Click Asia Summit in Mumbai, India: Social Media Edition

1. Digital is not niche. Digital is not mainstream. Digital is bigger than mainstream. According to him, India now has 100 million internet users, over 84 million desktop internet users and 40 million mobile internet users. (No, I don't know where he got the numbers.)
2. The true change is deeper than the numbers. The qualitative aspect, the consumer trust of the medium (as evinced by the popularity of social networking).
3. The top three media in terms of trust are recommendations from people known, consumer opinions posted online, and brand websites (Nielsen study, not India-based).
4. People don’t trust editorials. People trust their friends.
5. It pays more to invest in unpaid media than in paid media.
6. Brands need to move from advertising to editorial. If newspapers and media are vacating editorial, it’s an opportunity for brands to take over. Build “transparently biased” editorial around your brand.
7. This actually changes brand management inside out. Can you keep pace? Some marketers are still touting the 4Ps. Let Kotler retire!
8. There is a new world where perceptions change much more rapidly than they ever used to. “Products are made up of atoms, brands exist in neurons. People buy brands, not products.”
9. Brand management is like air traffic control, with different screens for managing all your campaigns. It’s an around-the-clock process, and there's no time to sit back. “We’ve come from a world from which we had three months to do creatives to where a product lasts less than three months.”
10. Run ads based on what’s trending: there are huge opportunities with consumer demand. Is there an opportunity to market here that your brand is fast enough to take advantage of?
11. The new process starts with research, but with live research: active listening. Listening isn’t tracking. Google Alerts is not tracking: it tracks <0.5% of mentions of your brand typically.
12. The new process continues with action. Respond to consumer negatives first. Integrate Customer Service into Brand Management. Customer service is now the first step of brand management.
13. The third step is planning and analysis.
14. The last step is the deployment of communication.
15. For a coherent voice, integrate customer service, corporate communication, brand marketing, product marketing and employer branding.
16. It’s different strokes from different folks. Every communication about the brand has to look, sound, feel, taste different. But give the brand a cohesive identity.

But it wasn't all work at the Summit! One evening, I went up to the rooftop of my hotel and watched the sun set over the city.