Waking up to the wonders of green tea

Posted on April 25, 2013 | 1 comment

Note: The article was published in Deccan Herald by Kusum Kanojia on April 25, 2013. It features findings from a category research done by MavenMagnet.

Tea lovers and the health conscious it appears, have finally acknowledged and woken up to the goodness of green tea. A research conducted by MavenMagnet concluded that Indians love green tea today more than ever.

The result was based on an analysis of over 9000 conversations from the social media space in the past one year. And, it came out that 78 per cent Indians have a positive take on green tea with the Southern region topping the list. The flavours, however, vary on the basis of region.

Ice cool it, brew it with fruits or serve it piping hot – green tea emerges a winner. Best enjoyed without milk and sugar, green tea does wonders even when simply brewed in boiling water. For those who are not so calorie conscious, a small dollop of cream should do.

Tata Global Beverages, which analysed the research, informs that north Indians relish and rely on green tea with lemonade while amla ginger tea works best in searing summer of the Southern region. The Eastrners enjoy mango flavored green tea while central India beats the heat with jaljeera flavored green tea. As for the West, it experiences green tea with aloe vera flavor.

Green tea leaves undergo minimal oxidation process. The antioxidants, therefore, in green tea prevent damage to healthy cells and tissues caused by harmful UV rays.

Dr Karuna Malhotra, a homeopath physician, says: “Oligomeric proanthocyanidins is one of the most powerful antioxidants found in nature and the high levels of the same are present in green tea. It helps in slowing down the premature ageing process thus leaving your skin youthful.”

“It also reduces blood fat while detoxifying the body and suppressing untimely food cravings,” she adds.

The flavors preferred work best as per the weather conditions of these regions. Living in the hot plains of the north India is no less than a challenge given the extreme weather conditions. With this, come problems like heat strokes, nausea and acute dehydration.

While colas provide temporary relief from the heat they are high on unhealthy acids sugar content that do more harm than good. Green tea comes as a relief as it contains antioxidants that help in coping dehydration better.

The south essentially experiences a tropical climate . The hot and humid climate makes one sweat, lowering down the water content in body. Amla tea is good for summer season as amla berries are a natural source of Vitamin C, which helps in building immunity system and improves resistance of the body.

Summer in central India is hot, dry, and windy where temperatures easily touch above 40 degrees and plus. The cooling properties of green tea with jaljeera flavor work great against the temperature of the region.

East India blends the benefits of unripe mangoes with the goodness of green tea. Mangoes with green tea extract help in replenishing essential body nutrients and salts along with improving body’s metabolic rate.

Vikram Grover, Vice President (Marketing), Tata Global Beverages, says: “This survey helps us in understanding that green tea has been positively spoken about and people are adopting the habit of drinking it for wellness purpose. It means it is no longer viewed as a lifestyle beverage. So when you have an interesting blend of health and taste, there’s no excuse.”

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Posted in Business

Identity

Posted on April 3, 2013 | Comments Off on Identity

Identity is something that defines you. It’s what you stand for and what people expect from you. It is important for everyone to create an identity and be true to it. The same holds true for a business.

Why is it that important to have an identity? The reason is quite simple. You cannot be everything for everyone. You need to define your niche. The one thing you are great at doing. The one thing you do better than everyone else.

Take entertainment industry for example. Most successful individuals as well as businesses in this industry have an identity. Aaron Sorkin, the guy behind TV shows like The West Wing and The Newsroom, has an identity. His shows focus on the what goes behind the scene, whether it’s how the people behind the President runs a country (The West Wing), or how a great anchor does news (The Newsroom), or how a live sketch comedy show is put together in a week (Studio 60 at the Sunset Strip). He is great at it and has stuck to the same pattern even when doing movies like Moneyball (how a perfect baseball team was put together with limited resources) and the Social Network (what went behind creating the biggest online social network).

Same is true for successful businesses. Disney has an identity of being the perfect place for wholesome family entertainment which ranges from a dozen TV channels to movies to theme parks. They are always true to it and you as a consumer have perfect sense of what to expect from them.

