Social Media Agency Feature: Tiramisu

Who are we?

Tiramisu is a pure play digital agency with a strong consulting focus, operating at the convergence of technology & liberal arts. We operate across the domains of owned, earned and paid digital media in India and across South East Asia.

As a result of our diverse portfolio spread across a wide geographic area, our colleagues are a unique mix of management consultants, business analysts, social media experts, copywriters, graphic designers, technical architects, coders, musicians and film and digital video experts.

Tiramisu was set up in 2011 in India and Singapore, and within a very short span of time we've delivered substantial quality work not just for startups and SMEs, but as well as for leading brands both in India and abroad.

WHAT'S IN THE NAME?

Tiramisu falls in the category of ‘experiential’ names, i.e. names that evoke memories of a pleasant experience but may not necessarily have anything to do with the product or service of the company. Apple Corp, Mango Clothing, Orange Telecoms, - you get the gist, right?

Tiramisu is an Italian dessert and literally translates to ‘pick me up’ or ‘lift me up’. Having tiramisu is truly an uplifting experience, one we hope to provide to all our clients.

Our co-founder Amit is gung-ho about selecting appropriate names that have an emotional connect, a sense of energy and can see a company through decades of evolution. When selecting our company name Amit made us suggest and evaluate names across several parameters. Finally we zeroed in on Tiramisu after a marathon eight-hour Skype conference between our India and Singapore based partners!

Obviously, we also have a brand naming service for our clients where we evaluate a brand, product or service name across several different parameters and thereby build a list of recommendations for them to choose from.

What do we do?

Our mission is not just delivering a neat technical solution to out clients, but also to ensure we solve all kinds of business problems they may encounter.

We begin with the business objectives of our client, providing them with industry trends and peer benchmarking, following which we make our recommendations.

Some of our typical projects are:

• designing logos & product e-brochures
• designing & implementing full web sites, e-commerce portals etc
• building web, mobile & Facebook apps
• designing, implementing & reporting on social media campaigns
• corporate, product or training videos for digital platforms
• original background scores, radio jingles & voice overs

We also have expertise in FMCG, Real Estate, Live Music and Luxury goods domain clients.

Why do we do it?

“I have seen the future and it is digital!

Actually, it’s a whole bunch of different reasons - from mid-life crisis to being your own boss and everything in between.

That said, all the founding partners felt that there was an opportunity in addressing market demand which fell somewhere between the traditional advertising agency and the conventional web design shop. We positioned our services & competence strategically between the two, and the results speak for themselves.

How do we evolve?

By being ourselves!

We follow the mantra "Chase excellence and success will follow." Understanding how our work impacts clients and how their TG is responding to it, is what gives us such a high that we can’t help but learn from the experience. As a result, evolving has become a natural part of doing what we normally do!

In any case, social media is all about human behavior and is a constantly evolving field. We love the challenge that comes with being part of such a dynamic industry. It also acts as a great leveler and gives us an equal chance to fight it out with the big boys of the industry.

Social responsibility in social media

The role of digital agencies in our times is akin to that of the teachers during the education revolution. We are the beacons who help guide consumers along the way. Tiramisu strongly believes in sharing our learning with all – be it the competition, business partners or our clients. We like to help clients in their journey to the top of the social media maturity matrix model of an organization.

It is this principle of ours, which has seen us turn away clients only interested in garnering ‘likes’ on Facebook rather than paying us for creating a genuine and deep engagement with followers.

Need of the hour

There was this one guy on a Facebook brand page we were managing, who participated in all our contests, never scored much, yet thought that he had the rights to bully us into giving him prizes because he had somehow garnered 20,000 followers in Turkey!

And then of course there is the notorious Lemp Brewpub incident that took place recently.

Social media is a double-edged sword. It is still nascent and we, as well as our authorities are yet to fully come to terms with its pros and cons.

In a country where one can get arrested for merely liking a Facebook post, businesses looking to adapt social media need to be educated about all aspects of social media. One cannot be social for the heck of it or do it because that’s what everyone else is doing. There is a right way of identifying your target platforms, target groups and there is a way to engage with your followers. And then of course, there is an etiquette in which you keep that relationship going.

The need of the hour is for agencies like us to educate anyone looking to leverage digital media about the pitfalls and help them to choose the right mix of earned, owned and paid media and a strategy which fits their business objectives.

We learned the hard way

“Always make a plan B (and C, and D, and E….)”

No matter how good your strategy and content is, if you are not constantly analyzing the metrics and course-correcting along the way, your campaign is bound to fail!

There are trends everywhere and these trends give metrics. One must learn to use the metrics judiciously. When is your target group most active? What kinds of posts gather most eyeballs? What time of the day? What kind of content? If you are not learning from the mistakes others are making, you will commit the exact same mistakes while someone smarter than you learns from it!

Did we just share that?

Making fun of situations with our clients is not our style. To us, even the silliest request has a valid reason behind it and we attempt to unravel it and educate ourselves as well as our client along the way. Besides, The Oatmeal has already done a stellar job in this genre.

However, here are some infographics done by us recently, which might make for interesting viewing:

They work with us

Toyota Financial Services, JWT, 98.3 FM Radio Mirchi, CSC, IIMB, UB Group, ipro, Airtel, Infosys, SAP, Pernod Ricard, Indigo 91.9 FM, etc.

Industry as we foresee

India’s 122 million Internet user base already makes it the third largest in the world. This user base represents a savings pool of US$130 to US$150 Bn. Last year India also crossed a major milestone in mobile Internet usage – it overtook desktop Internet usage for the first time ever.

This user base is set to increase by three times to 350 million by 2015. With rapidly plummeting smartphone & tablet prices, coupled with cheaper 3G plans –it’s anyone’s guess that a mobile commerce revolution is on the anvil in the country.

The other significant event in the Indian social media industry will be the General Elections of 2014. A first ever, since social media was not significant enough in the last GE. We expect media spends to sky-rocket, heads to roll and entirely new benchmarks to be set in the use and abuse of social media.

A day without Internet

• The World will be short of 691,200 Internet users
• There would be 139,344 less websites
• 144 Billion less emails sent
• But 99 Billion of those would have been Spam anyway
• So that’s around 45 Billion important emails missed!
• 3,278,688,524 less searches on Google
• More than 500 TB of space saved for Facebook
• Fascinatingly enough, 62.7% of the World Population would continue with their daily lives undisturbed!