Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sometimes called as Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) are low-priced products that are sold swiftly. These products are nondurable goods which range from soft drinks to toiletries, cosmetics, oral hygiene products, shaving products, detergents, batteries, stationery products and plastic goods and groceries. FMCG may also include pharmaceuticals, consumer electronics, packaged food products and soft drinks. Gautam and Gangal analyzed the factors responsible of the boom in rural marketing, consumers‟ preference for FMCG products based on 4 A‟s (i.e. Awareness, Affordability, Adoptability and Availability). On the profit scale, the margin for these types of products is very low but they are sold in greater quantities which is the reason for outbreak of numerous brands for each type of FMCG product leading to competition in the market. To be successful in the market, each Producer/supplier works out various business strategies for these products. One such tactics of Business, the Advertising encourages consumers to try a new brand or a brand they have not tried before. If these advertisements can create response among the consumers, then the producers can grab the market. Chandrasekhar analyzed the consumer buying behavior and brand loyalty in rural markets regarding fast moving consumer goods and found that brand loyalty varies from region to region in soaps category. Jain and Sharma analyzed the brand awareness and customer preferences for FMCG products in rural market which revealed that people in the rural market have on an average awareness about most of the products. Also, in response to advertising, consumers may buy more quantity of the product category, than they bought before. Different brands sponsor different events and shows in villages, which are actually a cost-effective way to

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Social media is electronic media for social interaction. It makes use of world wide web highly scalable and accessible publishing techniques to transform and broad cast media monologues into social media dialogues social media supports the democratization to knowledge and information from content consumer to content producer example public social media web sites include face book, twitter, my space, flicks, foursquare, Linked In, you tube, yelp, dig, second life, Tumbir, and style live. An entrepreneur to introduce their product to perfect selection of advertising media. FMCG is a category of product of product characterized by frequent purchase and usually low price. We consider FMCG those like food, toiletry on so on. FMCG saw a huge opportunities in social media. Now day’s social media are increasing becoming an essential tool to establish contracts with customers and be able to engage and maintain a valuable relationship social media might be a good platform from the FMCG advertisement. A company should always keep in mind that in a social media perspective customer are the centers of the world the visible impact of World Wide Web in market place around the market place of global. Social technology is given to the business on the social web are must have that a sort of land rush to build communication and create brand out pasts in place like face book and twitter has long-term organization impact and the business opportunities. Business is learning to apply social media strategically for significant and meaningful outcomes sales and growth improve customer relationship, superior and highly innovative new products. The International use of social media to drive meaningful, strategic business out comes. By intentionally designing new social business models with customers, employees, and value Cain partners, any forward, thinking organization can direct and guide social business efforts to access they very highest level of mutual value creation. Social media were viewed either as a consumer activity, with marketing were viewed either as a consumer activity, with marketing as the most useful activity for businesses to be engaged in or something workers used inside the company to collaborate and occasionally for product innovation or customer care. However social media have now infiltrated practically every aspect of business operation and perspectives have expanded. Marketing managers have predicted that 2010 will be the year when social media are integrated in the organizations and really start to become useful for companies and become important tools in the communication. Others have argued that it is crucial for marketers to look to the Web for new ways of are the most promising way to reach new customers. At the same time, one of the most prominent names in research about branding and related subjects, he multitude of new media’s developing; it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to raise awareness for their brand. The only way forward in managing this complexity, is for companies to be able to coordinate messages and their marketing efforts across all Medias. The combination of coordinating your branding messages across all medias including the social media, the great impact that social media (as an example the social network Facebook with more than 400 million active users) has for both individuals and companies, the speed with which things move in this domain, and the relative scarcity of existing research about this area all are reasons why this study was initiated. About the discussion above, this study will be about how social media influences branding.

Over the last decade, social networks have changed communications, shifting the way we consume, produce and interact with information, based on explosive migration to the web. Social media websites like Facebook (FB), Twitter etc. have created huge impetus on the communication platform with the end customers of different products and services that was lacking in the traditional medium. Social networking sites are used as marketing tool by marketers in creating brand relationship. Huge growth of customer base enables marketers to explore social media networking sites as new medium of promoting products and services and resulting in reduction in clutter of traditional medium advertising of reaching the mass customers and not realizing the actual ROI. Social networking sites are more collaborative and interactive in comparison to traditional media followed by marketers. Social media advertising is a paid form of brand, service or business promotion and requires a proper and planned communicative message and budget. Advertising is customer centric in nature. Customers play an important role in any major or minor communication because they are the one who are going to decide the fate of the advertising communication. Some benefits of social network advertising include (Jothi et al., 2011): 1. Popularizing your brand, idea or service to the target group. 2. Informing target audience about your brand or service’s presence in the market. 3. Encouraging healthy competition in the market.