It all seems to simple and straightforward. You find your niche, understand what you are good at and stick to it. So why does everyone not have a strong identity? There are a couple of reasons for that. First is greed. You think you can do everything and can be the best at everything. This is rarely true and leads to losing the identity. Second is lack of focus. It is hard to be really good at one thing and build an identity.You got to have good focus and stick to that one thing. It takes time and effort at building the identity and many people get lost in between.

We at MavenMagnet have defined an identity and are true to it. We do market research leveraging the power of online conversation and are great at it, better than everyone else.

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Posted in Business

Impact of technology

Posted on March 26, 2013 | Comments Off on Impact of technology

I wrote this post about four years back while doing my MBA at Columbia Business School. For some reason (don’t remember why), didn’t publish it. So putting it out now.

This week reinforced my belief in the reach and impact of technology. It’s across industries and continents. It spans different walks of life and touches people in different ways. But the common element is that it has more impact than ever before. Here’s a recap of four events/cases this week shed light on how technology is playing a critical role in various industries.

Paul Calello, CEO of Credit Suisse investment banking division gave a talk on leadership and state of financial markets. He was asked what is the next big thing that will influence the market. His one word answer was technology. He went on to explain how technology can increase transparency, make it more practical to put forth checks in place and help make better decisions than ever before.

In supply chain management class, the case study for the week was Zara success story. One sentence reasoning behind Zara’s success is its heavy investments in information technology and automated infrastructure. The amazing infrastructure Zara has put in place to have a rapid inventory update every six weeks (less than half the time taken by a typical competitor in the space) is heavily dependent on connectivity and automation in supply chain management.

Next was a simulations exercise for Statistics class to find out a bond which is more profitable and less risky than a bunch of specified stocks. In other words, statistical regression using computing power to solve an otherwise a complex looking problem.

Lastly, a talk on Google’s impact on creating the massive digital library. Very interesting to see two contradicting sides of impact technology was having on an industry. On the brighter side, the knowledge was going to be universally available to anyone interested in leveraging it. On the darker side, activities like piracy will grow and the revenue hit on publishers will in turn have an impact on authors motivation.

I have always been a believer in technology and its power. I strongly believe in the idea that it’s the application of technology in innovative ways that is going to have a lasting impact for many years to come.

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Posted in Business, Technology

Trust

Posted on March 9, 2013 | Comments Off on Trust

“No one got fired for buying an IBM machine.”

This old saying states in very clear words the importance of trust in decision-making process. Whether you are making a personal decision or a business decision, knowingly or unknowingly, trust has a say in it. It is a confidence building factor which helps you make a decision and defend it when something goes wrong.

In case of a business, trust has multiple impact areas. Your sales efforts get a big shot in the arm if your prospective customers trust you. You get the best talent to work with you and the best advisers to guide you. It is one thing that can have an amazing ripple effect in everything from valuation of your company to your reputation in the industry to your success.

The importance of trust highlights a very important thing about businesses that we often overlook. Businesses are often treated as entities. But this puts the human element of businesses front and center. You are a human being and you deal with other human beings. By nature there is skepticism in trying new things, in believing in new technology and in relying on new people. But when you do go for it and get results as expected (or better than expected), an amazing thing happens. You feel good about making the right decision and eventually develop trust for what was back in the day a new thing.

Trust has three very important properties. It is contagious, it reciprocates and it is fragile. In order to be successful, you need to work on all of them. You need an initial set of mavens who trust you and are willing to vouch for you. You need to have an open enough mindset to trust others, partner with them and work with them. And most important, you should be careful about not breaking the trust of others. It’s something that takes a lifetime to build and seconds to destroy!

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Posted in Marketing

Hilton, Marriott, Four Seasons are most ‘relevant’ hotel brands

Posted on February 15, 2013 | 1 comment

How do you choose a hotel? By the quality of service? The view? What your friends might think? How about the water pressure in the shower? Don’t laugh.

Brodeur Partners looked into the heart of what really matters when it comes to online conversation about hotel choice and has come up with intriguing answers. “We wanted to go beyond speculation and opinion, and really see what drives online behavior – in this case, conversation – around different hotel brands,” said Brodeur Partners CEO Andy Coville.

