M.AD School Sri Lanka and Maldives Programme Director Mallika Shankarnarayan has created behaviour change for the world’s best marketers

M.AD School Sri Lanka is part of the world’s most awarded creative school, with its alumni in leadership positions around the world

 

If you are a marketer, or a brand, or an NGO, or even a government body interested in connecting with people, to form a relationship with them, to ‘sell’ them a product, a service or an ideology, you have to be where the people are. And that happens to be social media. It’s where people are. It’s unavoidable. It’s powerful. And it’s here to stay

• The importance of being social vs. doing social

M.AD School Sri Lanka’s Programme Director Mallika Shankarnarayan is a Choice Architect with over two decades of experience in strategic leadership, helping brands master the art of having meaningful conversations with people. An award-winning strategist, Mallika is passionate about how people make choices and helps architect behaviour change that results in massive brand growth. In this interview, she dissects social media marketing and how to matter, do it right and stay relevant:

By Marianne David

Q: Let’s start with breaking down the basics: Why is social media important and what does social media marketing entail?

Think of where people get their news from, where they buy and sell preloved clothes, where they express their creativity, their anxiety, their frustrations, their opinions, where they galvanise others like themselves for a cause they care about, where they connect with people they share interests with – and most likely, the answer would be social media. Social media is where people are congregated and it’s where they are having most of their conversations; 48% of the global population is on social media. 

If you are a marketer, or a brand, or an NGO, or even a government body interested in connecting with people, to form a relationship with them, to ‘sell’ them a product, a service or an ideology, you have to be where the people are. And that happens to be social media. It’s where people are. It’s unavoidable. It’s powerful. And it’s here to stay.

Social media marketing at its core, is all about being meaningful to people, and breaking down the silos between media, creative, data and technology to ignite the right conversations and build and strengthen the right communities, with content that is relevant and build equity. All in all, providing people value for their time and attention, in ways that matter to them. 

Q: Could you expand on the thinking behind having conversations online, and, as you constantly emphasise, the importance of ‘being social’ as opposed to ‘doing social’?

One needs to understand the nature of social media to be able to be effective within in. Many marketers, even MNCs, are guilty of slapping their ‘print’ campaigns on their social feeds, of staying silent in the comment sections, of deleting negative comments, of not regularly interacting with their audiences (mind you, simply putting up a post does not equal interacting!).

Building a strong social media presence and then failing to interact with people on the platform defeats the purpose. It’s the same as not attending to a customer who walks into your store. Unacceptable. It’s equally unacceptable to be talking ‘at’ people all the time. You don’t want to be that person at a party who talks only about himself all night long. You’ll find yourself standing in a corner alone very soon.

Be social. Have a dialogue, interact, be authentic, and let your personality shine through as you engage with the audiences and let the interactions offer something of consequence to them, even of that is a laugh that they can share.

Q: A message you constantly deliver is that anyone can stand out but it’s mattering that matters. What are the stepping stones in mattering on social media?

Standing out is easy. One can be gimmicky, do something controversial, rouse some anger, put up attention-grabbing fake news, call your competition names…. and it may get people’s attention, but it’s always short-lived and hurts your equity.  

If you need to matter, and not just on social media, you have to listen to the people you want to build a relationship with, truly listen – and enable, inspire, entertain, inform, assist. Provide a meaningful value exchange. That’s how you influence people and matter to them, in life and in social media!

Q: When brainstorming for a social media strategy for a brand, what’s the recommended process?

When brainstorming for a social media strategy for a brand:

• Be clear on the goal, and keep them SMART. Specific, Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Timebound.   
• Understand the context in which you are operating. In addition to a thorough brand and competitive audit, understand the category dynamics, while always looking at emerging behaviours.
• Know the people you are designing for. Understand what, when, where, why and how they make the choices they do, and how these choices interact with each other.
• Define your brand’s DNA. What is the brand purpose, the mission, the tone of voice, the personality? What human problem does this brand hope to solve? 
• Develop a content strategy and a conversation calendar. 
• Plan on how you will integrate your social media strategy with other channels.
• Identify the budget, tactics and tools required to achieve your goals.
• Set up a way to track results. 
• Be inspired. Know what great looks like.