them intact with the brand. Advertising on internet provides a major contribution to brand competition in the market. Advertising here not only provides information about a product or service but also promotes innovation. Besides it also facilitates customer satisfaction. Big and small companies, individuals of all walks of life, major and minor events, concepts, etc., nowadays lay their base on social network advertising to get recognized in the market (Zarrella, 2010). Facebook, Twitter etc. have become a personal, product and corporate branding hub in the world. Every brand that exists on social networking sites has the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more (Eric, 2008). The effective brand communication strategies are analyzed to find the impact among the users. “Media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. They support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producers”. Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film. They are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally require significant resources to publish information. Social media technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, blogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowd sourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo. A group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. Web 2.0 is platform on which social media is based. Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro blogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Weber also includes search engines in the definition of social web, and describes them as reputation aggregators with the task of aggregating sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of reputation. Weber approaches the question of branding in the social web. He defines this as the dialogue you have with your customer, and claims that the stronger the dialogue is, the stronger the brand is, and vice versa. Actually he groups, in the era of social web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can flourish. The companies in fact recognize the importance of participating in social networks in order to develop the brand and build relationships with key customers. It is argued that online communities will play a key role in the future of marketing because they replace customer annoyance with engagement, and control of the content with collaboration. "Indian companies are spending over R150 core on social media marketing campaigns," said Venke Sharma, president of Arc Worldwide, part of advertising Major Leo Burnett India. Facebook had said in April 2011 that of its 800 million active users 25 million were from India alone and Twitter, which has 106 million users worldwide, said India ranked second in traffic after the US. And this is making fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) majors, such as Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Tata Global Beverages (TGBL) and Procter & Gamble India (P&G), step up their advertising spend on the growing social networking websites and devise new ways to 'engage' youngsters such as Ashar. For instance, HUL, after seeing the success of its 'Sunsilk Gang of Girls' on Facebook last year, has now taken its flagship brands such as Axe deodorant, skin care product Vaseline and detergent Surf Excel to social media sites. The availability of social networking sites on mobile handsets has also fuelled the popularity of this medium in the last one year. Rajan Anandan, vice-president of sales and operations at Google India, said at an event organized by VC Circle, a provider of news and data on investments in India, in New Delhi in March 2011 showed that India had 100 million internet users, of which 40 million accesses the internet through their phones. Anandan added that more than 300 million people in India would be hooked on to mobile internet by the year 2015.

SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITIES IN MARKETING

Social media marketing are increasing expenses and increasing traffic 65% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure of business with 65% reporting positive nearly two third of marketing are using social media to gain market place intelligence 65%tied for fourth place 58% of marketers indicated generating lead and developing loyal fans were benefits of social media. The focus is popular social media sites such as Face book, my space, Twitter, Wikipedia, You

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Face book - Face book’s casual friendly environment requires an activities social media marketing strategy that begins with creating a face book business fan page social media marketing for business page revolves around furthering conversation with audience by posting industry related articles, image, video etc. The FMCG Industry on Face book have on average a bigger fan base due to the presence of strong and well-known brands that rule the top positions almost since face book’s inception very good results in the Industry’s well performing social marketing. Face book is clearly a top choice 95% of marketers are using face book the top focus for people just getting started with social media marketing (79%). Twitter - Twitter is the social media-marketing tool that lets our broadcast updates across the web follow tweeters in your industry or related fields. Official related tweets about specials, discounts and news updates with same fun and quirky tweets interspersed. Be sure to rewets when a customer’s has something has something nice to say about you. Tool revolves around dialog and communications so be sure to interest as much as possible. A majority of marketers(69%) will increase their activities on Twitter slightly down from 73% in 2011. marketing working 21 hours or more per week with social media as many as 80% say they will increase their use of Twitter in 2012. You tube - Advertising are done in a way to suit the target audience. The type of language used in the commercial and the ideas use to promote the product reflect the audience’s style and taste many business try to create video content with the aim of having their video. You tube introduced the FMCG product to the usages, pricing, product demonstrations and etc in this method of social media advertising easily attract to the customer Google + - Google+ is the new face book competitor, and it promotes the same fun, casual atmosphere on Google+ up load and share photos videos links and view all. You can also try hosting video conference with hangout feature in some fun create ways Google+ allows for targeted advertising methods, navigation service and other forms of location based marketing and promotion to introduced map and the product station . Linked In - Linked In is one of the more professional social media marketing sites linked In Group is a great venue for entering into a professional dialog with people in similar dialog industries and provides a place to share content with like mind individuals encourage customer on your linked In profile to create an area that will allow business owners to promote their product or service and be able to interest with customer. marketers should become aggregators of customer communities. It is not about broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience. Instead, when marketing to the social web marketers should participate in, organize and encourage social networks to which people want to belong. Rather than talking at customers, marketers should talk with them. The task of aggregating customers is done in two ways: by providing compelling content on your web site and creating retail environments that customers want to visit, and by going out and participating in the public arena. Demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors have become less relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel-their behavior as well as their attitudes and interests. Goal for the marketer is to identify groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the marketing. The role of social networking in establishing an integrated marketing strategy. They argue that online communities have evolved considerably since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. For example, Cisco has put forward a customer community, which allows customers to help themselves to technical support information via web communities. Technical support function online, customers began to compete with each other to answer queries that had been posted by other customers. This strategy contributes towards the creation of a community of people with similar interests who will trust and act upon the recommendations of others in-group.