The study reveals that Hilton, Marriott, and Four Seasons (in that order) have the highest Conversational Relevance™ in online discussions among leisure and business travelers. The conclusion is based on an analysis by Brodeur Partners and MavenMagnet of what is “relevant” in online brand conversation.

The Conversational Relevance™ scale is a measure of how much people are talking about a brand and how impactful and positive that conversation is. Brodeur and MavenMagnet parsed more than 18,000 online conversations between May 2012 and October 2012 across social networks, profiles, forums, news websites and blogs.

“We looked not only at practical considerations but at how the brands resonated with hotel guests’ senses, values and social needs, which are the other dimensions of Brodeur’s relevance model,” said Jerry Johnson, Brodeur executive vice president of strategic planning. “When a brand is engaging all four dimensions, it inspires strong feelings and an abiding loyalty in those who experience it.”

“Using our proprietary technology, we tap into the collective intellect of engaged consumers—in this case, consumers sharing their experience about travel and hotels,” said Aditya Ghuwalewala, MavenMagnet founder. “Our zero interference approach eliminates the risk of respondent conditioning thereby delivering actual insights focusing on what’s relevant in the space.”

Four Elements that Drive Relevance

The top hotel brands in the analysis displayed highly positive overall Conversational Relevance™ scores based on positive/negative buzz differential, with Hilton earning a 58 percent score followed by Marriott (56 percent) and Four Seasons(51 percent).

The analysis dug much deeper, however, looking at each of the 10 brands’ attributes through Brodeur’s four relevance pathways:

  • Functional – Practical attributes people care about like service, location, rooms, recreation and rewards programs. Comments in this area dominated the conversation about hotels. Marriott, Hilton and Sheraton were the winners here.
  • Sensory – Attributes that appeal to all five senses like the view and water pressure in the shower (which surprisingly eclipses bed comfort in online attention).
    Ritz-Carlton and Hilton led the category.
  • Values – Attributes that reflect personal values such as the hotel’s service ethic and commitment to indulging patrons. Four Seasons dominated.
  • Social – Attributes related to customer status, such as the brand’s cachet. Four Seasons dominated here, too.

The analysis further broke down results between leisure and business travelers. Room cleanliness, for example, means more to business travelers than leisure travelers. It’s the other way around for recreation.

Leisure travelers were broken down further still, between those traveling with children and those without. The Ritz-Carlton was particularly popular in conversations in the former category, and recreation was paramount for families.

Key findings
The Conversational Relevance analysis was able to specifically identify strengths that some brands could leverage and weaknesses that held other brands back. In addition, it identified a framework that all hotels can use in managing their online and social communications:

  • Service and location are the biggest “functional” conversation drivers.
  • Accessibility – both to the hotel and nearby amenities – drives nearly two-thirds of online conversations about the “functional” attributes of a hotel.
  • When it comes to conversations about rooms, size matters, closely followed byconnectivity and technology.
  • While there has been a lot of investment by hotels in the quality of beds, the subject that most people talked about in the “touch” or “feel” category was the shower, specifically thewater pressure of the shower.
  • Room noise was a hot topic in the “sound” category, particularly among family travelers. Most of that conversation was negative.
  • People talked about the “values” of a brand in terms of what kind of service they received, i.e., having a “service first” culture and being responsive. A particularly important element that drove online conversation was a hotel staff’s responsiveness and personal attention to individual needs.
  • The biggest driver of social conversations is whether a hotel is “referenceable” – that is, something travelers would recommend to others.
  • That a hotel’s “luxury” or “indulgence” is a symbol of status and achievement drove a considerable amount of conversation among business and leisure travelers; however one-third of that discussion was negative.
  • By far the biggest driver of conversation among business travelers is whether a hotel is considered “best in class.” Social relevance for leisure travelers derives more from peer reviews.

Why Conversational Relevance?
This study on the hotel industry is the first demonstration of Brodeur’s new Conversational Relevance model. Applicable to any industry, organization, brand, person, idea, candidate or cause, the Conversational Relevance methodology measures buzz volume, impact and positivity/negativity across four relevance dimensions. At the same time, it identifies hot topics, positive and negative, uncovering hidden strengths on which to build a business and risks that could devolve into crises.

