WHY FACEBOOK STRATEGY NATURALLY LOST TO INDIANS
I came across this on net and decide to share it here. The reasons below:
1.Communication is the single most important to a company that is trying to sell in a region about which it absolutely has no clue about. Unfortunately for FB its whole campaign strategy about Free Basics was ruined from the get go. Back in April there was a serious debate back in India about net neutrality aspects.
FB retreated and carved up the image of Free Basics, but it based its entire campaign on a ridiculously patronizing tone that smacked of arrogance like Paul Denlinger talked about. Before, the debate was about net neutrality, but FB made it about a $283 billion foreign company talking like "daddy knows best". Throw in the very recent historical context of a company ACTUALLY colonizing India, it is plainly obvious what a disastrous strategy FB chose to market itself.
2. Another thing that just came off as incredibly elitist was the oped that Mark Zuckerberg penned in the most widely read newspaper in India. His oped literally starts off with, "It is time to choose facts over fictions". I don't know how lecturing a set of people you're trying to sell things to ever counts as a sound strategy.
3. Facebook has much to learn to keep its "hacking mentality" in check with common business sense especially now that almost all of the future cash flows are going to be generated from outside. It will really help the senior management realize that just because the Prime Minister of India tags Mark on some of his posts, they are not BFFs.
Google without any fanfare, or any romantic notions of "solving poverty" is in contrast not suffering any negative coverage by working on free access WiFi hotspots in 400 railway stations. It is working with the existing system, and orienting its business to match the local realities. With Free Basics, FB tried chiseling the Indian market to its wants, and naturally lost.
Personally, this isn't anything out of the ordinary. There have been 100s of examples where foreign companies came with an arrogant attitude that they perfectly knew what the Indians (and others) wanted, and saw that arrogance vapourize into losses when Indians didn't give a two bits and continued their lives indifferently.
McDonalds' had to leave the Subcontinent to do some serious soul searching after no one ate their beef burgers in India for a simple fact that no one in India eats beef. They eventually entered the country and now make some money.
Facebook has some very serious thinking to do, replacing their strategy head, meditating their urge to break everything and instead, learning how to work with existing things. Indians aren't going lap up whatever FB has to sell just because Mark recollected an anecdote about him visiting an Indian temple.
Do Americans buy Japanese cars because Japanese execs make all rosy talks about America? No they buy them because they are great quality at cheap prices. Facebook should maybe think about this before embarking upon world's "problems".
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