Ideas Maverick Blog by Preetham Venkky

Mantri Square (Mall) is arguably South Asia’s biggest mall, but clearly India’s largest. Situated in Bangalore, India; it opened its gates on March 01, 2010. Recently, it has received criticism for pumping in more traffic to the already congested Malleshwaram locality. What has come under immense fire is their insufficient parking. By distracting the public’s attention to much larger issues, Mantri Square Mall has been successfully running a good penny scam. A penny scam is one, where you get users to fork out small amounts of money which when added up benefits the establishment in crores.

Mantri Square Mall Parking Scam

The scam came to my attention when I visited the mall two Sundays in a row. They coolly asked me to fork up Rs. 50 right underneath a board which claimed the parking fees to start at Rs. 20 onwards. To add to it, they decided to give a parking slip with no rates mentioned on it. When quizzed about the same, their response was that their parking system wasn’t ready and functional as yet, so they can’t log the in and out time. This despite the ‘parking ticket’ having options for in and out timing. Here are a few photographs shot using my mobile camera:

What’s worse is that the security personnel at the exit gate take the ‘parking ticket’ away from you, leaving you with no proof of payment (not that there was any to begin with).

Professional operators of malls such as the Forum Mall provide you with a printed receipt of payment when asked for. Not to mention their system is computerised and logs each vehicles entry and exit time allowing all transactions to be recorded and reported. One can only estimate the professional manner in which a mall such as Mantri Square Mall is run since even after 2 months since launch they don’t have a parking system in place. And maybe intentionally so. Allow me to explain how.

Parking Scam Runs Into Crores

Listed below are the calculations of the undeclared profit for the Mantri Square Mall Parking Scam. Calculating conservatively, the final amount runs up to a cool cash pool of Rs. 1,83,00,000 (one crore, eighty three lakhs); possibly undeclared, unaccounted black money.

Total Parking Capacity: 2,000
Car rollover: 250 cars/hr from 1200 − 2000 hrs
Extra Cars Parked: 2,000
Total Cars Parked: 4,000 (at full capacity)

Conservative Undeclared Margin Per Car – Rs. 25
105 weekends/yr (at full capacity) – Rs. 1,05,00,000 (undeclared)
260 weekdays/yr (at 30% capacity) – Rs. 78,00,000 (undeclared)
Total Undeclared Margin – Rs. 1,83,00,000

That’s 1 Crore 83 Lakhs. Definitely not a small figure and arrived at with conservative calculations without taking into account the margins from two-wheeler parking. Quite clearly the number could exceed 2 Crores.

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So, what should Mantri Square Mall have done. Here’s my simple three step plan to restore consumer confidence:

1. Install a parking system, tomorrow (yes tomorrow!)
2. Charge the users the lower-end of the parking fee (Rs. 20)
3. Print the price of the parking fee on the ticket

While Mantri Square Mall would love to argue on the second point, my take on the issue is that it’s their fault (and laziness) that the parking system is not ready, why should consumers bear the burden? Either make the parking free, or charge the minimum fee.

The only question on everyone’s mind after reading this would be: What will Mantri do?

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Recently, Condé Nast publications decided to turn into a creative agency for their existing roster of clients with advertisements being produced, customised and optimised for other media (besides Condé Nast properties) such as Facebook and Youtube. Condé Nast, the publishers of Vogue magazine, have a bouquet of publications specialising in fashion, design, lifestyle as well as technology. It’s always endearing to see old media companies get onto the social media bandwagon with little or no understanding.

Case Study: Vogue India

So we decided to analyse the social media efforts by Condé Nast publications over at this side of the world. We analysed the presence of Vogue India on their three primary social media channels – Blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Vogue India Blog Analysis

Vogue India’s blog can be found at – http://www.vogue.in/blog.aspx With no means to subscribe to a RSS feed, I’m not quite certain if their blog qualifies to be one. While you can leave comments on the blog posts, and subscribe to it via e-mail using a long registration process; it’s nothing but a glorified content page, which until recently updated their blogs only once a month. With no way to subscribe to the content on this blog site (either via RSS or Atom feeds), Vogue India’s blog is user unfriendly and just not Web 2.0 ready.