The Conversational Relevance methodology has a number of advantages:

  • It relies on real people freely sharing thoughts with others who have common interests about things that matter to them.
  • Since it finds conversations where they occur, there’s no location bias.
  • It’s devoid of any response bias that could occur through a survey questionnaire.

“Our relevance strategy is founded on the principle that creating a dominant, relevant brand is as much a science as an art,” said Coville. “Relevance can be quantified and, more importantly, systematically improved to support behavior change in the people you’re hoping to influence. Conversational Relevance is just one of our many services that deliver on this principle.”

For more information on Conversational Relevance and hospitality, visit http://www.mavenmagnet.com/Articles/MAVENMAGNET_Hospitality-Relevance-Audit-2.14.13.pdf

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Posted in Advertising, Technology

Netflix got it, you can have it and more!

Posted on February 12, 2013 | Comments Off on Netflix got it, you can have it and more!

In one word: information.

Netflix has got something that can help them develop better originals than most others content producers. Netflix knows what people are watching, how many times they are watching, which episode cliffhangers are most captivating and where are the audience dropping out. This is unparalleled information that can be put to use to develop more targeted programs and improve the content (provided the creatives listen to them). The interesting thing is that they can learn not only from their shows but also from shows of other channels for which they buy syndication rights. The information source is not a focus group of 15 people or a survey of 1500 individuals, it’s information they are getting from hundreds of thousands of consumers feeding it on a continuous and ongoing basis.

Same is true for the likes of Hulu and HBO (with its HBO GO) kind of services where you have a two-way connection with the audience. Online stores like Amazon and Zappos have the same edge when it comes to goods. They track every step of consumer to know what they are buying, what they are not buying and much more. But for the rest of the world where there’s only one way connection with the audience or consumer, you lack this information. The void can be filled with the help of information on social media.

Social media takes edge away from these distributors to a large extent. You can get the same information for your content or product by listening to the consumer on social media. The reason being we human beings like to talk. We like to share our thoughts, feelings, opinions and a lot more. Social media has provided everyone a great place to do that with the rest of the world. By analyzing this amazing database of information, you can learn anything from what they are liking about your content or product and what they are not.

But you get something more that the Netflixes of the world do not get from their power of connectivity. You get the reason behind a particular action. By using the right technology and techniques, the information on social media can be analyzed and you can be provided with not just what, but also the why.

In a nutshell, whether you fall under the bracket of Netflixes of the world or not, you got to leverage right technology and techniques to analyze the information online and use it to make better products for your customers.

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Posted in Technology

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A mile and an inch

Posted on January 30, 2013 | 1 comment

While you build and market a product, it is important to decide (at least to start with) if you want to make a product with functional expertise or industry expertise. There is no wrong approach, but at the same time there are trade-offs in both of them. In order to define it, consider an analogy in terms of depth and breadth. How deep you go or the depth you cover, defines how much expertise you are building in your product for a particular industry. How much wide you expand or how much breadth you cover, defines how many industries have application for your product.

Functional expertise is what we can define as a mile wide and an inch deep. A product that is great at doing one particular thing or solving one particular problem and is applicable to solve the same problem in multiple industries. When you go for this approach, the goal is to do one thing, but do it better than anyone else. You should have the core platform that is solid enough to add a different skin and be applicable in another industry. The upside for the approach is that you have scope to expand your reach to multiple industries. Your product can be the standard product of choice for solving that particular problem in any industry that faces the problem. Downside being you are not expert in any one industry and your customer might be more comfortable dealing with a product suite that solves many other problems for them along with the one you are addressing.

Industry expertise is something that can be defined as an inch wide and a mile deep. You develop a product for a particular industry but that product (or family of products) address many issues in one industry. When you go for this approach, the goal is to become integral part of this industry. Your product should be the best there can be to solve the problems in this particular industry. The upside is while you market the product, you are building strong relationship with one particular industry. If you do it right, you build trust with your customer in that particular industry. The downside for the approach is you are dependent on the one particular industry. Your success and failure would have direct correlation with the kind of reception your product receives in this industry.

