For most companies, marketing spend is one of the largest cost items on the financial statement. Yet the level of discipline placed upon that marketing spend is too often appalling. Habitual behavior over the years has resulted in marketing not being managed like the rest of the business.

Whereas it is unthinkable for a CFO to manage the financials of a company without a general ledger system, the CMO continues to run the marketing of a company in the absence of an analogous business application. This is despite that the fact that a company’s marketing efforts requires coordination among multiple internal functional areas, departments and business units; across much geography; and between external agencies, vendors and partners. Coupled this with the rate of marketplace change, the complexity becomes crushing. Today, it is just too hard to do marketing consistently well—and, it’s increasingly inefficient and unaffordable.

Forrester Research in its one its findings concluded that “Given the complexity of delivering consistent customer experiences, integrating marketing processes, and measuring marketing performance, we cannot afford to continue and rely on point solutions” because the consequences can be severe on both the company and its customers.

1. Companies Suffer - Inefficiencies lead to wasted resources, to campaigns that are misaligned with the brand strategy, to unacceptably long cycle times, to reduced accountability, and to clouded visibility to the landscape of programs that are underway or planned.

2. Customers Endure - The internal issues of marketing bubble up and spill over the walls of the company. These issues then manifest themselves to external customers as suboptimal brand experiences. Instead of “right person, right message, right time,” a customer may be dumbfounded by the inadequacy of a company’s understanding of them as an individual and by how poorly they use that insight to build a profitable relationship.

It is therefore time that senior marketers start re examining their practices, with the realization that the consequences of maintaining the status quo negatively impacts the company’s most valuable asset—namely, its customers and this in turn will certainly propel professionals to inquire how technologically enabled marketing may address the need.

Change is on the horizon, however, with CMOs increasingly being required by the CEO and CFO to demonstrate management acumen—not only for result that drive the bottom line, but also for the expenditure of resources and for the practices and processes used in the design and deployment of programs.

To drive the productivity and efficiency that is now demanded, the CMOs need to holistically consider the entire Marketing Value Chain—namely, all of the business processes that connect corporate, brand and field marketing plus external marketing suppliers and agencies to customers.

Enhancing the efficiency of these processes will allow the marketing to become more effective in strengthening customer relationships.

Companies that have deployed automated marketing solutions have been found to deliver productivity gains between 15 - 40% across all components of the marketing production and roll out value chain including project management, artwork production, agency spends, campaign cycle time, campaign responses and in the process drive up customer response and retention rates by any where between 10 to 20 per cent.

So if you are one of those at the client or at the agency who constantly says that your simplest campaign takes several months to define and launch and that your resources spend most of their time in ferrying data, briefs, and creative across multiple agencies, then maybe it is time for you to ask your self “How can Automated Marketing make my marketing & business more efficient?”

If you’re not already on the social media bandwagon, get on to it now. It’s only your brand that will gain online.

Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell’



There’s nothing to be learnt about social media. We need to apply what we already know to a new social environment. Yet, managing your brand online is not an easy task, although it may seem so, owing to the heavily crowded online marketplace.

Social media is being called the revolution of our century and since a social presence is considered a must-have, you may as well work on creating it. Demonstrate your experience and your personality by making yourself available. It makes your brand credible, helps you attract new customers and investors.

Here are some methods I have seen work best to give brands the momentum in this crowded space. So, grab your mouse and begin.

Simply Socialise
Start anew. Social media is wired differently, and is all about one-on-one conversations. Be active on social networks. It’s important you set up your profiles and use those sites to your professional advantage.

Create one or more social networking profiles for your Indian as well as global audiences. When you are ready, extend your social media presence to Twitter, where you can simply spread your influence through the means of a conversation. Have a LinkedIn profile for yourself. Do not forget to create a profile in Technorati, the blog search engine. Ping them every time you post. Google profiles are another important tool for ranking high in search results.

It doesn’t end at that! Once you make an effort to become part of a community, you will need to make yourself available when people reach out to you.

Go The Whole Blog
First, create your own blog. It’s easy, and free. Wordpress.com and Google’s blogger.com come highly recommended. Choose a URL that is easily recognisable and findable. Great if you can try to include your brand name in it.

Create new content regularly. The more others can use your content, the better they will adopt it.