The first blog post was published on 16 Aug 2008 with close to 70 post so far. The blog articles haven’t been regular until just recently.

Vogue India Facebook Analysis

Disappointingly, Vogue India seems to have taken the Facebook group route instead of bringing in more interaction with the brand by establishing a Facebook page instead. To confuse the user further, they have 2 groups with similar updates.

Vogue India group has 6,418 members and was last updated on 14 Mar 2010 while Vogue India: Your Fashion Bible group has 2,879 members and is up to date. The strategy to maintain two Facebook groups is both disconcerting as well as confusing. Both the groups are listed under the “Entertainment & Arts – Fashion” category and are administered by Jasmeen Dugal.

What’s odd is that there is little or no interaction with group members and the groups are primarily being used as a broadcast medium to notify members about new articles and updates on the main site / publication. Vogue India could’ve used their group album to publish behind the scenes photographs of all the action, but instead they seem to be using it only to update it with the cover pages for each of their issues. There’s a huge scope to utilise this community, but they seem to be doing little about it.

Vogue India Twitter Analysis

Vogue India seems to be using Twitter only as a broadcast channel. They have a disproportionate ratio of tweeps following vs followed. As a thumb rule, brands are expected to follow back their followers. This action enables their fans to send them direct messages which ensures one-to-one communication without disrupting their public timeline.

Their first tweet was published on 29 Sep 2009, a lame broadcast tweet. There is absolutely no interaction with tweeps and all the updates seem to be using the web interface. Anyone serious about using Twitter social media related communication will always use an application like Tweetdeck or CoTweet.

I don’t know what’s worse, their lack of interaction, despite fans wanting to or their lack of understanding of who they need to follow. A large number of tweeps they follow don’t seem to have updated their Twitter profile pic.

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Listed below are a few pointers Vogue India could use in order to up their social media interaction:

• Enable RSS subscription on Vogue India blog
• Migrate the blog to WordPress platform with Disqus commenting
• Merge both the Facebook groups
• Actively interact with Facebook group members
• Post behind-the-scenes action on group albums
• Move from Facebook group to Facebook pages
• Follow back your followers on Twitter
• Interact with Indian tweeps interested in fashion
• Activate the latest Facebook like button on all web pages
• Integrate all your social media platforms

All stats and details were gathered as on 24 Apr 2010.

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While most social media marketing experts understand and propagate the importance of titling, tagging and describing all media uploaded on social networking sites, very few understand its importance from the context of social objects.

Social Objects

In an interesting webinar a few days back, Brian Solis pointed to the importance of all media uploaded on social networking sites as candidates for optimisation. SMO (social media optimisation) is the new SEO (search engine optimisation). I would prefer to define social objects as any media which can be found by searching. Social objects need to have the following properties:

1. Social Objects should be associated with a digital file offline.
   A word document, a notepad file, a power point presentation, a MP3 audio file, a movie file, a picture, a XML / HTML page, etc. are all digital files offline which can be shared online.
2. Social Objects should be findable via search.
   A social object stands to be one  only if can be located via generic search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) or using network specific search engines (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.).
3. Social Objects should have a title, tag / category and description.
   All social media content should be tag-able, descriptive and  titled. This helps describe the social object and distinguishes one media type from the other. This is important since all searches are still keyword based and the above three properties will help locate the appropriate media.

In simpler terms, an image on Flickr, a bookmark on Delicious, a video on YouTube, a document on Scribd, a blog post on WordPress, a tweet on Twitter are all social objects which satisfy the above properties. Needless to add, a proper keyword analysis is advised before defining the various properties of a social object. So the next time you upload an image or a video spend a little extra time filling in the additional information.

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I think we are at the cusp of the traditional ‘advertising is dead’ syndrome and the resurgence of social marketing. While browsing through my library at home, I stumbled upon David Ogilvys’, Confessions of an Advertising Man. A few years back, when I was trying to shape our organisation as a leading technology evangelist, Ogilvys’ writing always taught me to lead from the front and instilled a great deal of leadership.

Confessions of an Advertising Man is a book that needs to be read by everyone interested in entrepreneurship, networking, and leadership. It’s not a book on advertising but a book on life-skills. With a few doubts in my mind on how to add value to our present set of clients, I went back to Confessions. David, unsurprisingly, came through for me once again. Each time I browse through the book, I discover a new way of thinking and a renewed inspiration to do things differently.