Q: How does one select the right platform for a campaign and what are the main areas to keep in mind when designing for omni-channel effectiveness?

Always start with the consumer, the audience, the people you want to design for, sell to. Once you have defined what your high-value audience segments are, you need to define the goals for that audience set. What exactly do you want them to do? You’ve then got to select the right platform based on where your audience predominantly is, how active and engaged they are on a platform, and how they use the platforms for different needs. Knowing the consumer journey and the multiple and varied path that they take to purchase is foundational, as is optimising your content for the channel, and constantly testing and learning.

The best social media campaigns have mastered the art and science of connecting with people and being great conversationalists. They are authentic and expressive of the brand’s purpose

Q: What are the three campaigns you would pick as recommended viewing for social media marketing aspirants?

The best social media campaigns have mastered the art and science of connecting with people and being great conversationalists. They are authentic and expressive of the brand’s purpose. 

My favourites?

1. Apple’s Shot on iPhone. Shot On iPhone began as challenge when iPhone users were invited to share their best shots on Instagram or Twitter. Presently, #ShotOniPhone has been populated with more than 15 million posts (to date) on Instagram alone and is arguably one of the most successful UGC campaigns that launched an online movement which is relevant till today and is revived each year. Brand exposure that Apple hasn’t had to pay for directly! The brand is taking this further with the series of marketing campaigns shot on the iPhone. This successful social media campaign has even spawned other hashtags from people wanting to associate with the brand, such as #iphoneography, #iphotography, #iphonephoto, and #shotoniphone12pro.

2. Oreo. It’s fun, agile, creative, engaging, with a massive fan following on all the social platforms. From the ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ Super Bowl tweet in 2013 to now, Oreo continues to engage while keeping the brand and the product at the centre of it all. Oreo’s Instagram page is the epitome of creativity, using the cookie as a blank canvas, placing it in the most unusual and creative scenarios that keep viewers endlessly entertained. From tracking  down their fan who was born in the same year that Oreo cookies were introduced and posting a picture of her eating an Oreo cookie on her birthday, to taking major events and connecting them to the Oreo cookie in an entertaining and creative way, Oreo leads the way in FMCG social marketing.

3. Spotify. At the end of every year, social media buzz hits a high note for Spotify as it launches its annual ‘Wrapped’ feature, giving users a snapshot into their listening habits. A brilliant campaign that keeps coming back with brilliant expressions of their brand promise, it is a best-in-class example of how marketing teams should harness data, provide great value to its audiences, create and co-create  content, encourage product usage and integrate campaigns across media.

Q: What are the key platforms you believe social media marketers should keep an eye on in the months ahead?

I am extremely excited by the explosion of audio consumption as demonstrated by the ubiquity of podcasts and the popularity of Clubhouse. Live audio represents the next (and elevated!) phase of social media. Voice is a natural extension of having a conversation. 

Twitter has already started rolling out Spaces, which replicates the Clubhouse experience. An article by NBC news says that Facebook is working to add live audio features to its existing products and testing a standalone audio app, according to three sources at the company who were not authorised to discuss the plans publicly. Spotify is experimenting with live podcasting tools. Voice is more human, more real, and has a great capacity for dialogue. It will be great to watch this space unfold.

Q: Social media is an ever-evolving thing. How does one stay relevant?

 One, always be the custodian of the entity you want to super serve – your consumers! Know them, their habits, their behaviours, their motivations, barriers, triggers, preferences, the choices they make, how these choices interact with each other, the culture and the context in which they are embedded,  and the trends that they are co-creating. You need this to be able to understand the human problem behind the business problem and to solve for it. 

Two, make time for inspiration. Know what great looks like in this space. Look at the best social media campaigns, the technology that enabled great ideas to take shape, understand and deconstruct the strategy, not just the tactics. 

