MobiKwik ties up with GoPaisa and Pennyful after successful partnership with PAYBACK

MobiKwik, India’s leading Mobile Wallet with over 17 million users, today announced its intent to become India’s largest platform for all loyalty and bonus point redemptions. In a bid to achieve this, the company announced fresh tie-up with GoPaisa and Pennyful, two of the country’s leading cashback and discount coupon players in addition to PayBack. With these partnerships in place, users can now redeem their virtual points collected on Pennyful and GoPaisa, on MobiKwik and use them across more than 50,000 leading offline and online merchants that are a part of the MobiKwik ecosystem.

MobiKwik already counts PAYBACK, India’s largest multi-brand loyalty program as its strategic partner from March 2015. The partnership enables PAYBACK’s over 30 million customers access to MobiKwik’s seamless payment experience and an opportunity to redeem their PAYBACK points on MobiKwik.

MobiKwik has seen huge uptake from the 3 month old partnership with over 1 lakh PAYBACK customers having redeemed around 5 crore PAYBACK points worth Rs. 1.25 crore on the MobiKwik wallet. The points have been used for a variety of needs like making e-commerce purchases, buying travel tickets, mobile recharges as well as utility bill payments. PAYBACK has also benefitted from the partnership with over 2 lakh MobiKwik users having signed up on PAYBACK till now.

Bipin Preet Singh, Founder and CEO, MobiKwik said, “We aim to be the platform of choice for customers when it comes to redeeming any kind of loyalty or bonus points. Our seamless transaction experience and wide network of merchant tie-up make us the preferred partner for all cashback and loyalty program players in the country.”

He further avers, “While for loyalty and cashback players we become a source of millions of additional users, for us it makes sense from a product standpoint to tie up with them as it’s in alignment with our core philosophy of providing consumers a ‘more-than-a-wallet’ experience. Physical wallets are only good for storing loyalty cards, but with MobiKwik users now get to instantly redeem their points as well. We look forward to striking more such partnerships going ahead and aim to be default choice for consumers intending to redeem any kind of virtual points.”

MobiKwik’s merchant network includes the who’s who in the consumer space including the likes of Café Coffee Day, Myntra, Jabong, MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, GoIBIBO, BookMyShow, PVR, Domino’s Pizza, eBay, HomeShop18, Fashionara, Pepperfry, ShopClues, and JustEat.

Shine revamps mobile app with new features, launches new advertising campaign with Javed Jaffrey

Shine.com – currently India’s second largest jobs portal – capped off an excellent year that saw them reach 1.5 million mobile app downloads. To engage with jobseekers, Shine.com introduced an affable mouse character Mr. M in their marketing campaign, which helped them increase their database to 16 million. Furthermore, the year also saw a substantial increase in their new client count, apart from improved satisfaction levels of existing clients.

With increasing role of mobile phones in the job search domain, Shine.com is now targeting to become a ‘mobile-first’ company where the entire registration and job search process for a jobseeker can happen on a mobile phone. Apart from simplifying user flows on mobile, Shine.com has also added an exclusive feature on its mobile app that lets jobseekers discover their personal networks to find people in companies where they want a job.

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Commenting on this unique feature, Zairus Master, Business Head – Shine.com, said, “For us to give value to jobseekers and recruiters, we make innovative uses of technology that would take the industry ahead. Our research pointed us to a seminal study that says that your next career move is likely to come from people who are not our closest friends but are likely to connect you to professional circles that you don’t have access to. Building on this insight, we have added a new feature to our mobile app which let candidate discover their network to improve their job chances.”

While talking about the idea behind the new campaign for this product, Rajan Bhalla, Group CMO, HT Media Limited, said, “With our focus on the mobile first approach, the key benefit which we wanted to highlight was that now jobs are available at your fingertips “Anytime & Anywhere”. This demanded the brief to be sharp enough to articulate benefit in the most clutter breaking and creative way. We have created a series of films where we have shown an innocent character, enacted by Javed Jaffrey, who always gets into funny and awkward situations which threatens to undo everything good that he has done in his job. In other words, ‘Uski Vaat Lag Jati Hai’ and at this opportune moment, Mr. M, the brand mascot, comes to his rescue to find his next job using the new Shine.com mobile app right then and there. We are launching this campaign across media – TV, online, print, radio, social media and outdoor – and looking forward to connect with large numbers of people among jobseekers and recruiters.”

