Brands in India believe to reach their target consumers they have to invest in traditional marketing and advertising; television, print, electronic, events etc. It is probably true.

However, they often and more times ignore the impact that word of mouth marketing creates on their consumers. Here’s one such story that made waves in India last year and continues to do so in 2009.

We’ve all heard of Polo, Ralph Lauren and we all know how their Rugby/Polo Pony’s with the single digit number on the sleeve became the biggest ‘style’ statement in India for 2008.

There was no advertisement in print or television. There is no Polo store in India. There is no marketing tactic that Polo used for the Indian market. So then how and why did this story become such a big rage? I decided to ask around and see how the Poly Pony tee became the most talked about and worn brand in India last year?

My exposure to Interactive Marketing and Social Media has been ample and rapid in the last month, since I started my Internship with an Internet startup. In the quest to learn by doing, I have been using several different web services and trying out some Twitter clients (which there are a multitide of! Consolidation anyone?)

I recently realized how many social media profiles I have, and how difficult it has become to track friends' activities and keep in touch + network. Different sets of friends and contacts are spread out across Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogger, Gtalk, Shelfari, Flickr, Picasaweb, Ning and Slideshare and I frequently leave comments and update status messages across these networks. I felt the need for a platform where my friends could see posts from all my networks on one neat page. Conversely, I wanted the convenience of having to access just one page where I could see what my friends are reading / posting / commenting about.

“Most advertising tends to be”, Edward Kosner once said, "a trailing indicator of popular culture". 

This might have been true 30 years ago, but the scene today is different. Advertising is actually CREATING culture(s) and is more and more targeted at changing the basic psyche of the target customers.