10 Things Brand-Owners Can Learn From Digital Start-ups

I was invited to attend a Digital Conference recently and it was one of the best I’ve attended because it was actually an ‘un-conference’ – an awesome format where one could attend any one of the numerous sessions that were taking place in parallel, so one could literally go with one’s ‘energy’.

Running my own Digital start-up for the last 4 years, after having been at Asian Paints, Unilever and Aviva, has allowed me to develop my own perspective on ‘what offline brand-owners can learn from digital start-ups’. I hosted a discussion around this topic but it was quite poorly attended to say the least. I’m conveniently putting that down to the moderate success of my venture which meant that I was not a household name and well, my company mycity4kids.com is getting there(hopefully atleast) but we’re still some distance from the names I was competing with, such as LinkedIn, Yahoo and the like. So rather than beating myself up and prolonging the bout of ‘analysis-paralysis’, I thought I’d lay down my thoughts in the form of a blog and put the hypothesis to test.

1. The sex is in the Product, not the Ad

The key difference seems to the way brands and start-ups are wired. The underlying philosophy for a start-up is that a great product drives trial and word-of-mouth, which in turn drives repeats and frequency of usage. Think Uber. For brands, the common belief seems to be parity products with great communication, read advertising, will drive penetration and repeats. Brands like Dove illustrate beautifully how a great product with good communication can deliver outstanding results. Kinder Joy is another example of how a differentiated product beats differentiated communication like Axe hands-down.

2. Product Improvement is a daily process, not an annual/bi-annual launch/re-launch

The Build-Measure-Learn approach to product development, as outlined in The Lean Start-up, is at the heart of how a Digital Start-up works – continuously improving the product through a series of iterations based on user feedback. While the costs and complexity in the offline world may not allow for the same time-frames, what it could certainly learn is the mindset of seeing the product as a continuous work-in-progress, as opposed to a fixed one between periodic re-launches.

3. Is the person managing your brand’s social media pages the best ambassador for your brand

Social media pages provide brands a great opportunity to engage with customers and reveal the ‘human face’ of the brand on a day-to-day basis. Despite this, the task is almost always assigned to an Agency and the brand-owner is quite unlikely to have physically met the person ‘managing’ the ‘brand’, creating a dissonance between what the brand stands for and what it delivers. Moreover, social media pages have also become a preferred mode of logging complaints and while an out-sourced entity may be able to respond quickly, it is quite unlikely that they can resolve the issue without appropriate levels of authority and expertise. Our learning is that people want authenticity so the person managing your page should be the best ambassador of what your brand stands for and believes in.

4. Don’t let vanity metrics gloss over the real stuff

The currency of vanity metrics keeps changing but the vanity clearly remains. So while Facebook Like’s was where brands ‘invested’ monies in the past, the new ‘investment’ is on branded mobile apps. These numbers look good on ppt’s but start-up’s simply don’t have the luxury to do this, which we learned the hard way. We deployed an agency to manage Facebook ads for us and the number of Like’s simply exploded at a Cost per Like which was 60% lower than earlier. A closer look at the underlying demographics revealed that 80% of the newly acquired base was completely wasteful so, in reality, we paid 2X more.

5. Virality is an outcome. Not a strategy.

No brief is complete without the new virus in town called virality. Virality is like hitting a six off the last ball and wining the match for your team. This is every batsman’s dream because it happens so rarely. The consistent players know that innings are built on singles, two's and the odd four. There is a lesson in it for brands as consumers expect brands to help them improve their lives on a regular basis and not only when the brand is afflicted with the ‘virus’.

6. Passion and Experiences beat Pedigree

In my first job out of business school, I shared a PG accommodation with a friend who was tasked with managing a sanitary protection brand. A regular on our showcase was product samples which, for obvious reasons, only served to gather dust. In another instance, I found a bachelor managing a diapers brand quoting insights sourced from various researches. Contrast this with mycity4kids, where the entire content teams boasts of the single most important qualification – being a Mum. The best insights come with experiencing stuff rather than reading research reports.

7. Self-learning is to Digital Marketing what Experience is to the rest

I came across a provocative headline a year back which said that the CMO of Citibank had sacked her entire Digital Marketing team in the US. Her argument was that, just like every member of her team understood conventional media and hence there was no separate team for TV, Press and so on, everyone now needed to understand Digital and not leave it to the Digital Marketing team. The good news is that there are great online resources to learn from. My personal favourite is Twitter where I follow a number of thought leaders on issues ranging from SEO to Content Marketing. Reading an article a day is a fun way to learn and stay abreast with the latest thinking. Nothing beats putting the theory to practice however, and here one’d been lucky to be able to make changes on a ‘live’ site, measure their impact and make more changes and so on, to know what really works and what doesn’t.

8. Discussions beat Presentations; Decisiveness beats ‘Right-ness’

Presentations are like a TVC – time-consuming to make, great to ‘communicate’ but not so to ‘engage’. When you’re in survival mode, you expect everyone to contribute and discussions are a great way to elicit participation. Start-ups are also forced to value time much more and hence almost every meeting would end in a decisive outcome, as opposed to getting all the ‘data’ before committing to a decision. The point being that it is important to be decisive and while the decision may change later, it's still better than not deciding.

9. Great things take time to build

This is counter-intuitive but true. Zomato which won the ET Start-up of the Year in 2014 began in 2008 and Bookmyshow which won the previous year, started in 2007(in its second coming). Contrast this with the Sunsilk Gang of Girls, a brilliant initiative launched by HUL in 2006, which had generated a few million page views per month, within 5 months of launch. By March 2007, the number of registered members had crossed the half million mark, with about 30,000 gangs. The stats are clearly impressive but the initiative is long dead as revealed by a search of ‘gang of girls’ on www.sunsilk.in. Sunsilk is roughly a Rs 1000 cr brand today and arguably, the value of the community they were building would have valued it at several times more than the core franchise. With average stints of 18-24 months, chances are that the brand would have passed through 4 teams in the last 8 years making it almost impossible for the initiative to survive. In a start-up, the founder’s vision ensures that businesses stay the course as they find a way to deliver it.

10. Start thinking about a new venture instead of the next ‘stint’

I’m often asked about whether I regret quitting and what it feels like to run a start-up, after working with the ‘big boys’. After four and a half years, I can confidently say that I have no regrets despite a lower bank balance. In terms of what it feels, I think the highs have been higher and the lows lower but most importantly, I feel ALIVE. I believe in the endless possibility that every new day brings and that I can make the world a better place in my own, small way. So my final advice to you, if you’ve patiently reached this part, is to stop thinking about your next stint, the next designation and so on. Instead, think of starting your own venture and discover your true potential. You won’t regret it.