Rohit Ohri, CEO Dentsu Branded Agencies (APAC), said, "It’s a VUCA world. The new Shine.com campaign  reflects the unpredictability of today’s job environment where ‘Job mein vaat kabhi bhi lag sakti hai’ and showcases how the Shine.com mobile app comes to rescue of people at critical moments of job stress by helping them get their ‘dream job’ from anywhere, anytime”

Soumitra Karnik, National Creative Director, Dentsu India, said, “Shine.com has been a really interesting brand for the creative team to work on. The fact is Vaat and job are inseparable and no matter how well you play it, you could still land in a soup. And with the Shine.com Mobile App you can get a job anywhere and anytime. Javed Jaffrey was the perfect protagonist to portray the Vaat situations and of course we have retained our main celebrity – the talking mouse, Mr. M. We are really excited about this project.”

“The Internet is running out of IP addresses.”

This was the blunt assessment of my networking lab professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology ten years ago. It turns out that the largest network of all — the capital-I Internet — was never designed to accommodate the sheer volume of devices logging onto it. In the early 80s when the internet protocol was developed, no one considered an Internet of billions of devices for a network that was used only by higher education and government. They almost certainly didn’t conceive of a network that would require addresses for household appliances. Why would my thermostat, security system or bottle of prescription medication need to be connected to the Internet?

But my, those wheels of progress do turn quickly! The future has arrived, bringing with the “Internet of Things” — a universe of devices with all the software, sensors and network connections that promise to make our lives better, but what kind of experience is this providing? What can companies do to bridge gaps between these technologies and people who have yet to adopt them?

Surprise and delight with the power of data

“Knowledge is power” or so the saying goes. In the era of the Internet of Things — where devices collect data every hour of every day — that statement couldn’t be truer. One company that is uniquely positioned to rise to the challenge of understanding all this data is Google.

Ranked as number 15 on Tenet’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2015, Google is an old pro in the tech industry for gathering reams of information and turning it into something useful. Just look at their main product: their search engine dominates the market to such an extent that the company name is used as a verb. But now, Google has turned its attention outside of the World Wide Web.

With Google’s acquisition of Nest — known for its self-programmable thermostat — the search giant did more than buy a company that manufactures amazing temperature controls. They purchased permission to enter our homes and help themselves to the “data cookie jar”. Google can now, unintrusively, collect data on our behavior as we go about our daily business. Combined with the aforementioned expertise in understanding that data, this acquisition is a natural fit that has endless possibilities.

Think about self-monitored home security systems. Such systems could learn your daily movements, monitor your Google Calendar to determine when you’ll be away and connect to your Android device to send notifications in the event suspicious activity near your home is detected. Taking that to the next level, it’s easy to imagine a self-securing home, one that locks itself as you leave for work in the morning. Perhaps the system could unlock the door for your teenager who once again misplaced their key or open the garage in order to accept that Amazon Prime package. These are just some examples of how the Internet of Things can delight customers and, potentially, win over those reluctant to embrace it.

What about customers who are uncertain of allowing data to be gathered about them in order to make this magic happen?

Maintain trust through transparency

In the age of domestic surveillance, drones, and customer data breaches, the idea of an Internet of Things collecting personal data can feel intrusive for many late-adopters. Yes, these new technologies open up the possibilities for an improved life, but at what cost? Customers will — quite rightly — have questions they want answered, such as:

How much information is being collected?

What are they doing with the information?

Are they selling my personal data to others?

Is this all safe and secure?

These questions are real and need to be addressed so as to make it easy for customers to adopt new ways. The path that companies can take to get ahead of any negative perceptions is through the often neglected, but always recommended, principle of transparency.

Companies specializing in the Internet of Things must always be clear about what these technologies are doing for their customers, and what those customers are providing in exchange. By setting easy-to-understand expectations early, customers won’t be unpleasantly surprised later. Privacy and personal data are understandably, sensitive topics for consumers, so invest the time and effort to foster trust with your organization and your connected devices.

Trust is an important aspect of your communication, but it shouldn’t end there. An overall engagement strategy, or lack thereof, can have a lasting impact in the faith customers have in your company and its devices.

Source;Tenet Partners

Written by John Kusovski,Director Digital Marketing

Often, a brand is thought of as a single entity—a particular set of beliefs that distinguish it from other brands, types of interactions that are associated with a distinctive brand experience, or the total amount of value associated with it. As a practical matter, a brand also can be looked at as a coalition of different types of customers, people who hold various beliefs, have different types of experiences, and contribute varying amounts of financial value. Building the brand means assembling different groups of customers in different ways, using all of the tools available to marketers.