Keep your content brief. Use lots of visual breaks so people can absorb better. Think about adding a graphic per post. Invite all your customers to your blog. Link to everyone who matters in your industry.

Post fast and frequently, both the good news and the bad. If your customers do not find out the bad news from you, they probably will from your competitors.

Talk in a human voice. Be warm and personal. Be imperfect. It is a real-time conversation between two human beings, not the perfect ad copy of traditional marketing.

Keep your blog lively. If you had a customer event, create some videos and post them on YouTube. Link to the videos from your blog. For photographs, there’s Flickr or Picasa.

Don’t stop at that! Go on and search for other blogs in your area of expertise and pitch them your ideas for posts. Each blog is personalised and has its own focus, so customise your pitches while writing to each. Keep blogging! Repeat!

YouTube Your Way To Stardom

Say hello to the world via YouTube right now. Start your own free broadcast channel. On youtube.com, select a category and simply watch a few videos to get a good idea about what you can accomplish with the world’s favourite “Broadcast yourself” Internet video channel.

Next, click on the “Create Account” link on the top right corner to create an account. If you use Gmail, you can link your YouTube account with your Google account. You just created a YouTube channel for yourself.

Now the “Create Account” link would have been replaced with your user name. Upload videos to your channel by clicking on the “Upload” link on the top of the YouTube page.

Once uploaded, promote your video. If you are on Twitter, tweet about it. Link to the video from your Facebook page. YouTube will automatically prompt you about your friend list in Gmail. The service also allows you to find friends in Yahoo!, Facebook, and Hotmail. Could it get any easier?

Gain From Your Campaigns
Use the ‘exclusivity’ tool while indulging in campaigns for your brand online. If you appeal to people’s vanity, it will attract them to your social media campaign.

Switch on the “Fun” meter while dealing with a youthful target audience. This almost always works.

Make your customers feel loved or appreciated by your brand. Hook them by discussing real-life issues. It connects with people instantly.

Come closer to your consumers…create support forums to discuss their issues. Give them advice where required.

Sign For Success
Your email signature must also reflect its personality—make it social. Give information using this as a channel. People in your network will automatically find out more about you. Add your blog URL, RSS feeds, social icons et al to your signatures.

The trend is to have a virtual business card. This makes it convenient for people to look for you and for you to share your information with them.

Lastly, and most importantly, EARN TRUST. If you don’t have all the answers, do not pretend that you do. Nobody would fault Einstein if he didn’t know baking. Instead, help your customers find answers elsewhere. Give them enough options to lead them. They will come back to you for more.

And the one philosophy that ALWAYS works is ‘Act on your customer’s voices’. Under promise and over deliver! Nothing is more sacred than this.

So, go and get your name out there on the social web…and budding entrepreneurs, even more so! There isn’t a more fun way to do business than social media marketing.

It was during the peak of the dot com bust in 2000 that EBS Worldwide, a Mumbai based marketing services firm came into existence and has transformed itself during the e commerce revolution that took place a few years later. With the diversification of markets and the increased emphasis on specialising customer relations, the niche industry of marketing process outsourcing is gaining importance. In an email interview, Chris George,founder and group CEO, EBS Worldwide talks about the need for new marketing strategies, the future of social media in brand management, future plans of the company and the new paradigms in the service industry.

You believe there is an increasing need for MPO (Marketing Process Outsourcing) firms in India. How has the industry evolved over the last 10 years and how competitive a sector is it?

As forms begin to look for more measurable, yet effective ways to further their brand, marketers are looking beyond traditional ‘advertising’ agencies to meet this need. Marketing today goes beyond the idea of creating a memorable television advertisement; it’s also about using technology and new media and building a one-to-one relationship with the customer. These needs require that the Chief Marketing Officer partner with a new kind of marketing services company; this is where EBS comes in. Globally this industry is highly evolved and has undergone a segment-wise classification within the sector – direct marketing agencies, digital marketing agencies, marketing software companies etc. In India, the industry remains fragmented with small players and a limited understanding of the larger landscape. However, we’re at the cusp of change in the industry, where players like EBS are driving the consolidation wave, having achieved scale both in India and international markets. The next few years will see India leapfrog a few steps of evolution to achieve what mature markets have done, albeit in 1/4th the time.

