Stq 05

Social Technology
Quarterly
Facebook’s
Open
Graph
&
Social
Feedback
Why
People
Need
Stories
C
a
p
t
u
r
i
n
g
P
e
o
p
l
e
’
s
S
t
o
r
i
e
s
t
h
r
o
u
g
h
D
i
g
i
t
a
l
M
e
d
i
a
STQ
Vol. 2 Issue 2

3
Social Technology Quarterly Vol. 2 Issue 2
2
S
T
Q
S
o
c
i
a
l
T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
Q
u
a
r
t
e
r
l
y
C
a
m
p
a
i
g
n
s
W
h
y
P
e
o
p
l
e
N
e
e
d
S
t
o
r
i
e
s
D
i
a
r
m
a
i
d
B
y
r
n
e
T
h
e
S
t
o
r
y
t
e
l
l
i
n
g
M
a
n
d
a
l
a
G
a
u
r
a
v
M
i
s
h
r
a
W
h
a
t
’
s
N
e
x
t
f
o
r
W
e
b
s
i
t
e
D
e
s
i
g
n
?
A
m
i
t
M
i
r
c
h
a
n
d
a
n
i
N
L
P
a
n
d
S
o
c
i
a
l
M
e
d
i
a
:
A
S
e
m
a
n
t
i
c
P
e
r
s
p
e
c
t
i
v
e
V
a
n
d
a
n
a
U
.
C
o
m
m
e
r
c
e
L
e
v
e
r
a
g
i
n
g
F
a
c
e
b
o
o
k
’
s
O
p
e
n
G
r
a
p
h
a
n
d
S
o
c
i
a
l
F
e
e
d
b
a
c
k
S
y
s
t
e
m
K
a
u
s
h
a
l
S
a
r
d
a
A
p
p
a
r
e
l
C
o
m
m
e
r
c
e
t
h
r
o
u
g
h
D
i
g
i
t
a
l
S
t
o
r
y
t
e
l
l
i
n
g
M
a
l
i
k
a
V
.
K
a
s
h
y
a
p
G
i
f
t
s
a
t
t
h
e
C
l
i
c
k
o
f
a
B
u
t
t
o
n
V
a
n
d
a
n
a
U
.
T
h
e
P
s
y
c
h
o
l
o
g
y
o
f
B
r
a
n
d
L
o
y
a
l
t
y
D
i
a
r
m
a
i
d
B
y
r
n
e
C
o
m
m
u
n
i
t
i
e
s
T
h
e
E
V
o
l
u
t
i
o
n
o
f
V
i
s
u
a
l
S
t
o
r
y
t
e
l
l
i
n
g
A
n
i
n
d
y
a
K
u
n
d
u
C
a
p
t
u
r
i
n
g
P
e
o
p
l
e
’
s
S
t
o
r
i
e
s
t
h
r
o
u
g
h
D
i
g
i
t
a
l
M
e
d
i
a
N
a
h
a
l
S
h
a
h
A
m
b
i
e
n
t
S
o
c
i
a
l
A
p
p
s
K
a
u
s
h
a
l
S
a
r
d
a
R
e
d
i
s
c
o
v
e
r
i
n
g
o
u
r
D
I
Y
S
p
i
r
i
t
P
a
y
a
l
S
h
a
h
4
8
1
4
1
7
2
2
2
7
3
0
3
3
3
7
4
5
4
8
5
2
Overview
The universe is made of stories. We live in them. Big and small,
told and heard, stories have profound impact on our lives.
Storytelling is perhaps one of the oldest human pastimes, and
now, in the era of social, it is being meta-morphed into a tool that
empowers people. Wherever a story originates from, the retelling
of it pays it forward across the social web, emulating the impact
of the butterfly effect.
The butterfly effect has become a metaphor for the existence of
the seemingly small things that can bring in great transformations.
Stories have similar powers and are being utilised by marketers
and brand managers every day across their campaigns,
communities and commerce-related activities. To reflect this
importance we decided to focus this issue on storytelling with a
re-imagined butterfly effect on the cover.
The articles reflect the power of stories aligning with trends in
social technology across diverse fields. We hope you enjoy
reading it as much as we enjoyed while creating, writing, designing
and implementing it.
Team Kuliza
The Social Technology Quarterly is a research publication from
Kuliza that helps brands leverage latest research and trends in
social media and social technologies.

4 5
Kuliza
Why People
Need Stories
Campaigns
by Diarmaid Byrne
Photo Credit:
LauraFulmer
People spend a large amount of their
day in stories; gossiping and storytelling
consumes much of our time; the average
American watches TV for 4 hours per
day. Storytelling is one of the few human
traits that is universal across cultures
throughout history, from Sanskrit and
Greek folktales to contemporary books
and movies. Anthropologists believe
that familiar and predictable story
structures provide order and certainty
for people, and allow us to understand
and organize our world.
Technology has changed how people
discover, listen and tell stories.
However, people’s desire for stories
has not changed with new technology.
Irrespective of the technology,
everything starts in the brain and that
still responds to narratives and stories.
From an advertising or social media
campaign perspective, brands need to
stand out from the noisy crowd. They
04
Our need for stories is never satisfied. It is through stories
people have connected with one another. Stories have the
power to create phenomenal changes and influence beliefs.
Photo Credit: uffizu.chu
Stories Communicate
Stories are the primal form of
communication for people. They connect
people to each other and function as
links to historical and religious traditions,
legends, symbols and narratives. Stories
also serve to unify people and values to
a nation and national ideal.
Stories Educate
From Stone Age paintings to Greek
philosophers, Aesop’s fables to
communications in our digital and
social age, stories educate. It is
how we communicate our values
and behaviours to guarantee they
endure. Steven Pinker opines that
stories are an important tool for
learning and developing relations
within social groups; as our ancestors
started living in groups they had to
make sense of increasingly complex
social relationships. By exploring how
readers felt about protagonists and
antagonists in 19th century British
novels, Carroll, Johnson, Kruger
and Gottschall found that stories
(specifically 19th century British
novels) promote and bind people to
common human values. In a sense,
a story can be viewed as a training
ground for people to understand how
to interact with others and learn about
the customs and rules of society.
Stories Develop Empathy
Empathy is crucial to social interaction.
Stories trigger our imagination and allow
us to become participants in a narrative.
By living through events and emotions
we may not yet have experienced,
stories enable us to develop empathy
for people and circumstances, thus
increasing society’s tolerance and
understanding. Mar and Keith Oatley’s
research indicates that fiction increases
people’s ability to connect with others.
On tests of empathy, heavy fiction
readers outperformed heavy non-fiction
achieve this through stories. When
they create a story, they establish a
connection with their audiences, create
meaning and purpose that people can
believe, identify and participate with.
Emirates has done this well in its recent
‘Hello Tomorrow’ campaign. In the auto
industry, Volkswagen and Ford have
had popular campaigns with their Darth
Vader and Doug adverts respectively.
Away from brands, a major reason for
the success of social networking sites
is that they allow people to create and
curate their own stories on Facebook,
Path, Instagram and others.
That people are so immersed in stories
everyday, that they are drawn to and
engage with them, suggests they will
continue to play a crucial social function
in our lives.
readers. This increased empathy was
seen in kids as young as 4 who were
exposed to a large number of books
and films.
Stories Teach Morals
Stories educate people not only
about society and values, but also
educate people about the type of
morals that are expected of them. One
element of standard story plots is that
‘goodness’ and learning is rewarded
Photo Credit: jabbusch
while malevolence is punished. This
is seen in everything from children’s
fairytales to contemporary movies.
Even antiheroes such as John Cleese’s
Basil Fawlty are not allowed a happy
ending. Psychologist Marcus Appel
argues that people have to believe
in the idea of justice for a society to
function properly. This was humorously
shown in The Simpsons episode “Bart’s
Inner Child”. From his research Appel
found that people who believe that
there is punishment or reward based

6 7
Kuliza
References
Jeremy Hsu,The secrets of storytelling:
Why we love a good yarn, Scientific
American,September 18,2008
Jonathan Gottschall, Why fiction is
good for you, The Boston Globe, April
29,2012
Eric Barker, Do stories rule our lives?
Would that be good or bad?, www.
bakadesuyo.com,May 6,2012
About Diarmaid Byrne
Photo Credit: Andrew Huth
on behaviours are those who read a lot
of fiction. As Erik Barker writes, “Fiction
seems to teach us to see the world
through rose-coloured lenses…[and
this] seems to be an important part of
what makes human societies work.”
Stories Motivate
Stories have the power to motivate
because they appeal to our emotions.
People typically focus on their negative
experiences in life. The seven basic
story plots often show characters in
a desperate situation and how they
managed to reverse and improve their
circumstances. Whether in Greek
legends or a friend’s story, people can
associatewiththetrialsandtribulationsof
the characters and their circumstances,
find a connection between their own
stories or experiences and the story they
are reading or listening to, and become
motivated to overcome their problems.
Stories Persuade
Stories can mould and change people’s
Photo Credit: autopoiet
Image Credit: The Pie Shop
beliefs, feelings and decisions. They
have always been used in advertising to
persuade audiences about a particular
product or brand position. Jennifer
Edson Escalas found that people
respond more positively to narrative
adverts than adverts that argue a case for
their products. Similarly with nonfiction,
people are critical and skeptical, reading
with their shield up. However, a story
Psychologist, interested in social
behaviours and behaviour change and.
ChiefPeopleOfficeratKuliza.Writeson
communities and commerce.
Twitter: @diarmaidb
moves people emotionally. Apple did
this very successfully with their “Think
Different” campaign. Stories are also
used to convince people of a specific
political view or to influence their
opinions and behaviours, from Fox News
and propagandists to government spin
doctors and corporate communication
departments.
Photo Credit: Idealog