When you start building the product, you are working at dimensions of an inch wide and an inch deep, or in other words, you are solving one particular problem in one particular industry. The way to expand is to contemplate if you love that particular industry or that particular product. Do you find scope and expertise to do a lot more in that particular industry or do you see application for your product to be applied to multiple industries? It is very lucrative to go for a mile deep and a mile wide, but more often than not, it is wiser to pick an inch in either one of the two dimensions!

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Posted in Business

Relativity

Posted on January 27, 2013 | Comments Off on Relativity

Last week temperature in New York was at least 7-10 points sub 32 degree Fahrenheit. End of the week it was 32, and it felt really good (on the warmer side).  On the other hand, in my home town of Indore in India, the temperature was in late 40s for the week and came down to 30s end of week and my parents felt it was really bad (on the colder side). This brings up the point that everything around us is in fact relative to something else.

We experience it everyday at work. The quality of work being good or bad doesn’t mean anything. It is either better than someone else’s work or worse. The cost is more often than not either cheaper than the alternatives or more expensive. The company performance is either better than the same quarter last year or worse.

Same is true when you look at your brand in your industry. When doing research on your brand, you have to consider what kind of perception your consumers have about your brand as compared to the competition. In technical terms, we call this benchmarking. The basic idea of benchmarking is setting the foundation for relativity.

While almost always an absolute analysis of your brand is required and is immensely valuable, the relative analysis helps you prioritize your resources, fix the areas where you are most vulnerable to the competition as well as publicize and exploit the areas where you have competitive advantage in the industry.

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Posted in Business

Degrees of likeness

Posted on December 15, 2012 | Comments Off on Degrees of likeness

Social media has taken the ease of expressing oneself to a whole new level. People express their opinion on everything from an everyday product to a television show to an event to a movement. Issues are discussed, recommendations are made and reviews are shared to make this world more connected than ever before. This provides a whole new challenge to measure and learn about what the opinion flow is from a market research perspective.

Lets talk about an interesting question of “how much”. The point is simple, do you like something enough to go for it? Or on the other hand, do you despise something so much that you will recommend against it? You might like a product, but not enough to buy it. Or in a more interesting case, in deciding whether to see a movie or not, you might dislike the actor, but like the plot enough to sit through it for a couple of hours.

The important thing lies in the sophistication of analysis. You got to understand the difference between people being on the fence or on either side of the fence. But the more important thing is to understand how strongly have people formed their opinion. Metaphorically speaking, how tall is the fence to let people cross from one side to the other. The next step is to figure out the reason behind an opinion and factors that can play a role in impacting that opinion. 

The beauty of market research techniques developed by MavenMagnet is to understand the degree of likeness people have about a certain topic without putting them in a box. This provides us the capability to extract patterns, form key takeaways and make actionable recommendations to help in making critical business decisions. 

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Posted in Business, Technology

Business of distribution

Posted on December 8, 2012 | Comments Off on Business of distribution

Distribution in very simple terms is taking goods and services from producers to consumers (or retailers who take it to consumers). The task of distribution has paramount importance in a consumer business. You can produce the best product in the world but unless there’s a well-oiled machinery to take that product to the consumer, you cannot be successful. On the other hand, if you are the distributor with the best reach, you can attain success by taking a good product and placing it in the market. This market dynamics gives the distributors unparalleled strength in the power play in their industry.

Pharmaceutical industry is one of the industries where distributors play a very important role of taking innovative drugs and making it accessible to the consumers worldwide. Another industry where distributors play a commanding role is entertainment. In case of movie distribution, its more of an oligopoly where a few studios control the worldwide distribution of the movies. A few publishing houses control the publication of majority of best sellers and a few television network have the bandwidth to reach millions of consumers.

Till very recently, and in many ways even today, the business of distribution in almost all industries is a game of few big players. Over the last few years, internet has played its role to pose an interesting challenge to the traditional players in this space. Though the challenge is still not big enough to create a dent in the business of distribution for the traditional players, it will be interesting to see how the business will adapt or how a new breed of distributors will leverage the digital media to distribute products to the world in more efficient and cost-effective ways.

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Posted in Business, Marketing