunderous success, like an Old Spice or a Blendtech or something of that level. I think we have come close now. The year 2012 should see a few large Social Media successes in India as well. It will give a well deserved respect for Social Media, amongst marketers.

And yes, in this aspect, I would hope that it is one of our client campaigns, which makes the cut ‘from good to great’

10. We should see some M&A in the agency space: We have many agencies in digital and social media spaces, that are either boutique or small enough, and not part of any big agency group. Between all of these smaller and independent agencies, they manage a large part of the digital and social media businesses. And ad and PR agencies, much bigger than these independent agencies, often do not get a share of that business.

As explained in an earlier prediction, the spends on digital wil increase, and there will be more number of integrated campaigns, too, where the mainline agency and the respective digital agency would probably work together.

It would be time where the larger agencies start thinking of ‘owning’ this piece, and not just renting it. And while ‘build’ is always an option for them, some will look at a ‘buy’. Here is where before end of 2012, we will see some M&A activity amongst the agencies.

We may also see some smaller agencies consolidating in parallel, which wil add steam to the M&A movement in the industry.

So those are my ten predictions. What do you think?

Agree with few, disagree with others? You have any other predictions? Share them as comments. Love to do the discussion.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing everyone in the digital industry, and then everyone else also, a Very Happy and Prosperous 2012.

What do you think? Are advertisers and ad agencies not “walking their talk”??

By the way, I refer to the following blog post that I had don earlier, on the subject of views of Nitin Paranajpe (CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever Ltd): http://blog.socialwavelength.com/2011/07/thought-provoking-words-from-nitin-paranjpe-ceo-and-md-of-hindustan-unilever-ltd/

Social Wavelength is full-service Social Media agency, based out of Mumbai, India.

We do Social Media. We do almost nothing else!

In outbound communication oriented Social Media, we work right across the board, from strategy to execution. In short, we help brands create an exciting presence for themselves, on Social Media.

We also do Social Media Monitoring, or “listening” into social media, and this is used for multiple purposes, including Online Reputation Management (ORM), general buzz monitoring, sentiment analysis, competition tracking, market research, etc.

We are one of the largest Social Media teams in the country, enabling us to handle upwards of 50 leading brands, for their social media activities.

But this only happens with a great big, smart and very talented team. And one which is growing by leaps and bounds.

YES.. WE ARE HIRING!!!

So, if you are smart, can communicate well, are a digital native, love to dabble of social media spaces, and want to make a career in social media, do write to us. We may just have the perfect job waiting for you!

I was at the Click Asia Summit earlier this year, and shared thoughts on Social Media Planning, and challenges thereof.

A video recording of the same is shared here below:

Would love to read your views on these thoughts. Do share!

We are in a rapid expansion mode, to keep up with growing demands of Social Media services.

We are looking for some great talent to join Team Social Wavelength. Our recruitment efforts involve working with recruitment agencies, directly souring profiles, and also putting an ad in the Times of India.

In addition to these efforts, we figured that we also need to talk to you, and let you know about our company, our organization set up, some of the positions that we have open, etc. So here are three videos sharing some of these details:
1. A basic introduction to Social Wavelength:

2. Some details about the organization and the positions open at Social Wavelength:

3. Calling for experienced folks from advertising agencies to consider Social Wavelength as an option! Especially if digital and social media is what turns them on, at work!

Those of you who may be interested to explore further, do check out our website, or email us your resume!

It was fun time again this year, at the Global Youth Marketing Forum, organized by Dr. R. L. Bhatia.

I was invited to speak on the subject of how brands are using Social Media to reach youth markets. As our company has many brands that target youth markets using Social Media, I was able to share my experience. A detailed case study that I shared was about one of our clients, Channel V, and a recent, successful campaign that we ran on Social Media, called ‘Sabse Liked College’.

My presentation deck, from the forum is as under:

This post is the second part of a two part series on the challenges faced by the marketing world today.

In the previous post, I shared some thoughts around the changing marketing model, the need to relook the marketing budget allocations, and the changing role in an organization for marketing.

This second post is largely inspired by Umair Haque’s message that “Marketing Can Do Better“, again from the Harvard Business Review. And my question to that is, “can it?”.

Yes, theoretically, it can do better, but the challenges as highlighted by Umair, are so huge that it will take a marketer significant will and conviction, and then effort, to make the change, and then ‘do better’.

Umair starts with a strong paragraph, that should make any marketer squirm.. :

Why are so many marketing campaigns brand-destroyers and money-losers? Why is “branding” becoming a devalued asset, whose returns are dwindling (witness Google building the world’s mightiest brand with barely a penny of orthodox marketing expenditure)? Why do people and communities exact steeper and steeper discounts, price-cuts, and margin-crushing concessions from the beleaguered, besieged companies once known as the masters of the universe?