• Use your marketing activities to affect how consumers feel about your brand, not just, what they know about it.

• Build direct connections with consumers, rather than letter retailers have this connection. Engage them and have a dialogue.

• Use your marketing activities to be part of their life, from home to the office to the store where they finally make a purchase.

• Remember that in social media it is about them and not just about you. This is not the place for a one-way conversation or for just telling them things. Ask questions and get ideas.

• Don’t confuse social media with media, the two things are different and need different strategies and approaches.

When it comes to FMCG brands, social media mostly consists of having some kind of Facebook or a Twitter presence to raise brand awareness and spread word-of-mouth. Taking social media on a step further, here are 3 things for FMCG brands to think about as part of their social media activity: Social Media Discount Vouchers - According to market research, company Chadwick Martin Bailey, one in four consumers state that coupons are the primary reason to become fans of FMCG brands on Facebook. So there is a clear opportunity to drive an increase in sales in-store through distributing coupons on social networking sites. Coupon star, a leading FMCG specialist digital coupon / voucher service provider, has launched “Social Bricks” – a suite of solutions enabling FMCG brands and retailers to securely distribute printable-coupons to consumers through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Social Bricks enable FMCG brands to offer their Facebook “fans” or Twitter followers the opportunity to print coupons, which they subsequently redeem at major supermarkets and convenience stores. Social Bricks is powered by Coupon star’s secure coupon technology ensuring that brands can tap into the benefits of social media without worrying that their offers will be distributed uncontrollably. Identifying Influencers Online - Given the nature of FMCG products, they are often discussed online in forums and discussion areas like Mums Net or Top Tips (which actually sells advertising space to FMCG brands). If FMCG brands can identify their social media influencers in forums or other relevant discussion areas, and then successfully engage with them, they can collaborate to produce goods, which appeal directly to their needs and requirements. In turn, the influencers will endorse the product, encouraging more people “like them” to purchase from the range. Using real people to engage online - FMCG brands, particularly confectionery, cereals and other food products that are aimed at children, often come under fire in online discussions for their sugar and salt content or their general lack of nutritional value.

The Internet is changing the brand environment or ″brandscape″. This study explores new strategies and tools for building brands on the Internet, including the interactive approach to attracting customers and building loyalty. established, the next step is to get customers to try the brand. If the offering is developed properly, it should provide a satisfactory experience and lead to a willingness to buy again. To entice trial and repeat purchase requires triggering mechanisms, which are created through advertising, promotion, selling, public relations, and direct marketing. The company needs to communicate the values of the brand and then reinforce brand associations to start the wheel of usage and experience, and keep it turning. Through the combination of the stimulus of consistent communications and satisfactory usage and experience, brand awareness, confidence and brand equity are built. Traditionally, in addition to providing added value, brands were a substitute for information - a way for customers to simplify the time-consuming process of search and comparison before deciding what to buy. However, the Internet makes search and comparison much easier. This threatens to undermine the value of brands. On the other hand, the logic of the Internet cuts another way. Transactions on the Internet require customers to provide detailed personal information - names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. Generally, people have concerns about sharing personal information. In addition, the intangible nature of the Internet, and the fact that customers are buying goods that, in most cases, they have never handled or seen (except on-screen), has placed greater importance on trust and security. People only tend to transact with sites they know and trust - sites that provide a wealth of information and make comparison shopping easy, where the user feels a part of, and sites that understand the user's needs and preferences. This highlights the surfacing of information and relationships as key sources of added value in the Internet economy. Customers derive added value through the provision of information on the products or services they buy, as well as on topics of interest related to the brand and product characteristics. Traditionally, brands have been developed in an environment whereby a company creates a brand, and projects it onto a third party intermediary (the media). In response, many unnamed customers develop a ″relationship″ with the brand. The Internet, on the other hand, offers interactivity, whereby the company can establish a dialogue and interact with individual customers on a one-to-one basis. In doing so, a company can listen, learn, understand and relate to customers, rather than simply speaking at customers. This creates the opportunity for companies to build stronger relationships than previously attainable. However, this also poses a challenge as these relationships may take on a life and character of their own (Cleland, 2000).

