'Stories' is leveraging social media to connect with audiences: WeWork's Vineet Singh

'Stories' is leveraging social media to connect with audiences: WeWork's Vineet Singh

It will host two such sessions every quarter by inviting people from diverse fields.

Vineet Singh

MUMBAI: The global platform, providing collaborative spaces to creators, budding entrepreneurs, and SMEs, WeWork was launched in India just two years ago through a joint venture with Embassy Group. Today, it has over a cumulative office space of 3 million square feet in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Gurugram with over 25,000 members across large enterprises, SMEs, start-ups, and freelancers leveraging on its services.

It is a B2B space, offering some of the greatest perks of working in a shared environment, but has maintained an impressive B2C connect through its marketing techniques, social media being one of its strongest communication tools. Recently, it launched an in-house interactive property called ‘Stories’ to celebrate experience and journeys of renowned people, from different walks of life, who further can motivate millions of people to make a 'life' and not just a living. Aired on its official social media handle, the episodes are hosted by the leadership team and are open to members and the audience watching the live session for Q&A.

Indiantelevision.com interacted with WeWork India head of marketing Vineet Singh to know more about ‘Stories’ and the general marketing strategies of the brand. Edited excerpts follow:

What is ‘Stories’ all about? What is the idea behind the campaign?

With the focus on millennials, the idea behind ‘Stories’ was to find a new, different way to connect and engage with our audience. As India is home to 65 per cent of the population under the age of 35 years who are seeking greater social engagement, our aim was to reach out to them through a digital platform and connect this large community with well-known names who come from different facets of life, whom people look up to. These people can be achievers from various fields who talk about their journey and further inspire people.

The first episode featured Sunil Chhetri along with Albert Serran and Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, followed by Shane Watson and Brett Lee in the second episode.

How has the response (in terms of numbers of views and shares) been to the released episodes?

Both episodes received great response and appreciation from people on-ground, our members and audience online who heavily invested in the sessions. We had an influx of questions on Facebook and at the event itself. The response from in-house members as well has been phenomenal and we are overwhelmed to receive such positive feedback on Stories.

For the first episode, we had an estimated reach of more 1.95 million and 26 thousand engagements. The second episode had a much higher estimated reach of 2.73 million and the engagements crossed 28.6 thousand mark.

No. of Posts

Total Reach

Total Impressions

Likes

Comments

Shares

Video Views

Total Engagement

Eng. Rate

3

2,737,509

2,999,099

6,570

141

105

17,790

28,530

1.04%

What is the future roadmap for the property?

The vision behind our ‘Stories’ platform is to reach out to as many people as possible through our social media channels. Through FB live sessions, we celebrate journeys of renowned people from different walks of life by asking them to share motivational stories about their life and career held at various WeWork spaces in India. We will continue with this property and plan to host two such sessions every quarter by inviting people from diverse fields to come to our space and tell us their stories.

Apart from ‘Stories’, if we talk about the marketing strategy for WeWork, what has been the approach for the Indian market? How has it evolved over the past two years?

As the working millennial population evolved, so has our promotional strategy. We focus on using technological, digital, and social tools to reach out to potential customers and consumers. While WeWork is a B2B brand, our strategies and campaigns are not limited to any particular segment. We have a very consumer-focused strategy and this reflects in most of our campaigns.

As a B2B company, our aim is to create an experience for the product which is the workspaces we provide to our members. This also involves education of the category by shedding light on the value members are receiving through the membership.

As a concept, we have recently introduced a digital tour for our potential members who would like to visit our workspace but are not able to make time. Our team connects with the person through a digital medium like zoom call and takes them on a tour around the space while conversing about the features, design, events, benefits of working out of WeWork, etc at the comfort of wherever they are at that time. We plan to keep developing on strategies with the aim of finding newer ways to connect with the millennial workforce.

What are the opportunities and challenges that the current marketing scenario in India come with? How do you leverage/tackle them?

According to a Morgan Stanley report, India will have 410 million millennial, who will spend $330 billion annually by 2020 and an RAI and Deloitte study suggests that these people spend on average 17 hours online every week. They are the primary target the audience of the majority of the brands all around the world.

Marketers are aware of the shift in the medium where efforts are being put into digital marketing which is the place to reach them. While it is understood that digital medium is the way to get their attention, we also need to understand that India is a diverse country where one universal customised strategy will not work for all brands owing to the differentiated nature of the millennial segment.

At WeWork, we have a diverse range of members working in our workspaces who always strive to promote collaboration and a sense of community. Through our community team across the workspaces, we are always engaging with our members, understanding their views and taking it into account while driving our marketing initiatives. Therefore, by our initiative ‘Stories’ we found a new way to connect with both our existing and potential members to make them experience the conversations that we have at WeWork.

What are your thoughts on content marketing and integration with digital series to promote properties like yours?

Marketing is impossible without great content which is also valuable and relevant to the target audience. While every brand focuses on content marketing in their marketing strategies, most of them may not be relevant or valuable to their consumers.

At WeWork, collaboration, and community are the foundation and all our activities are directed to promote it further. So with the ‘Stories’ platform where celebrated people are being invited to space, it was very important for us to promote it through FB live sessions in order to bring the aspect of relevance, value and something of interest to our members and audiences. For instance, in two of our sessions we had invited sports players like Brett Lee, Shane Watson, Sunil Chhetri, etc, to talk about their journey in their respective fields.

We want to create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living, this could not have been spoken in a better way than they did and these are the types of stories we would like to continue with.