Social Media Agency Feature: TenTenTen - A Digital Product Agency

Who are we?

Simply speaking, we create digital assets for brands. Or to put it more complicatedly, we help brands engage in a deeper manner with today’s connected customers by creating platforms and applications that are useful & fun, thereby not just enhancing the customer’s life but also making him or her the brand’s champion in social media.

TenTenTen was started in Bangalore on April 1, 2011, and we are currently a team of 15.

What's in the name?

TenTenTen is just an easier (though inaccurate) way of saying the number – 101010. But it goes deeper than just using a binary number to signify digital. You see, 101010 is the binary representation of the number 42. And if you’ve read ‘The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’, you’d know that 42 is the “Answer to the question of life, the universe and everything.”

What we do?

We create large digital properties for brands. Essentially, we look at a brand/product and ask ourselves – How can technology improve the product performance, service delivery or brand experience? When we come up with an answer, we pitch it to the brand and work with them on creating and managing the asset.

Why we do it?

The digital advertising landscape is dominated by what is essentially the mass-media paradigm of building (or buying) an audience and pushing messaging. Be it banner ads, or FB pages, the approach is the same – treat digital as a new “media” and push the same old messages merely adapted for the new media.

But digital is far more than just media; it is the new “culture” that we live in. In this culture, people are the media. Therefore the role of brand messaging in brand building has come down dramatically. The coolest brands today (think Google or Apple) are built not by what they say, but by what they do.

So, TenTenTen approaches brand-building not by creating campaigns but by designing actions.

How we evolve?

The manner in which people access technology is evolving rapidly. From the web (accessed through a browser) to apps (on the laptop/mobile) to now wearables and in future who-knows-what. So we too, try to keep pace with this, and not restrict ourselves to what app we can create, but expand our horizon to explore what technology can do, at any level.

Social responsibility in social media

It’s quite simple really. With everyone consuming content in an active, involved manner - lies will get caught out, exaggerations will be mocked and fake-ness will be found out. So, be truthful, be nice, be good.

Need of the hour

The entire digital advertising industry is being strangled by er… digital agencies, simply by focusing on providing very basic services at a suicidal price. The big need is to get marketers to understand that digital is not just about extremely cheap, immensely measurable, and ridiculously quick campaigns. It is about investing in technology and deriving long-term value. Hence it is worth investing more money & time and pushing for world-class quality.

We learned the hard way

The business model is very important. We made some mistakes earlier where we just built products and handed them over to our clients. But, in digital properties, the launch of the product is less than half the work done. It’s not like say, a TVC, where a producer can hand over the commercial, and go on vacation. A big part in making an asset successful, is managing it, constantly improving it, and thinking about it all the time. So, creating a product is good, but managing it well is crucial.

They work with us

 IPL – We created and run the official Fantasy League

NIVEA – We’ve created a lot of stuff for them like Armprints & Ah Deo, and are now working with their Global HQ in Hamburg.

We’ve also worked with MakeMyTrip & Star Sports, and are currently working with Kingfisher Beer & Airtel.

Industry as we foresee

Marketing will be primarily digital, with content (like today’s TVCs) being just a subset of it. Even a ground-activation or a sampling exercise will use technology to add to efficiency and multiply impact.

A day without Internet

Pretty relaxing, if you have a good book, or some great company. But without that, I suppose it would be pretty boring and somewhat worrying to be cut-off from the world.

Lastly, are you hiring?

All the time.