At EBS, I believe you aim to address a gap that exists between traditional PR agencies and BPO services? Which are the different areas you focus on and what is the integrative outlook you offer?

EBS acts as a complimentary partner to the traditional advertising agency, focusing on the ‘below-the-line’ arena of digital marketing, direct marketing, eCRM(customer relationship management) programs, marketing software and pre-media studio services. The EBS Group consists of three entities – EBS Interactive, EBS MarketClik and EBS PreMedia. EBS Interactive is a global digital marketing agency, providing strategic consulting, management & execution services for a client’s one-to-one marketing needs. It works with marquee clients across India, Europe & the US. EBS MarketClik is a software products business where the software helps automate complex marketing workflows for global brands. The software is licensed to clients via the web, essentially offering the software-as-a-service (SaaS). EBS PreMedia provides off-shore design studio services to international brands looking to outsource work such as artwork creation, packaging design, layout & image manipulation through an integrated service offering, the EBS Group addresses the client’s need of creating, managing and delivering effective one-to-one marketing campaigns across media (web, mobile or print)

In India, how successful have digital marketing strategies been and by which industries in particular? To what extent has/can social media been utilised?

The fact that this industry is growing at about 35 per cent per year, shows the success digital marketing have been experiencing in India across sectors. However the utilisation of social media as an effective marketing tool is rather limited. Often brands have created social media games or side bar ad banners and been happy with the mediocre results. We need to ride this wave of social networks to understand how it will become to the ubiquitous to the lifestyle of customers tomorrow. Social networks will drive sharing at multiple levels and Facebook at its equivalents are too generic a platform. Brands will need to create their own networks of loyalists as a way to engage customers into a conversation.

How effective have loyalty programs proven to be, particularly in the Retail and FMCG sector? In which sectors would they prove to be most profitable?

Loyalty programs are the backbone of customer retention. While the quality of your primary service offering is always the main reason for a customer to come to a brand; effective loyalty programs help provide an incentive for the customer to stay with the brand. The most visible example of a successful loyalty program in the retail sector in India is that of the ShoppersStop First Citizen Club. The FMCG sector in India however has not seen any long-term sustainable program of its kind. While all loyalty programs are inherently profitable – it is easier and less expensive to retain a customer, than to acquire a new one – the financial services & retail industries do provide a higher impact visibility.

With regard to SME’s, what kind of marketing models would be most successful? How have/do you plan to cater to such businesses and nascent entrepreneurs?

Chris: Marketing Services for the SME sector in India, is significantly under focused, this could be a significant growth area in the coming years. The question however is of the SME companies understanding the business impact of such services. For example, the use of marketing automation software products can significantly reduce costs of campaign creation & management for SME companies. For EBS, this is part of next phase of strategic growth.

With the acquisition of New Jersey-based IMG, what are the changes you have/intend to incorporate in your business process?

Our overseas acquisition provided us the learning of ‘off-shore digital production’. How for example, do you manage the outsourced development of a social media gaming application from New York. So we moved parts of technology, creative & analytics to India. Now we have local account managers in the US who understand the client’s needs at a local level, while our offshore ‘pipe’ delivers the back-end.

When and how important is it to adapt your working model according to the nature or nationality of a client?

It is absolutely important to adapt according to geography or client. In our business, ‘one size does not fit all’. Simple matters like the Indian sensibility of colour and design is very different from the European markets. Or an Indian banking client has very different go-to-market strategies from an International one.

Do you intend to follow the route of M&As for EBS’ market capitalisation as well as accessing global markets? Any plans in the offing…

Inorganic growth is an integral part of our growth plans. We see about half of our future revenue growth coming from M&A activities. We’re looking at various opportunities at this time, but haven’t reached any conclusions yet.

Given the phenomenal growth in the service sector, what should be the focus when it comes to customer relationship management in India?

Integrating loyalty and reward programs, with social media is an essential part of future eCRM programs. If a brand has a loyal customer, they want to interact with other loyal customers. If the brand can facilitate this using social media, it can build lasting stickiness with the customer.