8 9
Kuliza
The
Storyteling
Mandala
Campaigns
by Gaurav Mishra
Image Credit: Julianna Coutinho
Marketers have always used stories to share information,
change opinions and influence decisions. Now, as people
create, consume and share brand stories in new ways,
marketers need to go beyond the 30-sec product ad or the
300-word press release, and tell purpose-inspired transmedia
stories that inspire, organize and energize people.
Six Trends in Storytelling
Let’s start by recapturing six important trends that are reshaping
how people create, consume and share brand stories:
• Short attention spans: People are consuming news
and entertainment in byte-sized pieces, increasingly on
smartphones and tablets, often on-the-go.
• Narrow interest graphs: People are selectively paying
attention to the topics and sources they are most interested
in and filtering out the rest.
• Social serendipity: People are discovering new content
based on what is shared by their networks, or by other
people like them, via sophisticated algorithms.
• Community curation: People are forming on-the-fly
communities around a shared passion or purpose by
curating content around hashtags and trending topics.
• Remix in context: People are remixing photos, videos, art
08
and music and sharing their creative work in the context of
a time, place or event.
• Emergent storylines: People are curating their own
Facebook or Twitter timelines as work-in-progress stories,
with emergent narratives
These six trends play an important role in the narrative arc
we will draw next: from Hero’s Journey to Heroes to Everyday
Heroes.
From Hero’s Journey to Heroes to Everyday
Heroes
Hero’s Journey: Storytelling
The Hero’s Journey is a good example of a monomyth or a
universal story that cuts across all types of stories, including
myths, movies, novels, and ads.
According to Joseph Campbell, all stories follow the same
three-part narrative structure of the Hero’s Journey. In
‘Departure’, the hero listens to the call of adventure and leaves
the “known world” for the “unknown world”. In ‘Initiation’, he
meets guides and allies, falls in love, undergoes a series of
tests and trials, discovers the answer and receives the gift. In
‘Return’, he reluctantly returns home, survives a near-death
experience, and shares his wisdom and power with the rest
of the world.
Source: Joseph Campbell Foundation
Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey
Storytelling that is purpose-inspired helps
brands inspire people to participate in a
shared purpose.

11
10
The Hero’s Journey has been used by filmmakers to create
franchises like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Matrix, and
by marketers to tell compelling stories about brands, most
often through 30-second ad films.
However, the six trends that are reshaping how people create,
consume and share brands stories are also reshaping both
the nature of the universal stories themselves and the art of
how these stories are told.
the three-part narrative structure of the Hero’s Journey,
they expand it, by incorporating multi-layered intertwining
narratives, complex social networks of characters, and
storylines that unfold over hundreds of hours.
In fact, we don’t really consume popular culture anymore,
certainly not as a linear narrative. Instead, we co-create it, by
deconstructing plot twists in elaborate blog posts, contributing
to extensive fan wikis that delve into the motivations of each
character, and creating our own parallel narrative in virtual
worlds and alternative reality games built around films and
TV shows.
As popular culture becomes more layered, brands have had
to rethink marketing. Increasingly, ads attract audiences to
branded “story worlds”, which try to retain their interest over
the long term, and convert them first into passionate fans
and then into paying customers, much like movie trailers with
entertainment franchises. P&G’s Old Spice Man is not only
one of the most memorable marketing campaigns in recent
times, but also an entertainment franchise in the making.
Everyday Heroes: Purpose-Inspired Storytelling
Now, let’s look at the nature of universal stories itself.
CNN Heroes in the US and CNN-IBN Real Heroes in India
are good examples of purpose-inspired storytelling about
everyday heroes acting as change agents, with a clear call
for participation and action. The phenomenal popularity of
the TED conference is another example of our innate need to
celebrate everyday heroes with “ideas that matter”.
These stories about everyday heroes who are changing the
world share some elements with the Hero’s Journey, but
diverge from it in important ways. First, each one of us is a
hero with a different call for adventure, a different journey, and
a different reward, which means that the idea of the monomyth
itself is problematic. Second, the most important journey is the
journey within, into the “unknown world” of our own hidden
potential, to search for our own best self. Third, our biggest
battles are the ones we fight with ourselves and the only way
we can win is by helping everyone else win too.
As people have become better at filtering out the 30-second
tell-and-sell product ad, brands have had to rediscover their
reason for being and tell stories that inspire, organize and
energize people around a shared passion or purpose. GE’s
Ecomagination and Healthymagination initiatives are powerful
examples of a brand telling purpose-driven stories that inspire
participation and action.
The Storytelling Mandala
The Storytelling Mandala is designed to help brands tell stories
that inspire, organize and energize people to participate and
act around a shared purpose. The inner circle consists of a
new three-part universal story that articulates the purpose of
the brand, the change it wants to catalyze and the quest it has
undertaken. The outer circle focuses on the art of transmedia
storytelling, including the role of content, the sources of
content, the role of channels and the role of paid, owned and
earned media.
Question 1:The Universal Story
To inspire, organize and energize people around a shared
purpose, brands need to tell their story in three parts, in
sequence: why (purpose), what (change) and how (quest).
• Why (Purpose): Who are we and what is our reason for
being? What is our shared purpose, our Social Heartbeat,
Heroes:Transmedia Storytelling
First, let’s look at the art of storytelling.
NBC’s hit TV series Heroes is a good example of transmedia
storytelling, where TV shows, graphic novels, video games,
mobile applications, ofﬂine experiences and online communities
explore different aspects of the same ‘story world’.
While many transmedia “story worlds” exhibit elements of
Image Credit: Ben Fredericson
Image Credit: Peter Hellberg

12 13
Kuliza
buzz, gossip and rumours.
Question 3: Sources of Content
Brands need to recognize that creating content requires
time and resources and tap into three sources of content:
create original content, crowdsource content, and curate
conversations.
• Create original content: Brands need to create a critical
mass of compelling original content, including almost all
the tent pole content like minisites, apps, games, films and
reports and at least some of the content pegs like blog
posts, video clips and infographics.
• Crowdsource content: If brands are able to create
compelling original content, they can use it as a
provocation to crowdsource content pegs from influencers
and community members, often by running crowdsourcing
contests.
• Curate conversations: Finally, brands can curate
conversations around their content tent poles and content
pegs into timelines (Storify) or collections (Pinterest), and
use them and content pegs, and even content tent poles.
Marketers and agencies are increasingly hiring journalists
and filmmakers to create original branded content. Marketers
are also creating contests to crowdsource everything from
personal stories to Super Bowl ads. Finally, most media
companies, and many marketers, are curating conversations
and using them as content pegs.
Question 4: Role of Channels
Once brands have created, crowdsourced or curated content,
they need to organize them across channels, knowing that
some channels work best for content repository, some for
content aggregation, and some for content distribution.
• Content repository: Channels like YouTube, SlideShare
and Flickr are typically used for storing videos, documents
and photos respectively.
• Content aggregation: Websites, blogs and Tumblr (and
increasingly social and mobile apps) are typically used for
aggregating content and conversations.
• Content distribution: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and
LinkedIn are typically used for distributing content to
community members and influencers.
The purpose of the content repository channels is to pull in
people deep into the content archive, while the purpose of
the content distribution channels is to push out the latest
content and create conversations. The purpose of the content
aggregation channel is to link pull and push, stock and flow,
content and conversations.
that can inspire people?
• What (Change): What is the change we are trying to
bring about? What does change mean for individuals,
communities and the world?
• How (Quest): What is the journey we must go through to
catalyze positive change in the world? What if the only way
we can win is if everyone wins?
Even when brands want to tell purpose-inspired stories, they
inevitably find it difficult to abandon their tried-and-tested
benefit-driven tell-and-sell claims. Therefore, it’s critical to
build a bridge between the benefit-driven claims that move
units and the purpose-inspired stories that move hearts.
Question 2: Role of Content
To tell their story in a compelling manner, brands need to
create three types of content, each with a different role: long-
form tent pole content to pull in people, short-form content
pegs to push out stories to people, and ongoing two-way
conversations.
• Tent pole content: Long-form content like minisites, apps,
reports, games or ﬁlms to showcase the full story in one
place and pull in people.
• Content pegs: Short-form content pegs like blog posts,
infographics and video clips to highlight and push out
different aspects of the story.
• Conversations: Ongoing two-way conversations to push out
the content pegs to pull in people to the tent pole content.
• Think of a tent. The content tent pole holds up the tent and
attracts people to it. The content pegs hold down the tent
and support the content tent pole. The tent needs both the
content tent pole and content pegs.
Now, think of a movie. The movie itself is the content tent pole,
while the trailers, interviews, announcements and reviews are
content pegs, leading to different types of conversations like
Question 5: Role of Media
Finally, brands need to intentionally use paid, owned and
earned media in sync to attract strangers, convert them into
familiars and then into promoters.
• Paid Media (for strangers): Targeted display, search or
social ads to attract people who don’t know anything about
the brand, and seek their permission to join an owned
media platform.
• Owned Media (for familiars): Private or public online
community platforms, social networking groups, or events
to organize people who have given permission to the brand
to share regular content with them.
• Earned Media (for promoters): Ongoing conversations with
community members and influencers to trigger participation
and action and energize them to become promoters.
However, even as brands are investing in building permission-
based, owned media assets, they are realizing that familiars
and even promoters sometime lapse into strangers and even
community members sometimes need to be reactivated with
the help of paid and earned media.
Purpose-Inspired Transmedia Storytelling
In summary, brands need to tell new types of stories, purpose-
inspired stories, and tell them in new ways via transmedia
storytelling.
If brands do this, they will inspire, organize and energize
people to participate and act around a shared purpose; build
permission based owned media assets that will increasingly
look like entertainment franchises; and thrive in a world in
which media is fragmented, content is cheap, attention is the
biggest constraint, but storytelling can still win over hearts
and minds.
About Gaurav Mishra
Rethinks purpose and participation
and engages people through
storytelling and crowdsourcing. Asia
Director of Social at MSLGroup/
Publicis Groupe
Twitter: @gauravonomics