The half-life of companies is shrinking and the weary practice known as “marketing,” adding little to no real value, seems powerless to help.

The challenge is well and truly thrown at the marketers!

Are marketers really that helpless?

I completely agree on his points of steep discounts, promotions and margin-crushing concessions. I mean, take for example, brand managers rushing to the GroupOns and the LivingSocials and the SnapDeals to sell (nay, ‘give away’) their products at deep-deep discounts. I liken this move to a marketer throwing up his hands and saying, “Ok, I give up, I cannot sell, and so I will just distribute my products for free!”.

Okay, I do not mean selling anything on GroupOn is wrong. Perishable inventory surplus and things of that kind are fine. But selling branded products for next to nothing, is beyond my comprehension.

Umair also brings in this concept of how marketing has not adapted / changed in all these years, and how its just about “talking down” to the customer:

Marketing is still a militaristic, adversarial school of thought that’s largely about cramming “product” down the already overstuffed gullets of “consumers” by “targeting” “messages” jam-packed with illusory, imaginary benefits at them, in grand “campaigns” that make overblown promises (“See this beer? It’s going to land you the girl of your dreams!!”). I’d argue that marketing as we know it is, still, largely about talking down.

I see this all so often in the marketer’s obsession to “control” things, “control” what comes in the media, “control” communication. Because in that manner, he can decide what exactly the customer should hear, see and read. And he wants to tell the customer what is right for him (the customer). Yes, the whole idea of “talking down“.

Not realizing that the customer does not want it, is not taking it, and that the so-called “control” is a myth in today’s times anyway!

Umair goes on to introduce the concept of “listening up“, then. But in his inimitable style, he first warns what marketers should not conveniently consider to be a ‘listening up’ effort! Yes, marketers may be prone to apparently grab new concepts, if in its garb, they are able to run their favorite old agendas, still.

So here is what Umair warns, is NOT listening up:

Listening up doesn’t mean surveilling your customers, and then discovering slightly cleverer ways to trick them (yet again). Listening up doesn’t mean holding five thousand focus groups a year, and thenprice discriminating the daylights out of hapless customers. Listening up doesn’t mean delving into mines studded with billions of seams of “data” about “consumers.” Listening up definitely doesn’t mean techno-stalking people in creepy, weird, and slightly sinister ways.

I am sure marketers must be seeing a creepy sense of familiarity in the above words. The obsession with traditional means and old forms or marketing keep taking us back to the old ways and the old tricks!! So what DOES Umair refer to, as he talks of “listening up“??

Wikileaks in the world and RadiaGate in India have suddenly exposed the world to a new set of possibilities. And a new set of vulnerabilities.

Conversations, be it on phone or in other electronic formats, and which one assumed to have been private and secure, can actually become very public and embarrassing for the people involved! While the legality of the public appearance of Wikileaks and RadiaGate conversations may be open to judgement, another form of conversations that are clearly legal and yet equally potentially damaging are the kind that are happening in various spaces of Social Media. For a brand or an individual, there is as much damage to fear in Wikileaks or RadiaGate mentions, as it is in damaging Social Media conversations!

Considering a certain parallel between these situations then, I would like to share some learnings from a RadiaGate situation, which can in turn be useful, in tackling Online Reputation Management challenges, for brands, via Social Media.

The bigger story of Nira Radia’s taped conversations, the 2G telecom scam, the role played by corporates and politicians, and many more of those issues, will take a long time to become clear. This post is not about RadiaGate or its fall out, per se.

What this post strives to attempt, is to relate the early response from Ratan Tata, in RadiaGate and map it to a possible ORM challenge for a brand, and see what learnings we can take from the same.

So here is what happened, in this context:

Several telephonic conversations involving lobbyist Nira Radia were tapped, and many of these conversations made their way to the public space, via links posted on the Outlook magazine website.

Nira Radia happened to be officially appointed by the Tatas, as their PR representative, and would have been looking after many corporate matters related to the Tatas. As a part of such management, the Chairman of Tatas. Mr. Ratan Tata, would also have need to talk to Nira Radia, sometimes. Now since the phones of Nira Radia were tapped, and those tapped conversations went public, what also went public, were some of her conversations with her client, Ratan Tata.

Considering the stature of Ratan Tata, this was extremely embarrassing, to say the least. Similar small bits of conversations that Mukesh Ambani (another client of Nira Radia) had with Nira, also went public, likewise.

Well, Ratan Tata was angry. As anyone in his place would. But unlike many others, Ratan Tata chose to go public with his feelings, condemning the leaks. It took everyone by surprise, as first of all, Ratan Tata is not one to go to the media ever so often, and secondly, on account of his direct involvement in some of the leaked conversations! Both, the extent and the manner of his response, surprised everyone.