Chris George likes to kick butt: Taekwondo style! Though a movie buff, it wasn’t the moves that he saw in martial arts flicks that inspired him to take up the sport. The founder and CEO of EBS Worldwide, a 10-year-old marketing firm, just wanted to achieve top form. There was one problem—gyms and lifting weights did not excite him. “I wanted to be fit, but I didn’t want to become a beef-cake,” says the 34-year-old winner of the Bo Dan belt. His quest for the perfect form of exercise took him to the Taekwondo Federation of India four years ago. Now, he spends about one and a half hours five days a week in practice. In January next year, he hopes to earn his first Black Belt. He sure is kicked about that!

Killer move
- Tack-gueg No. 6: A six-foot kick in the air

Killer move
- Tack-gueg No. 6: A six-foot kick in the air

Dressed to fight
- The Dobok consists of wide pyjamas and a V-necked jacket.
The belt denotes the rank or grade of the wearer

A long road to a Black Belt
- George has won White, Yellow, Purple, Orange, Green, Senior Green, Blue,
Senior Blue, Brown, Senior Brown, Red, Senior Red and Bo Dan belts
Essentials
- Head guard
- Chest guard
- Groin guard
- Fore arm and shin pads
- Mouth guard

EBS Worldwide will close 2010-11 with revenues of Rs 64 crore, within seven years of entering this business, is interesting. It makes the Mumbai-based company, arguably, the largest provider of interactive marketing services out of India. It has offices in London, New York, Mumbai and Noida. These offer three services. One, one-to-one interactive/digital marketing services across the globe. Two, remote studio facilities for artwork and design of anything from annual reports to ad campaigns and brochures only for global companies. Three, it helps companies automate their marketing departments. EBS is majority owned by Group CEO and founder Chris George and his team. The rest is split between IL&FS and several individual shareholders, including Mahesh Murthy and Ranjan Kapoor. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to George on how the company works. Excerpts.

You started as a music retailer (easybuymusic.com), what made you turn to marketing services?

We were doing very well with music retailing and in three years (by 2003) we hit Rs 15 crore in revenue. However penetration was an issue in India. So we took the CRM/technology knowhow and applied it to another industry. In 2003-04 banking and insurance had exploded. All the companies were in a tearing hurry, those guys wanted to achieve what the US taken decades to achieve. Their targets were like one million mailers, two million SMSes, can we track them, analyse them and so on. They needed everything, process, technology and creative. This was non (advertising) agency kind of work though the agencies were not interested.

So we had a lot of agency guys join us under design and production and then worked on the tech and processes. Our first client was HSBC Bank; we handled their credit card loyalty management programme. Today more than 75 per cent of our revenue comes from interactive marketing. Between 2004 and now, there has been a year-on-year growth in the share of one-to-one in marketing budgets, it is close to 35 per cent of the total.

How does the remote design and outsourced marketing bit work?

It is a bit like an ERP solution. We have a suite of automated products for marketing departments that ensure cohesiveness across all advertising messages across the world, say in colour, font, and design. So if a campaign for Avaya is created in Hong Kong, it doesn’t have to be recreated in Singapore. We license our software tools to Avaya which in turn licenses it to its complex web of resellers and dealers. They then use our software and templates, customise the campaign and use it in their regions.

There are three levels to marketing services. At level one, you are still defining the whys and hows of the brand. At level two, you have imbibed those but need processes to execute it. At level three, the whole function needs to be automated. For us, India is at level one, therefore the market opportunity outside is greater.

Isn’t this an awfully fragmented and low margin area? In fact most of the larger companies have been bought out by Publicis or WPP...

We have chosen to be in those businesses which are driven by technology, where there is no commoditification and no international presence. The companies that have been bought out have been struggling. One of our trips is to play the role of WPP in this space. So we are alright acquiring companies or growing organically. The sooner we hit Rs 100 crore (in 2011-2012) the closer will be to owning this space.

In a market place cluttered with competing brands with their competing marketing din, how can a brand run ahead of the pack? Here’s a thought: how about involving the very consumer we plan to sell to, in the actual selling of the brand? I remember watching The Joneses, in 2009, where a seemingly perfect family (they are not a real family) forms a part of the ritzy consumerist American society and starts influencing the neighbours with its elegant and trend-setting lifestyle – cool clothes, fast cars, latest gadgets.