15
14
Kuliza
Web 2.0 Design Style
Web 2.0 was characterized by a simplicity and clarity in
design. It hailed a resurgence in commerce on the web.
It built and nurtured online communities through social
networks and also leveraged new technologies to deliver
better services. Its most notable features are listed below:
1 Simplicity & Speed
Visual elements were reduced to the essentials without
compromising on effectiveness and the function of the
site. Central layouts were also preferred. This allowed
for a better connection between the user, the brand and
the service or product. Site loading speeds were also
carefully considered and the use of slow loading modules
such as flash intros were eliminated.
2 Columns & Navs
Sites were organized in 2 or 3 column layouts, akin to
print media, and navigation was simplified to fewer
links to communicate a sense of honesty. Graphics and
images were introduced within columns to introduce a
visual lightness.
3 Site Structure
Sites were structured such that they had a prominent
header, a bold logo, an often dynamic (and sometimes
static) window area displaying a bold message or
image, the content area showcasing an overview of the
service or product features, and a prominent footer that
often absorbed the function of a site map page (thereby
eliminating the need for it).
4 Strong Colours & Calls to Action
Sites featured prominent contrasting areas against neutral
surfaces (sometimes textured) to highlight a call to action.
The introduction of gradients and sometimes reflections
also made these call to action areas more appealing.
Really engaging icons also added a visual richness.
New Design Style
The new design style seems to be pushing the messaging,
structure and function of a website even further. Its most
notable features are listed below:
1 Single Page Format
It’s obvious that sites are losing traffic every time you
click through to another page. In order to hold someone’s
interest, sites are switching to a single page layout. The
entire value proposition of the site is explained on one
page and the user simply scrolls down to see more.
2 Columns & Navs
The 2 and 3 column layouts inspired by print media
seem to have disappeared. They have been replaced by
modules that look like little posters within the larger web
page for a particular feature or product. Since content
from multiple pages is now featured on one page, the
navigation has dramatically reduced to even fewer links.
3 Site Structure
The prominent header and bold logo seem to have been
dramatically minimised to convey a quiet confidence in
the products and services the company offers.
The window area displaying a message or image has the
ability to stretch across the entire browser window adding
a dynamic feel and a subtle but confident call to action.
This also signifies a change in the approach to a site
being conceived and limited to a set width.
The content area now showcases not an overview, but
the actual products and features in a visually appealing
poster-like presentation for each. This encourages the
user to stay on the page and keep scrolling.
What’s Next for
Website Design?
Web 2.0 Style Site New Design Style Site
Photo Credit: Squarespace Photo Credit: New Squarespace
by Amit Mirchandani

17
16
Kuliza
Also, the prominent footer continues to absorb the
function of a site map page, but also appears more subtle
and minimal.
4 Colours & Calls to Action
Sites continue to feature neutral surfaces (sometimes
textured) with messaging and graphics to highlight a
call to action, however everything appears more subtle
and refined. The colours appear to be reserved for the
imagery, giving the site greater flexibility to integrate more
colours. There seems to be a move away from gradients
and reflections except in images. Engaging icons continue
to add to the visual richness.
5 Videos
There is an introduction of a video presentation as a
layered link. This is an important change that complements
the move towards minimal one page sites, enabling the
user to learn more and see some of the features in action.
6 Shorter Attention Spans
There appears to be a move to optimise for shorter
attention spans of their users. People seem to be
searching for more and more specific products and
services, and the site needs to engage with those users
based on the specific selling points that they are looking
for. Therefore content cannot be linked to within a site,
rather all the content needs to be in plain sight, with an
appealing graphic to engage users for the aspects that
matter to them.
Conclusions
In short, the new design style of sites is moving towards
being simpler. Sites are now more neutral (therefore more
flexible with the messaging and imagery), faster to load,
better organized, more video oriented, and encourage
a user to visit for a longer time. This is a refreshing
improvement to website design as websites are being
precise, thereby ensuring better understanding for users
who can now choose what information they need, decide
where and how to get it.
About Amit Mirchandani
NLP and
Social Media:
A Semantic
Perspective
Campaigns
by Vandana U.
Image Credit: OurHypnoSpace
A phenomenon that has added great value to marketing,
communications and sales is the science of Neuro Linguistic
Programming (NLP). As you sit, scroll down and read this
article, explore this interesting angle, you will begin to notice
various methods, and analyze what will work best for your
business on social media.
Now that’s a weird mix: NLP and Social Media. How do the
two even meet?
Before I answer this question, here is a brief introduction to
NLP. Developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the
1970s at the University of Santa Cruz, California, it is based on
the relationships between language, thought, communication,
and behavior. It is about subjective human experiences
and how powerfully language affects these experiences. A
strong foundation of NLP is its focus on behavioural states
(determined, humorous, creativity, etc.). Simply put it is about
how we think and how we behave. The purpose of it is to
generate positive outcomes. Just as how we believe “We
cannot not communicate,” NLP presupposes “We cannot not
respond,” which is actually true, because everyone responds
or reacts both consciously and unconsciously. The key point
I want to raise here is that as sellers we have been looking at
17
Chief Creative Officer at
Kuliza and Managing Director
at Lucid Design India. Writes
on design, environments and
sustainability.
Twitter: @lucid_design
Neuro Linguistic Programming has been
influentialinenablingpowerfulcommunication
on social media platforms.

18 19
Kuliza
what we are doing; with the intervention of NLP there is also
the avenue to revealing customers’ responses.
Every marketer wants to persuade and influence people in
order to increase sales. Primarily every company exists to sell
products, services and ideas, or for that matter even values
and culture. To do so one is always seeking ways to influence
buying, loyalty, embed beliefs and be more persuasive in a less
obvious and more subtle manner. At a time when consumers
are more discerning, clever advertising is not enough.
Perhaps that is the reason, after plenty of market research,
one realizes that one has to speak to the consumer in his
or her language and use psychological triggers to encourage
them to like one’s brand or product.
Now, social commerce stands out from other ways of trading
and business and gives e-commerce a beating because
it is more engaging, participative and can offer an entire
experience. This is the reason social media falls back a great
deal on Neuro Linguistic Programming. While talking about
social media it is an obvious turn towards talking about the
social-ness of it. More and more retailers are using powerful,
hypnotic language whilst creating content. The first aspect that
can titillate any brand enhancement exercise is understanding
sub-modalities.
Modalities and Submodalities
Experiences are a result of the way we take in information
through our senses. Visual (what we see), auditory (what we
hear), kinesthetic (touch and feelings), olfactory (smell), and
gustatory (taste): these are modalities. Submodalities are our
preferred way of taking in information and representing it.
Some people are visual. They need to see things or visualize
a picture in their mind. Some are more convinced by a touch or
a feeling, are kinesthetic and others need to hear, or represent
things by the way they sound; these people have an auditory
sense of information.
In a typical social media update, retailers use words that
users use every day; that itself is the catch. Engineered well,
viewers are subconsciously motivated to take an interest in
your brand or product.
Having a mix of theVAK
For fans who are visual, posts in terms of maps, pictures,
diagrams and the use of picturesque language is the right
mix. Usually posts include words like see, look, bright, clear,
picture, view, reveal, imagine, an eyeful, take a peek, peek-
boo, paint a picture, etc.
Users who are very auditory will be most affected by a
campaign that makes good use of sound. This could be a
music remix competition or plenty of vox pops. Make sure
your campaign ‘rings a bell’ by using auditory words and
phrases like hear, tell, sound, resonate, listen, silence, deaf,
squeak, hush, roar, melody, make music, harmonize, tune in /
out, rings a bell, voice an opinion, give me your ear, loud and
clear, etc.
For people who go by touch, or the feel of something, a
brand’s updates can be constructed around words like pull,
make contact, do you feel, experience, sense, think, get in
touch, give a hand, hang in there. The language used needs
to offer these experiences.
A good mix of all the three elements will create that “win-win”
situation brands hope for.
We have just begun with the thrilling, delighting use of words.
There are magic words that can craft your social media
campaign, making it go viral.
Magic words
NLP is a great deal about linguistics or language. It may come
as a shocker to many as I reveal the power of verbs. These
are the part of speech that we understand as “action words”
but do not really realize the power of action. It reminds me of
the age old-mantra of advertising to create AIDA: Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action. With social media you can take a
direct leap into action and a really simple way is to use verbs.
Advertising and marketing tactics in terms of language
use enormous amounts of adjectives and adverbs. Most
campaigns are filled with them. With social media however,
using verbs is what induces that necessary action. Because it
and on the same wavelength.
One relied upon tactic of building rapport is by asking questions
about consumers. This shows you are approachable, that
you want to listen to your customers, shows that you are on
the same level as they are, and it makes them feel cared for
(getting back to VAK). Your questions can be constructed
using double binds so that comments and posts remain in a
positive tone and are seemingly open-ended. Brands should
comment on posts in similar tones. Rapport can help you pace
and lead your fans. Some of Ford’s Facebook posts reveal the
rapport it builds with its consumers.
All three posts follow the VAK pattern in order to build rapport.
The first one concentrates on the auditory and the following
two posts are kinesthetic in language.
Double bind
This is a deadly covert technique that many use even
unwittingly. Double binds give consumers two choices that
lead to the same beneficial outcome. From a brand’s point of
view, one is giving the person two choices, but either of the
choices gives the brand the desired outcome. Double binds
work on presuppositions. They cleverly create the illusion of
choice like “How would you like to pay, by card or cash?” (you
anyway have to pay!) Heinz has been lauded several times
over for its successful campaigns on social media. Apart from
is not what you say to the users, it is what you make them do.
The simplest of examples include like, share, buy, tweet,
connect, follow, poke, blog, post. These are simple yet
powerful words and these are the outcomes one wants out
of social media marketing. An effective tactic is when you can
embed an action in a post.
Comic Con India’s update embeds commands beautifully. It
first plays on loss – fans have missed out something. Then
as a solution to never miss out again, the update strategically
commands the users, making it a simple action: stay, go,
hover, select, magically appears and finally share. This is a
good mix of VAK and therefore outcome achieved!
Feeding these ‘magic’ words to users can help a great deal in
building rapport, a powerful tool and major principle of NLP.
Rapport
A key element of NLP is building rapport, which is not only
a positive outcome but also a tool. The aim of any retailer
on social media is to quickly build rapport, ensuring a larger
fan base, more likes, shares and more word-of-mouse. Also
one can suppose it is necessary to have an over-whelming
response or a business may begin to doubt the ROI and
effectiveness of social media.
What is building rapport? You are indicating to the user that
“You and I are the same! We come from the same place; we
have the same values.” A brand’s Facebook page begins to
mirror its fans, their behavior and offer more on that basis.
Rapport works on feeding back what users inform the brand
through comments and likes. Importantly it is not subtle but
obvious; however it works because both of you are in sync