Confessions discusses Ogilvys’ failures and triumphs in a world where advertising as we know it was being shaped. To my shocking disbelief I realised that the book was guiding me in the right direction in matters of the new paradigm of Social Media Marketing. The lessons learnt from the book can be reused to make way for newer marketing methodologies. I think it’s a must read for anyone interested in the field of mass communications.

NODE 6: If you are interested in selling a new world-view, as with Social Media, then there are lessons to be learnt from Confessions of an Advertising Man. Confessions is the Godfather!

Photo Credit - George Chen

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It started with a blog post against Cafe Coffee Day, by an aggrieved customer and as all things powerful, moved onto some classic bashing online. In this case, a typical social media frenzy on Twitter with the hash tag – #ccdsucks taking on new life. It’s even gone upto the extent of creating an anonymous Twitter account with the handle @CCDSUCKS with a defaced logo for a profile pic. One can only assume it was created by the loud and active tweep @AmolMathur considering the only conversation mentioned there was about his rank as a tweeter on 90di. Trying to get your 15 tweets of fame using a topic which is not equally represented is both unfair and in bad taste. But let’s get down to the facts at hand and represent the issue from both sides:

Tweeps at CCD

If anyone’s been to the Cafe Coffee Day at Ispahani centre in Chennai, you’d realise that it’s a store with very high foot-falls. This would put pressure on the store staff to cater to an ever-growing customer base. I personally think it’s unfair to keep other customers waiting only because you’ve ordered a Latte and seem to have a four hour agenda. I’m only making such assumptions because the blog doesn’t seem to be unbiased and we haven’t had a statement from the other side (Cafe Coffee Day or it’s franchisee). Lack of statement doesn’t mean admission of guilt.

But having stated the above, I think rudeness from a staff is unacceptable under all counts. People are reasonable and if the manager had put forth his point reasonably, then such a backlash could’ve been avoided entirely. Adding to this, there was the lame expectancy of a ‘cover charge’, something that doesn’t take place in any Cafe Coffee Day anywhere. I think such issues can be best avoided if all parties involved can behave gently, diplomatically and honestly; which the tweeps seem to have conducted themselves but the same wasn’t forthcoming from the store management. Taking this a step further, I would’ve expected tweeps to have handled the situation with more maturity:

1. They should’ve protested and tried to reason with the Manager
2. Not bluntly deface the CCD brand
3. Clearly state their dismay and their ‘feelings’ regarding the issue
4. Put forth a sane and practical demand (an apology for instance)
5. Welcome any kind of apology or dialog from CCD

Cafe Coffee Day

Well, clearly they seem to have offended a few customers and that is unacceptable. I do appreciate them getting to the bottom of the issue as quickly as they have, and apologised to the aggrieved parties involved. It’s not everyday that a company accepts their fault and tries to resolve the issue amicably. But clearly, things got out of hand and continued to do so for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, the last tweet from Cafe Coffee Day stopped at 12:40 pm on 05 Feb 2010. I would’ve expected a more active participation and it would’ve served them better if they had followed the three As – Admit, Apologise & Act. CCD should’ve handled the matter using the following means:

1. Contacted the franchise and interviewed Mr. Shiva
2. Published the interview and admit their fault (if any)
3. Immediately, publish a blog post with their side of the story and action taken
4. Actively respond to all tweeps using the #ccdsucks tag with their twitter apologies and blog post
5. Conduct pt 4 in a quick timely fashion
6. Try to steer the conversation from #ccdsucks to #ccdresponds

One of the primary reasons #ccdsucks has become a trending topic is because of the lack of active presence of Cafe Coffee Day on twitter. Their incapacity to steer the conversation from #ccdsucks to #ccdresponds  (or the likes of it) seems to have cost them dearly.

Conclusion

#ccdsucks issue does seem to have gone out of hands. While the mob frenzy seems to have stir a storm in a coffee cup, it was clearly uncalled for and completely misdirected. Considering their presence on Twitter, Cafe Coffee Day could’ve done better by actively (and constantly) responding to the issue by steering the conversation away from #ccdsucks to an alternative.

Photo Credit - Karthik Narayan

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