As promised in my earlier post, I bring you yet another short analysis (my viewpoints) on the Suzlon campaign(www.pals.in). So far so good or rather seems good but how long will this community live for? How does one sustain such a community?
Background: I saw some colorful, 70's fashion-like teaser advt in the newspapers and was quite amused by what it was all about? I thought it is some fashion house advt or some big retail chain announcing their new collection or some other networking site on the lines of FB/Orkut but when the actual advertisement appeared I was amazed that it was about pure air and the whole campaign belongs to Suzlon (www.suzlon.com) Fyi...the campaign was I had not heard much about Suzlon and thanks to such innovative campaigns ignorant people like us come to know about their existence.
Innovative Campaign: What Suzlon did many have tried by building a community on Social Networking Sites but what differentiates Suzlon is building a community through a website dedicated solely for a common subject. And yes the subject is the most in-thing these days considering everybody from the Media, Corporate Houses, Politicians, Social Workers, NGO's, Educational Institutions, Common people, Film Personalities and so on are taking interest in it or at-least showing that they are interested. Well as I always say striking at the Right Time always works. I call it innovation because the website is just not a basic data collection form but it is well planned content with some useful tools. It has lot of information to offer and yes there are famous personalities who have been roped in as members of the advisory board. The thought is in-depth.
The website is very colorful and also highlights various factual data about pollution and environment and has various interesting topics that would want us to know more about it. The highlight is of course the PUC reminder and Green Vendor (you can locate all vendors dealing with eco friendly products) http://www.pals.in/green-vendor/search.php - how cool is that. I like the short name PALS and very strategically and intelligently the full name has been thought of - impressive.
My views: Such a strategy of building a community for a common purpose needs continuous interaction/communication points with its members. As of now its too early to conclude about the success of this campaign. Some of the hindrances I foresee -
The data would be outdated in next one or two months, the data needs to be updated regularly or members would be bored to read it often.
To keep the community active the members need to discuss on various topics through twitter or on pals..(I still have to figure out it), there needs to be continuous probing with users to maintain the stickiness.
They say whenever a member registers to become a PAL they plant a tree but it would be nice if they could give more details about how and where it is being planted. How would we come to know if they have actually planted a tree.
I haven't completely scrutinized the site nor I intend to do as my objective is to talk about new campaigns and bring out my viewpoints. But would like to share some quick setbacks I experienced while I as on the website:
I had somehow bumped into useful tools page but somehow my window got closed. But when I was again on Pals I couldn't find the tools; it is nice to make things colorful and jazzy but it is for the people (who might not be web experts) and hence the user interface should be easy and quickly available.
There is no evident/visible search button to search your queries/info.
Conclusion: In the overall objective of building a community we should always keep in mind the small and minute details - eventually the platform on which the community is being built is important. The platform will decide the future of the community. What I mean is the whole community is being connected through a website, the topic is anyways interesting and will catch lot of eyeballs but the back-end needs to be very strong. Also a continuous interaction with the members (through events, updates, news) etc will help the community to grow.
As I said my objective is not to discuss the success of any campaign, I am just interested in the approach and the thought process behind a concept.
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