20 21
Kuliza
will learn how to use for great sales.
Another techn-ique is “the more… the more” pattern. The more
you use NLP, the more you understand responses. We have
all had the experience where the more we got involved with
something the more we learnt or realized. This is a structure
that can be very hypnotic, patterned as: The more you (x), the
more you (y). How you can make it work is “x” is a process
or action being done by your target group anyway and “y” is
what you want them to do. For example: The more you read
through this article the more you will understand how simple
this pattern is to use.
Target provides a good example of using suggestibility in this
post to its fans. With the simplest of presuppositions with the
word “like” being made synonymous with “birthday spankings”,
it has managed to draw a huge 68,768 likes.
So if you have begun to wonder if NLP is rocket science, sooner
or later you will realize that it is an easy way to get what you
want, because you know that these are not the only techniques
to make NLP for social media a great success combination.
About Vandana U.
VAK strategies Heinz relies a great deal on this technique.
You can see two examples above.
As the campaign on the top left suggests, a user has to
choose between red and brown sauce as a part of “elections”.
The illusion of choice easily clicks and a fan is made to think
that he or she is being offered a choice. Importantly, Heinz
is winning as a true election would be between Heinz and
another brand.
In the example on the top right , Heinz once again uses double
binds to cleverly pre-suppose an action.
Now don’t mistake this for a catch 22 situation. I am not
attempting to create a “no-win” situation but merely suggesting
how you can create great sales, and a “win-win” situation.
Using Hypnosis
Hypnosis urges us to view altered states of mind. It involves
putting one in an absolutely relaxed state, because it is during
this state that one is more suggestible and responsive, similar
to how a movie on the big screen can move someone to tears
or elicit strong responses. Now I am not we aren’t talking
about a strange, magical experience, but a state of trance
where the unconscious takes over the conscious mind. As
you read this with curiosity and interest I invite you to think
over this. Have you ever driven to work or home and began to
drive comfortably and upon reaching you don’t really recall the
entire journey, how you got there, and you can only remember
tiny bits? Have you ever been so engrossed while reading that
you got “lost” in the book?
All these are examples of entering into trance every day. So
why hypnosis now? The fact that hypnosis is an experience
and with social media making everything effortless and
working on the agenda of the consumer doing ‘relaxed,’
easy shopping, it becomes necessary to view how hypnotic
suggestions are made to customers. There are times people
have got lost in the world of liking, sharing and tweeting.
It is unfortunate that many people can get the wrong idea about
hypnosis. One need not be asleep in a state of hypnosis. What
I am referring to here is conversational hypnosis or covert
hypnosis. In this state people are awake and are definitely
aware of what is being fed to them in terms of information.
They are not at the mercy of the hypnotist.
As a part of hypnosis here are few techniques you could
employ in order to make ‘suggestions’ subtly. A cause-effect
pattern is a great way to start. You can use this pattern to
make implicit suggestions. If I tell you more about NLP, you
Marketing&CommunicationsSpecialist
at Kuliza and a certified Basic and
Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic
Programming. Writes on language and
communication.

22 23
Kuliza
Leveraging
Facebook’s Open
Graph and Social
Feedback System
Commerce
by Kaushal Sarda
Image Credit:
Facebook
It has always been evident that
consumers like to get other people’s
perspectives and opinions before
making a purchase. That is why we
always try to go to a mall in pairs or
groups. The dream of social commerce
has been to provide the perfect platform
to give instant feedback from peers
and friends alike by creating social
shopping experiences for consumers,
and retailers.
Facebook’s new Open Graph is taking
us in that direction by enabling Facebook
apps to move beyond the customary
‘like’ action and define new interactions
such as ‘read’, ‘bought’, ‘want’, etc., and
in turn allow brands and retailers to offer
their customers ways to connect with
friends. This will bring people together
online across an inherently social
activity — shopping.
Salient
Features
1
At the heart of the Open Graph is
frictionless sharing. It is a shift from per-
transaction sharing to one time opt-in.
This enables automated sharing around
any Facebook user interaction or
activity, resulting in a dramatic increase
in sharing of social content.
22
Open Graph provides an amazing opportunity for brands to
transform customer interactions into brand stories that can
virally reach and impact millions.
Image Credit: Nanigans.com
2
Developers can now make interactions
viral by defining ‘actions’ and ‘objects’
within their Open Graph Apps. Actions
consist of verbs such as ‘watched’,
“listened,” ‘cooked’ or ‘ran’. Objects
consist of the nouns users connect
to within an app like a ‘movie’, ‘artist’,
‘recipe’ or ‘route’. These constructs help
developers translate an interaction on
their app into a sharable story.
3
When a user takes an action on an
object within the Open Graph App, the
app will automatically broadcast this as
a story within the Facebook experience
to the real-time Ticker without the
need of a click. Stories broadcast on
the Ticker are accessible to a user’s
friends and include the app developer’s
customizable “Flyout” with more in-
depth information.
5
Marketers can promote these in-app
actions as sponsored stories to a
targeted subset of the user’s friends
via the new Graph Targeting capability.
4
Apps can also be part of a user’s
Timeline, and showcased by developer-
created aggregations that display a
user’s actions taken within the app in a
visually appealing way.

24 25
Kuliza
Top
4
1. Elle Trend
Report
Elle has launched a
shoppable trend guide
on Facebook. The guide,
embedded as a tab on
Elle’s Facebook page,
invited shoppers to navigate
across six editorially chosen
spring trends, including
floral, nautical and ladylike.
Users can click ‘love’, ‘want’,
‘own’ or ‘buy!’ on each
product page. By default,
all interactions with the app
were shared automatically
on users’ timelines, so
even if users did not make
a purchase, they would
inadvertently draw curious
friends to interact with the
app. This Open Graph
integration allowed Elle to
turn those interactions into
marketing promotions.
2. Fab Social
Shopping
Fab took its social shopping
experience one step further
by offering members $10
worth of Fab.com credits
a month as an incentive
to activate their Facebook
Social Shopping App.
Fab’s social shopping app
used the action “bought”
to automatically publish
member purchases to their
Timeline, Newsfeed and
Open
Graph Apps
Ticker. Interestingly, Fab
automatically hide stories
when users purchase an
item that was denoted as a
gift or an adult product. The
app helped Fab reward its
members for their word of
mouth marketing efforts.
1
Get onto the graph
Create an app and / or attach your site to
the social graph via Facebook Connect
and social plugins.
2
Level up on pages
Go beyond page engagement to
determine how to create a truly “social
by design” experience that conveys your
brand identity via user interaction stories.
4
Understand users’ social behavior
Dig deep into the patterns and trends
of your users, and how they create and
engage with their friends’ stories. Use
the graph-rank algorithm in smarter
ways to drive additional discovery.
Pluck out sponsored stories that may
resonate the most out of the Ticker
in real-time and put into the News
Feed to drive further engagement and
interactions.
3
Identify brand stories
Go beyond the verb ‘like’, think of new
actions, whereby every type of brand
experience and action that is inherently
social can now be translated into user
stories that is automatically shared with
their social network.
Top
4 Tips for
Marketers
Image Credit: Emily Barney

27
26
Kuliza
Apparel
Commerce
through Digital
Storytelling
Commerce
by Malika V. Kashyap
Photo Credit: Style.Beats
The business of fashion communicates through a visual
language; fashion shows, campaigns and editorials all exist to
create a dream world which then must be marketed in order for
one’s ‘dreams to come true’. This language is more powerful
still, as it transcends mediums, finding a perfect connect in the
digital world. Interactive, immediate and accessible, it is easy
to see why digital media threatens to take over the way the
fashion business has traditionally operated.
Perhaps the greatest example of digital storytelling supporting
commerceexiststhroughtheblogosphere.Byandlarge,fashion
bloggers humbly started in the mid 2000s with aspirations no
larger than to express their personal views on fashion. Since
then, their rapid ascent to the front rows of all the major runway
shows, collaborating with brands and influencing global
style leaves many wondering what they do, and how do
companies benefit?
Advertisements
For many bloggers, the most classic form of monetization is
through banner advertisement, the most desirable and easiest
form of revenue generation. It is an easy equation that works
both ways, ‘click to buy’ with minimal effort from the blogger.
27
About Kaushal Sarda
3.Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster created a
new Facebook experience
by launching an event
recommendation app that
smartly uses Facebook’s
Open Graph capabilities.
The app publishes events
users ”want to go to”,
“recommend,” “attended,”
and “RSVP’ed” to their friend
network, hence creating
tremendous viral awareness
about the events. The app
also pulls a user’s Facebook
music app activity from
services such as Spotify or
4. Sneakpeeq
Sneakpeeq is a social buying
site that lets its users check
out the merchandise before
taking a peek at the price
tag, much like in a store.
User activity within the app
included: ‘earning’ badges
and discounts, “loving” a
product, and ‘peeqing’ at a
price. All these actions were
published onto Facebook’s
news channels to encourage
conversations and brand
awareness.
Technology evangelist, serial
entrepreneur, Chief Evangelist
at Kuliza, advisor to Hash Cube.
Writes on commerce and CRM.
Twitter: @ksarda
Rdio to recommend nearby
concerts of artists based on
what users actually listen
to, not just those you say
they like.
A digital depiction of stories, apparel and the
fashion industry at large.