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Advertising using social media is increasingly a common strategy adopted by India marketers. While social media to engage with their customers through face book fan pages, Twitter Accounts, Linked In company pages among a host of other Globally FMCG companies have tapped into social media and engaged with consumers actively. The trend in India is seemingly yet to catch on, companies therefore are investing a greater amount of resources than ever before to facilitate such moves, The demand for social media experts is therefore also on the rise. Social media is one component of word mouth - Social media is really just a sub set of all word of mouth (WOM) conversation takes place both offline between friends, family and other or it takes place online. According to a recent study, 90% of all word of mouth conversation about brand still takes place offline this proportion of offline WOM will decline as the speed, reach and quality of online word of mouth –social media continues to grow and become a larger part of daily living. Reduced Marketing Expenses - The main financial cost of social media marketing is the time it takes to gain success. Nearly half of those who spend at least 11 hours per week on social media efforts saw a benefit of reduced marketing expenses. The self-employments (57%) were more likely than other to see reductions in marketing cost when using social media marketing. Social networking websites allow individual to interact with one another and build relationship using social media for marketing can enable small business looking to further reach to more customer are interacting with brand through social media advertising. Small business on short budgets an alternative to hiring a social media-marketing agency or paying for social media marketing services. FMCG Brands Now Powered by Social Media - When we discuss about the FMCG sector, we can see that nowadays consumers are provided with numerous choices in every shelf of every category. Those days have also faded away when there was only one-way communication and are very positively replaced by two-way communication in the social world. This in turn affected the decision making process of the consumers in a great way. The consumer behavior is different now compared to what it was years ago. Consumers’ today research, review & seek recommendations; analyze the post purchase experience etc. before initiating any purchase. Their will to reach out to the brands directly and with ease has become easy with social media wherein the engagement and interactions lead to purchase decisions. When leveraging an FMCG firm using social media, one should base it on few parameters like: core consumers, their engagement, tracking the interactions about the brand, measuring the success of In order to identify the core consumers, FMCG brands should not think of segmenting their social media audience. Instead, they should try engaging with the existing customers irrespective of whether they are core or not and utilize the social media tools to achieve brand’s goals. When you are planning a social media strategy for your FMCG brand, the initial step is listening to what your consumer has to say. Therefore, the social journey of your FMCG brand should always begin with social listening. This will build up many possibilities that the brand can utilize to further strengthen the bond with its customers. Analyzing the interactions will help you gain a deeper insight into your consumer’s minds and their sentiments towards your brand. For a solid measurement of your Return on Investment always keep a consistent eye on your competitor’s activities and structure your activities accordingly. Social Media facilitated FMCG brands to become more self-expressive and stand out amongst the rest as a more challenging one. When it is about FMCG brands, they are amongst some of the most innovative and prompt in their Social & Digital media use. What potentially matters are the efforts taken by these brands to stay ahead in the market. Before moving on, here are a few ways that FMCG brands should take up to market in social media:

• Plan and implement your marketing activities to know what the consumers feel about your brand. Let them not only know about the brand, but also understand it, relate to it.

• Engage with your consumers. Try to reach out to their needs and directly connect with them.

• Your marketing activities should be a part of your consumer’s lives. It should reach out to them to wherever they go, as they are the ones who will initiate the final purchase.

• Social media is more of a two-way communication. Do remember to ask questions to your consumers and get ideas.

• Last but not the least; do not confuse social media with media. Both have a different approach and strategy.

Social media has become a platform of advertisement of FMCG product and other. Social media can support their business goals. You tube, Twitter, face book we used the framework of advertising and other entertainment works. The

entrepreneur to improve the business through the way of social media advertisement the day today life in every person using the FMCG product. For example of car to shampoo in every product to standard the market is best way of social media advertising. Social media is particularly effective in positive shifting attributes like sentiment, recommendation, propensity to trail new product and brand loyalty while 83% of consumer exposed to social media marketing easily accessible a long memory. Social media is addressing the needs expressed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at a level beyond food and shelter social media is technology applied to support a basic human need the need for belonging and connecting with others. In social media if they are willing to commit the proper resources, the fact that none said that their brand was better off outside the social space shows that a social media presence is no longer optional, but is instead essential to the work of the modern marketer, even for FMCG brands which, as the research showed, have not been on the cutting edge of the social media phenomenon. To increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness. The specific area of fast moving goods sector within business to consumer market was chosen.

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• Cleland, R. S. (2000). Building successful brands on the internet. A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). University of Cambridge.

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• Weber, L. (2009) Marketing to the Social Web. John Wiley & Sons , Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

 Zarrella, D. (2010). The Social media marketing. O’Reilly Media.