Three, be present. Be plugged in to what it happening around you. Are there cultural pressure points that could benefit from the voice of your brand? Are there social issues that you have a right to play in – and that you could honestly play a role in improving (not just woke washing!)? Can you make a positive dent in culture, in communities? Observe. Listen. Be attentive to what’s happening around the people you want to serve with your brand.

Q: All social media is different but they all follow a few common strategies in terms of how their algorithms work. What are the main areas to concentrate on in making the algorithms work for you?

The algorithms are sort of a black box – and no one has a complete visibility of how they work. Social media platforms don’t publicise algorithm details; personal experiences is what you have to rely on to develop a playbook that works for you.

Having said that, there are a few common elements that can and should be considered when socialising content.

One, post regularly and frequently. Most algorithms will downgrade you if you post randomly. Stay consistent and keep the conversation going.

Two, social media is about having a dialogue. So do design for meaningful participation, and respond to the comments, and the engagement from your audiences effectively and authentically. You cannot control the conversation, but you can moderate it and respond with empathy, openness and the voice of your brand.

Three. Experiment, test and learn with new formats. Utilise video content, IG Stories, Reels. Stay in touch with the formats available and be unafraid to learn on the go, and use the real time feedback that social media provides you to optimise your actions. 

Q: How did you enter the realm of social media marketing and what are the most memorable campaigns you’ve worked on over the years?

 I am a Choice Architect and therefore a behaviour change marketer. I am deeply interested in how people make choices – why, how, when, where and what choices people make and the role of the environment that helps architect these choices. 

Social media platforms (Facebook, Weibo, Twitch, etc.) are now evolving to becoming metaverses – multiple universes which allow immersive experiences where people connect, consume content, shop, find love and shape their dreams. These metaverses are a minefield of choices for consumers. People will make their most important choices on these platforms and I want to help design meaningful experiences for consumers and achieve commercial successes for the marketers/brands I work with.  

My best work is when I can help architect meaningful behaviour change that results in massive brand growth. 

In the fiercely-competitive prestige skin care market of China, the objective of SKII (P&G’s $ 2 billion brand) was to bring new, younger women into the franchise by showing them real and meaningful proof of efficacy. The challenge was to change their behaviour to change their choice – young women in China don’t do any skin tests and therefore fail to see the true impact of SKII on their skin. The ‘My Skin Is My Proof’ initiative changed this. It was built on social-mobile platforms, inviting women across China to get a display-worthy proof of their skin status and use their skin scores in a nation-wide social status campaign. Hailed as one of the most successful campaigns from SKII, we drove record participation in skin testing and new user trial. 

Another favourite of mine is in hair care which saw a unique innovation requiring behaviour change – using a waterless hair conditioner. This was for Pantene (P&G) in Indonesia. Women in Indonesia are sceptical of new beauty regimes and will not change habits easily. We worked at different levels of choice, populating their environment (social, geographic, retail) with nudges that informed and influenced them to shift behaviours.

Q: You’re the Programme Director for M.AD School Sri Lanka and Maldives. Why should aspiring social media and digital marketers in Sri Lanka choose M.AD School Sri Lanka?

M.AD is the most awarded creative school globally, with its alumni in leadership positions in the world’s biggest marketing companies, advertising and media agencies, and social platforms, including FB, Linked In and TikTok. M.AD classes provide an exposure to what the best in class looks like with instructors from the US, Brazil, Singapore, UK and Australia, amongst others. You are taught by ‘practitioner-experts,’ who come from various markets, disciplines and brands, preparing the participants to excel not just in Sri Lanka, or Asia, but on a global stage.

All the class are live and online, with robust discussions, exercises and client-facing projects that emphasise the practical application of the 10 weeks of learning. The ability to string your thinking into strategies and pitches that drive conversion, along with the connections and support that the M.AD network provides, makes a bootcamp at M.AD a unique, value-creating experience.

Social media platforms are now evolving to becoming metaverses – multiple universes which allow immersive experiences where people connect, consume content, shop, find love and shape their dreams. These metaverses are a minefield of choices for consumers. People will make their most important choices on these platforms

[See https://miamiadschool.lk/ for more information.]