28 29
Kuliza
References
Imran Amed,The business of blogging | The Sartorialist,The
Business of Fasion,October 3,2011
Vikram Alexei Kansara, The business of blogging | Elin
Kling,The Business of Fasion,August 30,2011
Tim Arango, Soon, bloggers must give full disclosure, New
York Times,October 9,2009
Jacquelyn Lewis, The Man Repeller promotes Louboutin at
Saks,WWD.com,March 16,2012
Maria Denardo, Fashion Fairchild Media buys popular
blogger network,May 15,2012
About Malika V. Kashyap
Founder of Border&Fall.com, a design
consultancy and platform for creatives
in fashion.
Twitter: @MalikaVK
Blogs with larger traffic stand to gain the most, though arguably,
the brand equally wins out. Scott Schuman of Sartorialist.com
is one of the earliest bloggers credited with bringing street
style photography into the digital age. He reports traffic of over
13 million visitors a month and has stated that when retailers
American Apparel and e-tailer Net a Porter bought advertising
on his site: “Those two ads alone are a good fraction of a
million dollars: more than a quarter million and less than a half
a million.” With the print edition of American Vogue charging up
to $150,000 for a one page ad and an audience of 11 million
readers a month, Schuman’s influence in the world of fashion
becomes quite apparent. Another example is nowmanifest.
com; created in 2011, it was developed to deliver the most
renowned fashion blogs on one platform and has an estimated
traffic of 1.2 million unique viewers a month. Currently Net-a-
porter.com prominently features their advertisements on the
homepage for an undisclosed amount.
Campaigns
In 2009, Burberry enlisted the skills of Schuman to shoot photos
for their online campaign ‘Art of the Trench’. Branded as a living
celebration and documentation of people wearing the famous
Burberry trench coat, the site allows you to upload a photo of
yourself wearing their coat. Wildly successful, the campaign
continues until today and can be found at www.artofthetrench.
com. This example of digital branding has generated a
significant amount of goodwill for the company, now widely
considered to be the most digitally literate luxury brand. In
2011, Burberry tapped Indian blogger Manou from wearabout.
wordpress.com to shoot photos for the same campaign, turning
it into a full fledged high profile event at the Oberoi Hotel in
Delhi, home to one of their stores.
In June 2011, Elin Kling of stylebykling.nowmanifest.com
was photographed in brand Marc by Marc Jacobs clothing,
publishing the images on her blog. Links to MarcJacobs.com
were also featured as part of the ad campaign. The results were
applauded: “The day of the launch, we served over 94,000
impressions, drove over 2,000 unique visitors to MarcJacobs.
com, and for the two week duration [of the campaign] we saw
a two percent click-through rate,” said Plenge, web and social
media manager at Marc Jacobs.
Product Placement
One of the most controversial of all combinations is having
a brand personally endorsed by a fashion blogger through
an outfit they photograph themselves in. If the brand fits with
the blogger, for example Prada potentially sending shoes to
blogger Jane Aldridge of www.seaofshoes.com who loves to
wear Prada – product placement has immense value. Most
top bloggers, including Rumi Neely of www.fashiontoast.com,
are often sent clothes and accessories to include in their blogs.
In an effort to make readers aware of this potential conflict of
interests, the US Federal Trade Commission mandated that
by December 1 2011, “Bloggers who review products must
disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most
cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were
paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.”
Offline Presence
Bloggers with enough online clout are often invited into the
real world by requests of guest appearances and contracts to
style fashion shows. When US luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue
wanted to promote the 20th anniversary of world famous shoe
maestro Christian Louboutin, who did they call? None other
than The Man Repeller, also known as Leandra Medine, to try
on shoes, all while inside their store window. Fans watching
would tweet shoe requests to Medine, who would then try
on the desired shoe. Of course, Saks was also covered on
ManRepeller.com, whose web traffic reportedly hovers around
100,000 unique visitors a month. In another example, Swedish
heavyweight retailer H&M joined hands with Kling to launch the
first ever collaboration with a fashion blogger. Her collection,
available in 10 Swedish locations was a sell-out.
It is worth nothing that these traffic figures represent a very
targeted reader base, clearly with an immense perceived value
to brands. With active social media numbers, commerce and
the visual language of fashion remains a dynamic and engaging
user experience.

30 31
Kuliza
Here are some gifting strategies I simply
loved for being simple, easy and effective.
Social gifting as an experience has
been “wrapped” brilliantly by Wrapp. It
is a social gifting start-up with an app
that allows Facebook friends to buy
each other gift cards from participating
retailers either individually or by teaming
up. This can be redeemed online,
therefore one need not even budge
an inch (physically). Furthermore,
it sends users alerts for upcoming
birthdays ensuring that users find it
more convenient to buy and send gifts
online. It has amazingly followed the
mantra of maintaining shopping as a
social activity, as long as one stays put
to just the computer screen, an Android
or iOS.
With everything shared on Facebook
walls, this is also a strong friend-to-friend
marketing tactic. And it is exactly where
potential customers are - Facebook.
Plus it is on Facebook where people
connect.
Target, through its “Give with Friends”
app, has utilized the power of Facebook
for sharing anything and everything. The
phrase acts as a stimulus, as if finally a
solution to the problem of “How to get
everyone together at the same place
without compromising on convenience?”
Customers choose an e-gift card desing,
select the receiver and then have the op-
tion of inviting friends to contribute.
The three-step gifting process makes it
simple and ever-easy to get friends to-
gether. It engages people and makes the
gift-giving experience real.
In both cases the gift card sent can be
redeemed at a standard outlet or an
e-store. The systems use Facebook’s
built-in friend lists and messages to
coordinate social gifting. Also, Target
benefits from the additional marketing
plus boosts sales at both its regular
stores and online.
The convenience social gifting offers
is simple yet striking. Users, who want
to deliver a gift, can deliver something
of value for free and the person who
receives the gift gets something that
can be used for an actual purchase of
one’s choice.
Starbucks takes this a step ahead with its
gift card. One can buy a personalized gift
card in different denominations and add
a message. Gifting someone a pre-paid
card - that will also earn them points for
making purchases - makes it a gift worth
giving and definitely worth taking.
But this definitely is not the end of every
gifting experience. Making it all the more
interactive and engaging is the idea
of gifting points. Typically retailers use
point rewards system to build loyalty.
And accumulating those points have
always been important. Therefore when
someone transfers points to another user
as a “gift” it adds a tremendous value to
the gift. Starbucks allows it on its gift
cards and so does JunoWallet.
JunoWallet is a free mobile gift card
app available for download by iPhone
and Android users. They can “gift” their
JunoPoints to other JunoWallet users
and vice versa, helping each other to
Gifts at the Click
of a Button
Commerce
by Vandana U.
There was a time when teaming up or
getting people together was a herculean
task. However, social media has gone on
to prove otherwise, revolutionizing the
world with its quickness in getting people
together on a common platform without
really getting them out of their chairs.
Although (with due respect) Jodi Dean
and others do not consider this ‘social’ or
‘public’ in any way, it cannot be denied
that social media has changed the way
we communicate with one another and
virtually get together. The Net springs
several surprises, creating powerful
tools such as share, like, tweet to the most
boggling of apps. The latest is social gifting.
“Gift” by itself is a powerful word. It draws
great attention, for who would not like
to receive a gift? Buying “the ideal gift”
has perpetually been an arduous task,
but social media makes this almost an
‘everyday task’. It proves the premise
that technology is driving towards making
30
Social gifting makes present buying easier for consumers and allows
brands to reach more people.
life easier than ever.
Social gifting works on e-gifting; one buys
an electronic gift card from a retailer’s
website and sends it to someone via
email. This idea is elevated to the social
level, allowing Facebook friends to give
or receive promotional gift cards or to
contribute together to give joint presents.
What’s more is the technique retailers
use to lure consumers into this trend.
One, it is simple! The plug-in sits very
strategically on the website and with a
few clicks customers can easily create
a group gift directly from an online store.
Two, Facebook makes it even simpler.
Once you start typing the name of a
friend from your Facebook list, the
name and photo will populate the entry
field automatically. Those invited get a
message directly to either contribute an
arbitrary amount or split the cost of the
pre-selected gift.

33
32
Kuliza
The Psychology
of Brand Loyalty
Commerce
by Diarmaid Byrne
Photo Credit: Tumblr
Loyal customers are the proverbial holy grail for brands. Brand
loyalty is demonstrated by a consumer’s commitment to re-
purchase a brand product or service and other behaviours
such as word-of-mouth advocacy. Richard Oliver notes that it
can also extend to occasionally putting the interest of the brand
ahead of a person’s own interests. This type of loyalty is a great
asset to a company: customers re-purchase and evangelize
the products and services.
How does Brand Loyalty develop?
Our understanding and perception of the world is experienced
through our senses. Many decisions are driven by feelings. In
the context of loyalty, a person’s purchase behavior is based on
one’s emotions and how one feels about the brand.
Two ways to understand how brand loyalty is built is by looking
at the communications model by Shultz and Barnes and a
sensory approach by Martin Lindstrom. The communications
model explains how a person is impacted by messages on a
continuous basis. Messages are in the form of colours, shapes,
sounds, etc. There is a sender of the message (brand), a
medium (internet, TV, word-of-mouth, etc.), a filter that ignores
or processes the messages, the receiver, and our response to
33
About Vandana U.
earn their $100 gift cards much sooner.
Sharing and trading JunoPoints to help
their friends get to the promised reward
also acts as a reward. Taking loyalty a
step ahead this sort of gifting promotes
users to share more, bringing in more
consumers and fans for JunoWallet.
What’s more; there are gift registries or
what we may ‘nicely’ call wishlists all over
social media sites that allow people to
register what they would like. Facebook
again comes to the rescue, for most of
these registries allow Facebook users to
create these lists. What caught my eye
was how users can add items via an
online shopping portal and if one cannot
find the desired gift in the portal all one
has to do is describe it. The final step is
to make the list available to other users.
Gifting couldn’t have got easier than this!
Lastly,takesocialgiftingasanopportunity
to reach out to your target buyers, for
you can promote your brand at almost
no extra cost. Gift giving, either free or
purchased, can be made so tempting
that gifting and shopping become easier;
all done with the click of a button and
not making your customer reach to you,
but you reach to them. Isn’t that how
gifting works?!
Marketing&CommunicationsSpecialist
at Kuliza and a certified Basic and
Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic
Programming. Writes on language and
communication.
The psyche behind brand loyalty is intriguing, for
it is fundamental and complex at the same time.