As marketers address more fragmented audiences and have access to more data on individual customers, this “bottom up” view of branding may line up more closely with what brand managers actually do than a “top down” view. Their daily actions are less about moving the overall market closer to the single ideal brand and more about constructing, and holding together, a portfolio of customers with different relationships to the brand.

Many marketers believe that the brand is, to a great extent, “owned” by the customers. Their aspirations for the brand come to define it. The messages and brand dimensions that the marketer would like to promote are a combination of the marketer’s own goals and strategies, and what customers have made the brand into by everyday usage.

Marketers encourage this type of customer ownership when sponsoring platforms for communication about the brand, such as branded Facebook sites and company-owned sites for customer feedback, the development of innovations or the solicitation of funding. Since the advent of consumer-generated media, it’s become even harder to argue that brands are solely a function of what marketers say that they are, compared to what consumers think they are.

Brand equity measures for products and services typically show that customers vary significantly in what they believe about a brand. For example, a financial services brand may be perceived as having good service, accessible information, reasonable fees and financial stability, but individuals may experience the brand differently on a daily basis, depending on the channels that they use (a branch, a website or an ATM), the products that they’ve purchased and their particular needs for information. These brand drivers may be important, in general, to most customers. However, individual customers may react to them in unique ways. Good service for an online customer may mean that the website is easy to use and accurate, while good service for a branch customer may mean that the staff is friendly and attentive.

The degree to which customers are attached to a brand also can vary a lot. Some exhibit high loyalty to the brand, others are susceptible to competitive appeals to switch, and many are in the middle. They may exhibit “loyal” behavior, such as staying with the brand for years, without any emotional commitment. At any moment in time, the brand will be made up of customers who exhibit these different types of characteristics. For all but the blockbuster brands, the high-loyalty customers will be a minority of the overall base. They typically will account for a disproportionate amount of the brand’s revenue and profit. In many instances, the “middle of the road” customers are the majority.

Key Takeaways

The “bottom up” customer view of brands is much more relevant to brand building today due to the fragmentation of media and of markets.

Treating all customers the same way, with the same messages, doesn’t use resources effectively.

The customer portfolio is not a monolithic group with a single connection to the brand.

​Source:ama.org

Written by Gordon Wyner, partner at Millward Brown Analytics,is the contributing editor for Marketing News’ Marketing Management thought leadership content.

Mogae Media announced that Leena Sharma would lead Mobocracy as its Chief Operating Officer.

Mobocracy is India’s first full-service mobile advertising agency that helps clients with mobile strategy, mobile-solutions, enriched targeting and programmatic advertising. The agency also helps clients with research-on-mobile, quality-checks via mobile and consumer groups based on targeted profiles.

“Being pioneers and fore-runners in mobile advertising in India since 2011, and because of our keen understanding of mobile apertures and applications, we felt more and more clients need help with managing mobile communications. We launched Mobocracy at full throttle in March this year,” says Tanya Goyal, Executive Director, Mogae. “And Leena Sharma was the natural choice to lead this new agency, Mobocracy, as she has shaped and delivered over 200 campaigns for the best of brands over the last two years at Mogae. She understands advertising, and understands the mobile medium.”

An MBA with nearly 25 years in the business, Leena started her advertising career at Ulka in the early 90s. She has worked at Parle, American Express and Mastercard over the years. Leena joined Mogae Media two years ago.

40 new recruits from IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, IIT Roorkee, BITS Pilani, Delhi School of Economics, IIM Shillong, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore, IIM Rohtak, XLRI and other leading B-schools joined Mogae earlier this month, and will be based at its Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore offices. Many of them have been assigned to Mobocracy.

One of Mobocracy’s first assignment was the pre-embed of the Hotstar app for Star TV. “It is the largest pre-embed ever in India, and running across 10 top OEs including Micromax, Karbonn, Lava …” explains Leena. “We are also pioneering products like i-SMS which will change the face of consumer research. And creating a she-radio, and a multi-brand rural radio, and more. Our TagDash product with Twitter is already making waves. We have executed campaigns for HUL, Aircel, CNBC and others too. There is lots of traction in the mobile space. I have 2-3 invites a week at Mobocracy already.”

Mogae Media, the holding company of Mobocracy, is co-promoted by Sandeep and Tanya Goyal, former JV partners of Dentsu in India, Mogae is the sole-and-exclusive partner of Airtel for mAdvertising. Mogae raised Rs. 100 crores last year from Renuka Ramnath’s Multiples PE.