Whether he should have gone public in this manner, with his thoughts or not, could there have been other, better options are all a matter of conjecture.

But visualize the same kind of dirt flying on the Social Media space, instead of publicly accessible tapes. Then, from an ORM point of view, would this have been a right thing to do? What could have been the best means to handle a crisis of this kind?

Recognize first, that there was indeed a crisis. The goodwill of the Tata name had got shaken. It was made to appear that Tatas, like any other group, also use lobbying, to get favors for themselves. And because you hold a person and a group in such high esteem, therefore, it hurts even more. For the hero to have fallen, and seem like an ordinary mortal after all.

It was in the backdrop of such feelings that the public harboured, did Ratan Tata’s protests came. Here then, are some views on this, from and ORM perspective:

1. If as a company or a large brand, you are attacked by far smaller entities – the bloggerati and all – the last thing you want to start doing, is to show how powerful you are. If you come out like an elephant willing to trample them all away, it can only backfire. As the first reactions to Ratan Tata’s strong response showed. In spite of the great respect that the country has for Ratan Tata and the Tata name, when Ratan Tata himself chose to come out and show anger, it appeared as if reality had stung him. That his group had also tried to manipulate (in their own way) for spectrum etc. appeared to question the lofty standards of the Tata group.

Besides everything else, when Ratan Tata takes the fight to the open, it indeed becomes an open fight! And people like MP Rajeev Chandrashekar chose to also take him on, in public, and suddenly it appeared to a lot of dirty linen out for everyone to see!

2. So if one does not come out strongly, does that mean that one takes negative press (and negative social media) lying down? Surely not. There IS a need to act. And act fast too.

In the recently concluded Click Asia Summit, after my talk, I was asked this question. Whether in the totally unpredictable world of Social Media, a company can at all plan its footsteps?! Could the Tata group have “planned” for a situation like RadiaGate?

No, you cannot PLAN for an exact situation. In this very open world of electronic information, Wikileaks and RadiaGate WILL happen. You just don’t know what the next one will be like. And what damage it will cause. So while you cannot plan the exact nature of response, you CAN prepare a protocol and be ready. And not have to be randomly impulsive, and potentially put your foot into your mouth!

Companies need to have a plan, and genuine training to the team, to deal with these new media related challenges that can come any day! A key starting point is to have a Media Monitoring plan in place, especially a Social Media Monitoring one!

3. As a part of the plan, empower the frontline team to respond! I remember the live coverage of 26/11 and the various authorities in whose face, media was prepared to stick a mike. And how they had no clue what to really say. There was no coordinated response, neither was there a preparation at most places, about the ways to deal with situations of this kind. Where 26/11 was television, worst is the case with social media, where any kind of negative news can come, for your brand, and can potentially snowball. Before a Ratan Tata intervened, there would have been lots of questions posed to the frontline folks in Tata Communications. Were they equipped to give any kind of response at all?

4. Play in the same field. So, if someone has put a strong message against you in an online forum, and you choose to go and call a press conference in response. That does not work. No can do. The biggest conversations – at least in open forums – about Ratan Tata and Barkha Dutt and Nira Radia were all happening on Social Media. Ratan Tata, writing a letter in mainline press, or doing a press conference, was fine. But he let the tongues continue to wag on Social Media.

It was important to respond in this space also. Whether it was by posting a YouTube video and then have a team responding back to other queries, or whatever.

5. Strengthen your team with external forces! Yes, you can shout yourself hoarse with your side of the story, and there will always be people who will doubt it. And the more you say, the more questions will be raised, and the more risk of being perceived as guilty! However, can you get force multipliers in terms of external support? Consolidate third party opinions that agree with yours, and give your point of view, that much more credence. Instead of just Ratan Tata fighting the lone battle on behalf of the Tata group, including taking on Rajeev Chandrashekar and the Congress government, could there have been other credible sources who could have been brought in, to strengthen the Tata story? And give it better credibility?

Same approach works in Social Media as well!

6. This is the time when all your earlier good work comes to help. Yes, all those testimonials and your credentials that you have been building up. This is the time to go out and leverage those. Used in a subtle way, the testimonials and credentials now need to give additional credibility to your view point, and make people question the allegations against your brand. Tata might have done it in some measure and could have done a lot more. And you can do it too, in the possible face of any negative mentions against you, on Social Media.

In summary, I would emphasize that there will be more Wikileaks and more RadiaGates. There will also be more of the Dominos cases or the Nestle Greenpeace attacks. This is the new world, the world of new media as well.

It is not about hoping (praying??) that it does not happen to you. But about being aware of the possibility first, and then about having preparation for such eventualities.

Yes, we can learn from what Ratan Tata did right, and also from what he did not do so right.