34 35
Kuliza
purpose to life, an explanation for how people were created
and what will happen when we die. In the case of sports,
teams give their fans an identity that they share with others
– colours, clothes, chants and celebrations.
• A sacred space (church, temple or stadium) that are
places of repeated, frequent gatherings of large number
of people who come to worship and praise the efforts and
achievements of other people.
Both the communications model and the sensory approach,
with the examples of religion and sports, show how controlling
emotional thinking of consumers can lead to increased brand
loyalty. While this works in many ways, there are psychological
factors that impede the ability to build brand loyalty, and that
brands find difficult to control.
Loyalty and Human Psychology
Cognitive Overload
Research by Freeman, Spenner and Bird indicates that the
traditional purchase funnel is fading due to cognitive overload
and is being replaced by a ‘tunnel’ process. In this scenario
the majority of consumers are not buying a product or service
out of any form of loyalty, but are looking to simplify what is an
increasingly frustrating experience. They are overwhelmed by
the huge volume of messages they encounter daily and can not
interpret all of them. As mentioned earlier, the brain is limited
in how much it can process and what it chooses to process.
By overwhelming it with purchase information the shopping
experience becomes far more stressful.
Based on their research, Freeman, Spenner and Bird found
that decision simplicity – the ease at which consumers can
collect product information and compare pricing options – is
the biggest driver in building loyalty. Essentially, brands need
to make the purchase decision as easy as possible and not
overload people with too much information.
An interesting counterpoint to this view has been the experience
of JC Penney this year. Previously known for their large number
of promotions, they introduced a new, simplified pricing strategy
in early 2012 to make purchase decisions easier for people; no
more coupons, discounts or price tags ending in 99c. However,
it has not been a success. Consumers are used to what is
called shrouding, follow-up costs that increase the original cost
of a product and confuse shoppers. Shoppers intuitively search
for deals and with JC Penney no longer hosting sales, they
decided to look or wait for sales elsewhere.
Reward Programs
The market is flooded with loyalty programs. Many people have
multiple loyalty cards but actively use less than half of them.
Schemes similar to airline loyalty programs are typical of the
type of programs that retailers offer. There are a number of
reasons why people sign-up for these, but none that suggest
they cultivate long-term brand loyalists.
People often sign up for membership or loyalty programs
because it allows them to feel like they are getting a good deal:
they have spent and saved money at the same time. This is
accentuated by increased dopamine activity that reinforces
their satisfaction that they have received a good deal.
The major form of money saving that loyalty programs offer is
through rewards. This could be a free coffee after 10 purchases
in a café, a free upgrade for accumulating a certain number of
air miles, or a 10% discount for spending a minimum amount
at a retailer. The affect here is that customers feel special and
– in theory – lead to repeat purchases, brand advocacy and
increased loyalty. In effect it means that a customer may pay
more for a flight because they are a member of that airline’s
loyalty program rather than taking a cheaper flight with an
alternative airline. These types of programs are effective in the
short-term but do little to alter how a person feels about the
company. Members are more loyal to the loyalty program than
to the brand.
The reason they are more loyal to the program is sunk cost
fallacy. It is the resources (time or money) that a person invests
into a project or activity that they can not recover. People
worry excessively about what they will lose if they change
loyalty program, but do not worry enough about the costs of
not changing. In the case of a loyalty program, people feel
compelled to utilize their points and continue adding to them
because they are uncomfortable with the lost cost of not utilizing
them, something that is known as loss aversion. Games like
the message. Any message that is recognized, or considered
a basis for a relationship, is stored in our memory. When we
receive a similar message from a brand that has the same
recognizable colour, sound, shape, etc., we respond to it and a
brand relationship is born.
Martin Lindstrom developed a sensory approach to brand
building with the goal of emotional engagement between the
consumer and brand. He postulates that sensory branding
stimulates a consumer’s relationship with the brand and that
a brand should pursue an emotional relationship with the
consumer as emotions dominate a person’s rational thinking.
He argues that a brand should focus on developing synergistic
sensory touch points to strengthen the foundation of the brand
and increase the brand relationship with consumers. In the
case of McDonald’s, this would be reflected in their logo in
their restaurants and on their packaging (visual), the sound of
customers ordering and food cooking (auditory), the feel of the
packaging and seating (tactile), the familiar smell (olfactory)
and distinct taste of their products (gustatory).
Both the communication model and Lindstrom’s sensory
approach to brand loyalty building emphasize the importance
of targeting customers’ emotions over behavior. The idea is that
if a brand controls emotional thinking in consumers they will
control their buying behaviour. When researching products that
people are most loyal to, there are two that stand out for the
deep emotional connection that they build with people: religion
and sports.
Brand Loyalty – Religion and Sports
Religion and sports engender a level of loyalty that is devotional,
similar to Richard Oliver’s assertion above that brand loyalists
put the interests of the brand ahead of their personal interests.
This view is articulated by two quotes that define the devotion,
sacrifice, suffering and commitment, football in particular, but
sport more generally, engenders in people:
“Football isn’t a matter of life or death. It’s much more
than that” (Bill Shankley)
“You can change your wife, your politics, your religion,
but never, never can you change your favourite football
team” (Eric Cantona)
Why do both religion and sport create such loyalty? They
provide people with an organizing belief system, rituals or
habits, and places to meet in large groups for the purpose of
finding meaning. Essentially, they have a social and spiritual
impact that affects our emotions. They do this in a number
of ways:
• A shared language of faith, worship, ritual, suffering,
commitment and celebration amongst followers
• A form of entertainment: before sport became a mainstream
and primetime form of entertainment, religious ceremonies
and festivals were the major source of entertainment for
people. Sporting events were rarely held.
• A proscribed, agreed upon, ritualistic way of doing things.
All religions have rituals that are adhered to. Similarly sports
fans have rituals that include wearing their favourite team’s
colours and singing and celebrating.
• A transformative experience that cuts through income levels,
profession and nationalities. In the case of religion, it gives a
Photo Credit: berti87
Photo Credit: thehutch

37
36
Kuliza
that does not match what they believed in the past and so is
rejected as untrue.
Strategies similar to the communications model and sensory
approach are helpful when thinking holistically about how to
approach building brand loyalty. However, controlling emotional
thinking and thus determining buying behaviour is difficult
to achieve when there are so many individual, personal and
cognitive factors that influence people and their behaviours,
and can undermine the best loyalty building tactics.
References
Bill Nissim, Brand loyalty: the psychology of preference,
Brand Channel
Bob Sullivan,‘Fair and square pricing? That’ll never work JC
Penney.We live being shafted, Red Tape Chronicles, May 25,
2012
Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner, Anna Bird, What do
consumers really want?, Harvard Business Review Blog
Network,May 1,2012
Phil Ciciora,Research: Brand-conscious consumers take bad
news to heart,News Bureau Illinois,August 15,2011
Psychology Wiki,Brand Loyalty
Richard L. Oliver, Whence customer loyalty?, Journal of
Marketing,63 (3),33-44,1999
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Personality and brand choice:
can your favourite brands reveal your EQ?, Psychology Today,
February 1,2012
D. L. Wann, M. J. Melznick, G. W. Russell, D. G. Pease,
Sport fans: The psychology and social impact of spectators,
Routledge,2001
About Diarmaid Byrne
The Evolution of
Visual
Storytelling
Communities
by Anindya Kundu
Photo Credit:
Lost at E
Minor
37
A look at some of the landmarks in graphical representations
that complement storytelling; from cave paintings to
contemporary visual arts.
Storytelling has been an essential part
of our social fabric since the advent of
human civilization. It is how the human
brain connects dots and makes sense of
the world around us. As people evolved,
we took giant leaps in technology
and consequently the mediums for
expressing stories kept progressing.
Since a story essentially involves a
narrative sequence which can be
compared to an alternate reality, images
and graphical elements have always
been incorporated with storytelling to
help the audience connect with the
story. In this article we will analyze a
few such landmarks in the history of
graphical storytelling.
Sequential art played an important part
in graphical storytelling and evolved
from series of images in cave paintings
and Egyptian friezes to the very modern
development of comics, storyboards and
in some ways even in film and animation.
Cave Paintings
Paintings older than 40,000 years have
been found in cave walls in Europe,
Africa and Asia. These paintings most
commonly depict hunting expeditions
and wild animals. They portray the
story of survival of the human race in
the harsh environment that prevailed
then. The stories were narrated orally
and recalled from one generation to
another with the help of cave paintings
and symbols.
Egyptian Art
The art developed in the Nile valley
civilization between 5,000 BC to 300
AD was highly evolved and stylized. The
paintings, records in papyrus, carvings
on walls, sculpture and monuments
have been well preserved due to the
dry climate of the region. The sequential
wall paintings and friezes recorded the
Psychologist, interested in social
behaviours and behaviour change.
ChiefPeopleOfficeratKuliza.Writeson
communities and commerce.
Twitter: @diarmaidb
Farmville are a great example of sunk cost fallacy. It requires
investment of a player’s time, and if they do not return to the
game to tend their crops, their investment (time and possibly
in-game purchases) will be lost. Many people do not continue
to play Farmville for fun but to ensure that they have a return
on their investment. They keep playing to avoid feeling the
pain of loss.
Brand Choice and Personality
Peopleperceivebrandsashumanswithadistinctivepersonality.
Brands allow people to define and differentiate themselves in
a way that was not possible one hundred years ago. Jennifer
Aaker suggested that the perception of brands can be classified
according to the 5 major personality dimensions: sincerity,
excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic notes that “Related studies showed
that people’s choices are a reflection of the extent to which
their own personality, specifically their self-image or identity, is
congruent with the reputation of a brand.” In effect, we choose
brands that share and reflect our values, belief and self-image:
if someone views themselves as a daring adventurer, they will
seek out and be loyal to brands that also share this personality,
possibly North Face apparel and Suunto watches.
Just as people protect their ego and self-image, it has been
discovered that they will also protect their loyalty to a brand.
Tiffany Barnett White found that brands have become so highly
symbolic of a person’s self-image that loyal consumers with
close ties to brands respond to negative information about the
brand as a personal failure and a threat to their self-image.
This behavior was seen in late 2011 at the University of
Pennsylvania when their football coach was fired. Joe Paterno,
a successful coach for over 40 years at the university, was
fired after he was implicated in covering-up allegations that his
former assistant had sexually assaulted boys. The result was
large rallies in support of Paterno that descended into riots. This
is due to cognitive dissonance; people learn new information