The neighbours, already impressed, want to live it up to the Joneses’ standards. The intelligence of the film is the amazing premise that the Jones family forms a part of the savvy marketing team that these brands bank on to sell their products, raking in big monies for themselves and the Joneses.

Today, online and offline influencers form insightful partners who can help a brand innovate and improve its competitive position. The social media revolution has bought about a veritable goldmine of information that consumers dig into, before they make a brand decision. Be it a product or service, social word of mouth has tremendous consequences when brands fumble in a consumer encounter. Fates of movies today are not decided by trade pundits, but are dependent on 140-character tweets, Facebook statuses and blog updates.

In this age of the social consumer, it won’t be long before brands will have to rethink their voice of customers/consumers (VOC) programmes. Brands that fail to sift through the unstructured and unsolicited feedback, check merging trends before they turn out to be a public relations nightmares, need to take some learning from the Café Coffee day incident at Chennai that went trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.

So where do brands start the change revolution? By marketing themselves on the wide social strata, amplifying their communications’ scope and gaining insights in return.

Customer service is another key application. With Comcast and JetBlue leading the way, customers increasingly expect that complaints aired on Twitter should be handled promptly by company representatives.

Capitalising on key, unstructured and unsolicited feedback makes tremendous sense today as it helps the brand keep abreast of its actual market standing.

The age of the social consumer is here. Are brands ready to engage?

A varied portfolio makes this start-up from Mumbai a preferred choice for digital marketing services

For EBS, an outsourced provider of customer management and marketing back-office services,the threeyear lag in the dotcom revolution before it reached India was the perfect opportunity.The Mumbai-based company quickly ramped up business to become one the largest providers of digital marketing services in the country.For the first four years of our life (2000-2004 ),we were a pioneering ecommerce company out of India,mixing clicks with bricks, said Chris George,founder and CEO of EBS Worldwide.Then on,the company leveraged technology to make marketing better for its clients across the country,besides foraying into the global market.The firm helps companies automate their entire marketing process,offers interactive or digital marketing services across the world.For global clients in the advertising space EBS provides remote studio facilities for artwork and design for products such as annual reports or ad campaigns and brochures.This portfolio of services has helped bag clients including Disney,HP,HSBC,among others.The interaction with EBS has been value additive as they work as partners and try to address the real issues that IIFM faces,using technology innovatively, said Komal Bhanver,marketing and strategic initiatives director at the Indian Institute of Financial Management.Founded in a nondescript 1,000 sq.ft.industrial estate warehouse,EBS now has a presence in the US and Europe.Like most start-ups,George said in the beginning,the operations were at a much smaller scale,with the entire senior management sharing a small office space.As you can imagine,everyone hid their pens, he added.In 2006,EBS acquired IMG (now called EBS Interactive Americas),a US-based marketing solutions provider,that was around for 20 years.Subsequently,EBS executed two more acquisitions.One,a boutique digital marketing company out of New York and another a Delhi-based marketing services production company.The acquisitions helped EBS expand not only in India but also foray into the overseas market.EBS was angel funded by Passion-Fund a boutique investment firm,incubated by Arthur Andersen (India ) and subsequently funded by ICICI Ventures,all in the year 2000.In 2006,IL&FS invested bought out ICICI Ventures stake and further invested into the company.EBS also has marquee shareholders like Ranjan Kapur and Sunil Alagh.For IL&FS Investment Managers,the transaction presented an opportunity to strengthen its position in the non-voice outsourcing solutions space in the country.EBS,whose revenue model is based on a combination of longterm contracts and campaign based compensation,consists of companies that straddle marketing services (using technology) and marketing software products,working with clients across industries.For the fiscal ended March 31,2011,its revenues stood at around.66 crore.It intends to cross.100 crore by the 2012-13 financial year.George,who founded his first company at the age of 16,built a series of e-commerce portals before launching EBS.In 2000,he built Indias first online music e-tailer called EasyBuyMusic-. com,morphed it into one of Indias earliest e-commerce businesses,selling a bunch of stuff under the brand name,EasyBuyStore.com,while also simultaneously building a business around powering e-commerce for some of the big internet retailers of the time called EasyBuyServices.That explains how we got our name, said George.We saw India transition into the growth engine it is today,blending the old & the new,with a healthy dose of unbridled hunger to be part of the global stage, he added.