Jayant Jaisoorya is a confirmed weboholic. The 19-year-old law student from Hyderabad claims that the webosphere is his favourite hangout-he spends four-to-five hours a day surfing. When in the real world, he likes to watch and play tennis; Sania Mirza is his favourite Indian star. Five months ago, Jaisoorya chanced upon a web site, www.myenjoyzone.com, that offered to fulfill one of his fantasies-playing tennis with Sania, on a virtual court, of course. Not only that; if he managed to defeat her the maximum number of times-compared to other players who were also participating in the game-he could win a date with her, and also other prizes like iPods and music and video CDs. Last week, Jaisoorya met Sania after defeating her, virtually, a record 500 times.

Sania, incidentally, happens to be the brand ambassador for Sprite and the web platform where Jaisoorya played her every day was set up by Coca-Cola. Membership is free and there are no entry barriers-one doesn't have to be a Coke buff or have 100 crowns of Sprite or anything else. "This is a chill-out zone for the young crowd. They can walk in any time, hang around for as long as they want without spending a penny, yak about movies, music or any of their interests, play games, blog and build a group of buddies, all under one umbrella," says Neeraj Roy, CEO, Hungama.com, the firm that designed the web site. But why is Coke taking pains to provide such a platform for people who may not necessarily be its consumers? "Because through our brand platform, we are fostering a community that can eventually be converted into brand loyalists through persuasion, not intrusion," says Debabrata Mukherjee, Director (Marketing), Coca-Cola India.

Welcome to the world of brand communities or Social Network Marketing (SNM). Online advertising or e-marketing are old hat and corporate blogging has yet to take off in India. The new thing occupying every marketer's mind these days is building communities around brand concepts. And, this is largely being done online, simply because the latter is a much cheaper and simpler medium to manage in comparison to traditional media like TV or on-ground events. And, a growing population of internet users is adding ballast to this trend. Says Chaya Brian Carvalho, MD and CEO, BC Web Wise, a firm that designs and manages such platforms: "Building brand communities, or social network marketing, is about providing a platform centred around a brand where like-minded people discuss their opinions on anything and everything. Since the platform is built around the brand personality, the community riding on it has a direct, yet non-intrusive, connect with the brand." Smart marketers, of course, also make mild efforts to bring in brand talk, thereby, keeping the whole exercise relevant from their point of view. "Social network marketing is different from advertising on the social network sites like myspace.com or orkut.com in the sense that here, one is not pasting ads or shooting virals on the sites blindly. Instead, one is engaging consumers directly on one's own community platform," says Ankush Arora, Vice President, Marketing, General Motors India.

Sunsilk, Lux, Dove, Clinic All Clear, Axe, ITC, Pepsi, Cadbury's, Chevrolet, Perfetti and Kellogg's are some of the brands that have bought into the concept and the increasing traffic on each of their sites is prompting them to stay invested. General Motors, for instance, recently launched www.srvchillzone.com exclusively for Chevrolet SRV consumers-current as well as prospective. They can walk in to take a close look at the vehicle and drive it down a virtual track, discuss their experience or walk into zones like Know Your Metal, Track-O-Meter, Get Xposed or Mad-O-Maxx to indulge in some light activity like taking a quiz on their personalities, analysing their emotional intelligence and testing their financial acumen. "The site was launched in July this year and we have had some 1.5 lakh hits so far. Around 50,000 of these are repeat visitors," says Arora.

The most talked about web site, though, is that of Sunsilk (http//:gangofgirls.com), the shampoo brand from Hindustan Lever. According to the company, it has more than 2.5 lakh members and there are about 25,000 gangs (groups of girls with similar interests) who chat, argue and fight over myriad issues like the quality of their shampoos, their make-up, problems with boy-friends, cricket matches to Indo-Pak politics, among others. The site has various interactive features-like a makeover zone, where girls can try out new hairstyles or make-up; a chill-out zone; and a blog zone (with about 6,000 regular bloggers), among others. Says Vipul Chawla, Category Head, Hair Care, HLL: "The basic objective behind this is to make Sunsilk reconnect with the young Indian women. Sunsilk's inherent brand values and its personality sparked off the idea of a 'community'. The bigger challenge was to finalise the medium and we chose the internet because it gave us a lot of flexibility in operationalising it."

Besides flexibility, the biggest benefit of SNM is the direct and targeted reach it provides. Says Carvalho: "Traditional advertising cannot be easily accounted for, whereas platforms like gangofgirls allow marketers to interact with their end consumer in absolute real terms." Indeed, return on advertising is the most debated issue among marketers and there are still no foolproof tools to measure the efficacy of spends on traditional media like TV and print, whereas in the case of online community marketing, marketers deal with their consumers directly and, hence, the impact of their efforts is much more measurable. Indeed, communities can be built through on-ground events, too, but it is a no-brainer that such initiatives are quite cumbersome and expensive.

According to estimates, setting up an interactive website costs about Rs 5-25 lakh, whereas organising a one-day on-ground event for a crowd of 150-200 people can cost Rs 25-30 lakh. Traditional advertising, on the other hand, is even more expensive. For instance, a 10-second ad spot on television on prime time costs between Rs 50,000 and Rs 2 lakh. "Besides being a cost-effective medium, the internet also allows consumers a 360-degree experience of one's brand proposition. For instance, consumers can not only get a detailed overview of products and virtually check them out but also discuss all the issues on their mind with their peers or brand custodians," adds Roy. Indeed, online brand community platforms give consumers a sense of their own space by allowing them the freedom to air their grouse against their own brands.

These are early days yet; but this is clearly a concept that's here to stay.