39
38
Kuliza
and squares, these paintings narrate the
day to day activities of the tribe: hunting,
fishing, farming, festivals and dances.
Harmony with nature is the common
theme that runs through all their works
of art. The paintings are made on the
mud walls of village huts using rice
paste mixed with gum.
Ajanta Caves
The Ajanta caves comprise of 30 rock
cut cave monuments in the Aurangabad
district of Maharashtra, India, which
were built dating back to 200 BC. The
elaborate paintings on the walls of the
caves are considered masterpieces
of Buddhist religious art. They narrate
Jataka tales about the previous births of
Lord Buddha and have intricate details
and colours.
Image credit: Howard N Barnum
Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese
woodblock printing: “100 Poems
Explained by the Nurse”
Bayeux Tapestry, Normandy
Created in the 1070s, the Bayeux
Tapestry is an embroidered cloth of 70
meters in length. It depicts the Norman
conquest of England sequentially
with around 50 scenes embroidered
on linen with coloured woollen yarns.
The method of embroidery which used
outline or stem stitch for outlines of
figures and couching or laid work for
filling in areas with solid colours, imparts
a look similar to modern cartoons.
JapaneseWoodblock Printing
Wood block printing developed in China
as early as 220 AD. Initially used to print
text, it begen to be used to create art
and illustrate narrative poems or text
in books. Adopted in Japan much later
during the Edo period (1603-1867),
Photo Credit: Franjuan
Trajan’s Column, Rome
social structure, history and legends of
Gods and Goddesses with an emphasis
on afterlife. There is a distinct shift from
mere survival to complex social systems
and religious beliefs.
Trajan’s Column, Rome
Built in 113 AD by the Romans, this
30 meters high, triumphal column
celebrates the victory of Roman Emperor
Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. The
unique element of this column is the
spiral relief sculpture on its exterior walls
which artistically depict the war through
a series of images. The relief has about
2,500 figures with intricate details of
weapons and 59 appearances of the
emperor amongst his troops.
Warli Tribal Paintings
The paintings of the indigenous tribe
Warlis living in Maharashtra and Gujarat
border have their tradition dating back
to thousands of years. Using a simple
visual vocabulary of circles, triangles
Photo Credit: William Hays
Cave paintings in Lascaux, approximately 12,000 years old
Photo Credit: Marialaterza.blogspot.com

41
40
Kuliza
Image Credit: Stephen Fowler
Woodcut illustration of Nebuchanezzar
Image Credit: Nosoyunacebolla.blogspot.com
The Yellow Kid, the first newspaper comic strip
it reached sublime levels of artistic
mastery under artists like Hokusai
whose prints of tsunami and Mount
Fiji remain illustrious feats even today.
Although similar to woodcut printing, the
difference lies in the use of water-based
inks in the woodblock printing opposed
to oil-based inks. This gives woodblock
printing its characteristic richness and
transparency of colours. The narrative
themes evolved from initially being
restricted to Buddhist teachings to more
personal experiences of love, loss and
enjoying the beauty of nature.
Woodcut Illustrations
The technique of woodcut printing
arrived in Europe around 1400 AD,
derived from the Chinese woodblock
methods via the Islamic or Byzantine
regions. In this method the image is
carved into the surface of a block of
wood where non printing areas to show
white are cut away, leaving the original
surface to produce black outlines.
These blocks could be easily used
with the movable type and gave rise to
illustrated books. Initially the illustrations
accompanied religious text, but later
were included in stories and novels. The
Photo Credit: TFAHR
Bayeaux Tapestry
Photo Credit: Street Art Utopia
Mural by BLU in Berlin, Germany
example to the right is the Latin
schoolbook of Aesop’s fables printed in
the fifteenth century.
Stained Glass
Stained glass windows with illustrative
art reached its peak in churches in the
Middle Ages. They narrated stories
from Bible and reached out to even the
illiterate masses. As Gothic architecture
flourished, the windows became larger
and more elaborate in that period.
Propaganda Posters
Printed posters mass produced with
attractive graphics and textual content
have been used for communication of
events, advertisements, protests and
propaganda have been around since
1870. The propaganda posters used in
Communist or Nazi movements around
the world wars portrayed interesting
stories and powerful messages to
convince the audience. Bold colours and
strong lines and shapes were used to
create a more vivid and deeper impact.
Photo Credit: Arrested Motion
(Top and below) Photographs from Slinkachu’s ‘Little People Project’

43
42
Kuliza
Photo Credit: Forest Gospel
Manga art by Katsuhiro Otomo
Photo Credit: JR
Photographs of Israelis and Palestinians
Photo Credit: Lost at E Minor
A mural by Ukrainian artist Internisi Kazki
Photo Credit: Boston Public Library
A New York barber refusing to finish shaving a
customer after learning of his British identity
Visual
Storytelling
Photo Credit: Merry Farmer
Photo Credit: United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum

45
44
Kuliza
Visual Designer at Kuliza. Writes on
design, art and culture.
Image Credit: Fan Pop
Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson,
on an epic time travelling mission
About Anindya Kundu
Capturing
People’s Stories
through Digital
Media
Communities
by Nehal Shah
Photo Credit:
The Journal of
Awesome
In the digital environment, devices are
interacting with users or with other
devices; but there is always a human
intervention. Bluetooth is a great
example – a computer transferring
data to your phone through Bluetooth
technology. Most consumer devices do
not have the AI to initiate such activities
themselves and need a human to tell
them what to do or set a workflow that
the device can repeat.
Through trials and rigorous testing
most devices can be manipulated and
automated to improve performance.
But, the user’s experience is rarely
understood. If a website’s navigation is
buggy, requires too much effort, the user
gets lost and has to relearn things, the
user is going to leave.
Over the past few decades there
has been an impressive growth
of research and research related
45
Digital technologies in storytelling have become more
participatory through a combination of texts, photos and videos.
activities. Organizations deploy
substantial resources to understand
market segments, their competitors,
stakeholders, performing SWOT
analyses, amongst others. While
important, it becomes crucial to study
people who are going to consume your
product or service at the end – the end
user. What makes him or her tick? How
can one use this to design a compelling
user experience? How can one leverage
this knowledge to create artifacts that
fulfill his latent needs? How can one
strategize this data to give him things he
does not know he needs yet?
This can be done by understanding his
story. Some of the questions that you
should ask to discover his story and co-
create with him are:
• Where does he come from?
• What does he do?
• What are his life goals?
• What challenges does he face?
Comics and Graphic Novels
With the advent of printing it was possible
to have text and images side by side.
The speech balloon showed up in 18th
century. The first newspaper comic strips
appeared in North America in late 19th
century. The Yellow Kid is considered the
first newspaper comic and appeared in
New York World from 1895. Initially most
cartoons were of social and political
satire, but now comics and the broader
graphic novels cover all genres of stories
from horror to science fiction.
Contemporary Graffiti Murals
Inspite of technological advances,
people still graffiti. They make art
more accessible to a larger number
of people and have a broader impact.
Graffiti and street art have been major
influences in today’s contemporary
murals. JR is a French artist who uses
massive photographs on walls to create
a dialogue amongst the stories of many
lives around us and the immediate
environment, geography and history of
the place.

46 47
Kuliza
• What are his commitments?
• How does he function in his social and professional circles ?
• How does he communicate?
• Who does he communicate with?
• What is his community like?
• Does he participate?
• What influences him?
• What motivates him?
But, watch the interviewer in you! Take the ethnographic
approach. In order to get the truth and not mere facts, you
need to go the extra mile. Answers alone won’t help. Observe,
live with him and his community. One of the main tenets of
understanding the user is to forge a deep empathy with them.
You can do that only when you can connect with them.
Interestingly, if one approaches this problem through a fact-
finding lens, a large section of your end-users won’t be able to
articulate answers to your questions. It will most likely lead to
a halo effect, biased answers, fiction and exaggeration.
To avoid these challenges, stories have been traditionally
captured through shadowing and ethnographies, recording
oral traditions, preserving cultural memories through text and
visual mediums, like photos and moving pictures. Dudley,
Goff, Goff and Johnston used videos to capture stories of
Tsunami survivors, a great illustration of how modern media
can be used cleverly. These stories lend themselves to the
design of more efficient solutions for and during disasters.
While photo and video technology is fairly modern, the
interactivity that the internet offers today is incomparable.
Forums, social and professional networking platforms, online
multi-player games, fan websites and similar platforms, all
create small communities and digital natives that inhabit them.
This has given rise to a new setting and new technology for
understanding users.
Here are 5 tools that can be used to do your own user research
and analysis if you are restricted by a budget:
• Eye Tracking Software | GazeHawk
• Mobile Research Platform | Ethos
• Multi-Protocol IM Client for Ethnographic Interviews |
Ethnochat
• Tracking Visual Trends and Moodboarding | Pinterest
• Stunning Videos for Better Storytelling | Animoto
Reference
Dudley, Goff, Chague-Goff and Johnston, Capturing the
next generation of cultural memoories - the process of video
interviewing tsunami survivors, Science of Tsunami Hazards,
Vol.28,No.3,page 154-170
About Nehal Shah
Newer ways of mediating qualitative research methods are
emerging. There are netnographies, virtual ethnographies,
eye-tracking and heat-mapping to see what your user is
looking at on a website. Interestingly, but expectedly, new
businesses are materializing around digital research for better
user experience. Y Combinator backed Gazehawk has a
great, disruptive offering for this that uses just a webcam and
software. This is data-analytics made much more compelling.
The semiotics of communication has evolved and changed
perspectives for brands and businesses. The Anthropology
of YouTube is a brilliant video that captures the value of
stories through digital media, in this case, YouTube. Creator
of the video and a professor of Cultural Anthropology, Michael
Wesch, maintains that YouTube is more than technology, “It
is a space where identities, values and ideas are produced,
reproduced, challenged and negotiated in new ways.” It takes
on the idea of community and participation and gives an insight
into people’s motivation to be part of an online community and
social interaction design. Although a bit long (just short of an
hour), this video is a must-watch. It is the perfect union of user
experience, research, storytelling and new media.
The academic and practical implications of exploring and
exploiting the possibilities of digital technology are mind-
boggling. The potential of an electronic environment along
with multi-media integration is considerable. It can create
dialogues amongst users, stories, devices and the ecology –
therefore creating new meaning, at every stage.
Design researcher specializing in
identifying key user experiences
through qualitative research methods.
Twitter: @nehalshahr
Photo Credit: The Journal of Awesome
Intel’s Museum of Me

49
48
Kuliza
Ambient Social
Apps
Communities
by Kaushal Sarda
Image Credit:
USA Today
Salient
Features
1
Ambient social apps run in the
background and combine location
information, social connections data,
and other parameters to enable social
connections and interactions.
48
Ambient social apps sense people who are in your vicinity
to help establish real-world connections and interactions to
avoid missing out on socializing opportunities.
2
Such apps use implicit social
connections of the user to create
interesting real world connections and
experiences on the go and eradicate
missed opportunities.
3
These SoLoMo powered apps can also
be very event friendly. At big shows,
conferences, and festivals such apps
can leverage spike in location check-ins
and strong social intent to become the
hive of engagement.
Image Credit: Medvekoma
4
It is uncertain whether the future of such
apps will continue to exist as standalone
tools or as a feature woven into social
platforms like Facebook or Foursquare.
5
The purpose of these apps is compelling,
however execution and design issues
like battery drain, privacy concerns, user
experience, lack of perpetual interesting
activity, and dependency on other social
networks need to be resolved for
mass adoption.
Brand
Engagement
Scope
1
Brands can proactively engage
customers in the vicinity without
dependency on check-ins and use such
apps as a customer acquisition tool.
2
Brands have the opportunity to act as
equals with users and move around
events and other locations, unlike
Facebook where all interactions are
limited to a single place.
3
Such ambient apps could improve real
time brand engagement with rewards or
special offers made available for a short
time once user enters the ‘geo-fence’
around a business, encouraging a more
immediate response / action.
4
Leveraging the inherent social, hyper-
local aspect of the ambient apps,
marketers can expand their footprints
even wider by pushing out deals, such
as a buy-one-get-one-free discounts,
to users to share with friends or other
customers in the vicinity.
Image Credit: jewlogic

51
50
Kuliza
Top
4
1. Highlight
Highlight helps users detect
other Highlight users in their
vicinity. Their profiles shows
up along with mutual friends
or favorite TV shows or
bands, perfect fodder for an
introductory conversation.
The app also reminds users
of the name of a Highlight
user they have met before.
2. Glancee
The app tracks your location
in the background and links
to your Facebook and Twitter
accounts. It will show people
who are using the app in
the same area along with
their social graph interests
as well as automatically
uploading your Facebook
profile pictures.
Ambient
Social Apps
What we like
Highlight has a simple,
intuitive, eye-pleasing UI.
Issues
Battery drain; creep out
factor: strangers being able
to see my Facebook name,
profile picture, interests, and
exact location is creepy
Issues
Battery drain; lack of a map
to show people in vicinity; no
search option.
What we like
Radar feature tells you how
many steps away a person is.
About Kaushal Sarda
4. Banjo
The app uses ambient
location but it relies more on
aggregating location data
from Foursquare, Gowalla,
Facebook and Twitter to
provide a map of people near
you.
3. Uberlife
This app lets you start instant
“hangouts” for events you
attend or places you visit.
So, if you pop into a bar for
an after-work beer and need
some drinking buddies, you
can start a hangout and
broadcast your request to
your network and to the
Uberlife user community.
The app awards points
for conducting successful
meetups. It also allows
posting about the event while
it is happening, creating a
record that can be revisited.
Technology evangelist, serial
entrepreneur, Chief Evangelist
at Kuliza, advisor to Hash Cube.
Writes on commerce and CRM.
Twitter: @ksarda
Issues
Better positioned for making
use of your social networks’
location data rather than
finding new people or having
a totally seamless ambient
experience.
What we like
Radar feature tells you how
many steps away a person is.
Issues
The app will be of value only
if your friends and - more
importantly - the people you
want to be your friends are
also using the app.
What we like
This could enable brands
to proactively engage
consumers in the vicinity
without having to wait for
a check-in to respond to,
making the app work as a
customer acquisition tool.
References
Mark Sullivan, The year of ‘ambient social’ apps?, PC World,
March 8,2012
Jay Hawkinson, New ambient social apps enable brands to
proactively connect with those nearby, Mobile Marketer, June
1, 2012
Molly McHugh,These are the ambient social apps competing
for SoLoMo dominance, Digital Trends, March 19, 2012

53
52
Rediscovering
our DIY Spirit
Communities
by Payal Shah
For me, it all began five years ago when
we discovered my husband was allergic
to wheat. We started reading labels on
everything we bought to see whether
or not it contained wheat. Never having
checked labels before, even for calorie
content, I didn’t know what to make of
what I saw: images of ingredients and
nutrition labels. These labels looked
less like ingredients I would find in my
grandmother’s kitchen and more like a
chemistry lesson.
Was this supposed to be food? Was it
something that we were putting inside
our bodies, something that becomes a
part of us?
Thenceforth I began reading labels
on everything we bought - food or not,
and yes, there were chemicals in those
things too. So now we were putting
chemicals in and on our bodies.
52
A new generation of online and offline DIY communities are
rediscovering the art of making.
Think about all the things we do before
we leave for work - brushing your teeth
(toothpaste), washing your face (face
wash), showering (soap or body wash),
washing hair (shampoo and conditioner),
shave (shaving foam) moisturize (body
lotion), do up face (all types of make-
up), have breakfast (cereal, bread,
jam, ketchup, long life milk, vegetables
and fruits sprayed with pesticides and
fertilizers, etc). In just an hour every
morning, we bombard our bodies with a
cocktail of at least a hundred chemicals.
As this realization dawned upon me, I
resolved to reduce as many chemicals
as possible in my life. I started making
things from scratch - Thai curry pastes
(that way I could make them vegetarian),
peanut butter, bread, muesli, wet
wipes, kohl, compact, lip balms, vanilla
extract, everything I possibly could. I
researched the “no ‘poo” movement
which is more to do with giving up
Image Credit:
FerguStuff
shampoo than constipating myself. I
started growing herbs and making my
own home cleaning products out of
things in the kitchen.
At around this time I chanced upon
Pinterest. I was not alone. There were
thousands of women (Pinterest’s largest
user database is women) who were
embracing what our grandparents did
so naturally for generations before them
- living frugally, using what was locally
available and doing things themselves.
There are now people keeping bees
in their back yard, composting in their
gardens, making bread from scratch
in their kitchens, making condiments
for their pantries, making furniture in
their garages, growing vegetables,
keeping a chicken coop, sewing (or
at least) altering their own clothes,
making their own cleaning products and
home-schooling their children. A large
community of makers has been re-born.
The whole DIY ethic finds its origins
predictably in anti-consumerism and
strangelyinpunkideology.Itpromotesthe
ideas of self-sufficiency, empowerment
of individuals and communities, and
using alternative approaches when
faced with bureaucratic or societal
obstacles to achieving objectives. It
developed out of rejection of the need
to buy things or use existing systems
or processes that would encourage
dependency on establishments. In the
1970s, emerging British punk bands
began to record music, produce albums
and merchandise and performed
in basements and homes to avoid
corporate sponsorship and have artistic
freedom. This was the beginning of
not only DIY music, but of the DIY
movement itself.
For about 60 decades, we have been
using the term DIY synonymously with
home improvement projects that people
choose to complete independently and
without expert help. In the last couple of
years, DIY has come to include a wide
range of skill sets. Having started from
6th century BC in southern Italy where
Italian and Greek masons learned
to mass-produce components of a
building, the DIY movement today has
evolved to a re-introduction of skills that
can be used in everyday life, skills that
are influenced by post consumerism,
green living, self-sustenance and plain
frugality.
There are both online and offline
communities of makers - those that do
it all quietly at home, some that do it
at home and share their efforts on the
internet, some that make products and
sell them on the internet, some that take
making very seriously and organize
‘faires’ every year and others who are
DIY-minded, live very busy lives, but
aspire to make everything someday.
Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, in their
book “Making it - Radical Home Ec for
a Post- Consumer World” claim they
are plotting revolution from their 1/12th
acre farm in the heart of Los Angeles.
It is the ultimate guidebook of restored
Home Economics to its most noble
form - one in which the household is
a self-sustaining engine of production
at the centre of one’s life. They have
very detailed instructions on DIY-
ing everything - your own sourdough
starter, slaughtering chickens, worm
farming, making vinegar, beekeeping,
etc. They claim that DIY is a string of on-
going adventures that has shaped their
lives very fruitfully - everything started
because they decided to grow tomatoes
in their apartment balcony and they
knew they were not buying tomatoes
every again. One project led to another
and now the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts.
There are millions of people around
the world who are embracing this
movement. It is not always easy, things
go wrong, it takes some time, but is
infinitely rewarding. Try making your
own peanut butter and I guarantee you
will not look back.
About Payal Shah
Psychologist and child development
enthusiast. Writes about children’s
media, baby sign language and
education.
Twitter: @pobroin

54
Kuliza
Kuliza designed and built a social reader for a popular
Indian healthcare portal. The objective was to help
make their content available for consumption via
Facebook with frictionless sharing. This ensures
readers can discover more meaningful content and
dramatically increase referral traffic. The app provided
the portal a way to convert their large Facebook fan-
base into more active readers and advocates of their
articles. It also increased time spent on the site.
Facebook Social Reader
Indian Healthcare Portal
Case Study
Photo Credit: lkurnarsky
To Elevate
Campaigns
To Transform
Commerce
Brand Sites / Campaign Microsites
Soapbox Facebook Contest App
Touch Catalogues
Social Deals
Custom Facebook Apps
Custom Mobile Apps
Online Communities
Social Reader Facebook App
Social Stories App
Tag.it Experience
Tag.it Events
E-Commerce Sites
Facebook Stores
Shop.Pulse Social Shopping App
Social Gifting
enCount Mobile Loyalty App
Custom M-Commerce Apps
To Shape
Communities

www.socialtechnologyquarterly.com

Stq 05

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Andere mochten auch

Andere mochten auch (6)

Ähnlich wie Stq 05

Ähnlich wie Stq 05 (13)

Mehr von Kuliza Technologies

Mehr von Kuliza Technologies (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Stq 05