Author: Ideosphere

Are our festival campaigns truly festive?

 It’s that time again! Colours, flowers, sweets, fun, frolic, and brand campaigns!

Has to be festival-time, right? And world-over, this is the time when audiences are the happiest, and (most crucially) in a mood to celebrate, indulge, and spend!

 With Holi and Ramadan around the corner, this has given a perfect opportunity for brands to bring together two cultures. According to the Indian audience, it is important for brands to advertise them in a story-led format, which is crisp and meaningful. Our audience tends to relate their situations to the advertisements, and they start connecting themselves with messages portrayed via brand advertisements.’

• Arpita Chavan, Region Head

 The potential to leverage emotion, and celebration is massive, especially in a country driven by Bollywood, and community. There is no end to the list of festival campaigns we have created, year on year, season on season, like clockwork, there will be festive ads.

Most recently, came the much-debated Surf Excel ad, which, at its core talks about helping your neighbour. We have empathy, neighbourliness, acceptance, all packaged with the overall “Daag Acche Hain”…

And what did the audience take from it? Offense!

 Are we doing something wrong?

 ‘Representing culture through brands can be slightly tricky. In this digitally led age, it is imperative that we consider how our consumers might react to our campaign messages. Even if the campaign was tied to a simple message, it is easy for people to read tangentially into the message and create a backlash on social media, because freedom of expression!’

• Monica Mantri, Region Head

 One must question why we see these tangential reactions, all this offense, over a simple washing powder ad… And the roots may be in the manifestation of festive campaigns over the past few years.

Ask yourself:

• Are we still talking message, or are we talking sale?
• Are we overestimating the strength of the messages we create?
• Are we listening hard enough, and thinking deep enough?
• Do we know enough about the audience?

 There are really strong examples of brands that have successfully captured & held the attention of their audiences. Brands which have not only successfully grasped the cultural nuances, but also the changing mediums & sensibilities. We are a multi-dimensional nation, and our audiences must be spoken to as specific people, and not a faceless mass.

 ‘When I look back today, there is one campaign that reminds me of home and the festive season – the Shalimar’s Coconut Oil Durga Puja ads. They had been a pioneer in capturing Bengal’s passion and ecstasy centered around the festival, through its memorable Puja Campaigns. During the last decade, Shalimar’s Durga puja jingle has gradually become an anthem of this festival.’

• Rajarshi Bhattacharjee, Region Head

 Food, fun, community, celebration, and happiness… Sounds like the easiest mix to build a successful campaign out of. So, why is it this tricky to hit the bullseye with a festival campaign?

 Simple.

 Festivals are more than a trendy hook. They are built on traditions, people, and emotion; and the stories they represent are much deeper.

 These are the stories on which our cultures are formulated. They have been the pillars for all our diverse personas and beliefs, since centuries.  For the believers, it’s the tales of their Gods & Goddesses, for the non-believers, it’s still a time of all-pervasive celebration. How can a hasty brainstorm, and a quick campaign do justice to such ingrained traditions?

 Are we saying we should not create festival campaigns? Of course not! It’s an undeniably positive time for a brand to communicate with the audience. But we have to be careful to treat the event with the respect it deserves.

 Forget that it’s a ‘topical day’ and let yourself live the celebration! Be human, and not the ‘brand’ for a little while, and you’re sure to find that spark of celebration. It won’t come through a hastily emailed brief, nor a quick conference call. A festival is celebrated at every Indian home with hours, sometimes months of preparation. Your brand is no different.

 Put some heart into it!

By Bhushan Atulkar, Account Head- Insights

Insight is the capability of knowing and understanding the unknown facts by digging deeper through a systematic process of data gathering. Gaining insights into something is nothing new for us, as human species we start digging deeper into things in our surroundings to know more about them and adapt as per the information. Same is the case with brands, every brand under the sun is dependent on consumer insights which helps them in understanding the consumer behaviour, their desires, apprehensions, which ultimately helps the brand in adapting and growing itself as per the dynamic market conditions, leading to ground breaking innovation in products and processes. Insights are the sole reason that sets a brand apart from others by becoming a base of revolutionary customer experience.

 Brands start observing their consumers and gather insights since the first purchase. This process of observation and insights gathering is done through various methods viz. empathy interviews, observation of consumers in their natural environment, method of buying, gauging the competition.

These are some of the traditional ways of gathering insights from consumers which are more than valuable for a brand. For instance, Empathy interviews are very good in terms of gathering insights on the emotional and subconscious aspects of an audience’s action. This technique starts working where traditional QnA technique fails at getting deeper into a consumers’ mind. While these techniques are being used globally for collecting insights, times have changed. Introduction of digital mediums have opened a whole new world of opportunities for consumer insights.

 Over the time the techniques have improved and due to digital revolution insights as well as their gathering techniques have received a considerable impetus in the world of brand marketing. In today’s connected world, brands are constantly in touch with the consumers by putting them at the centre of their strategy more than ever. Meaning of constantly being in touch is, brands are gathering real time insights about their consumers’ activities through various digital platform viz. social media, smart phones, search engines etc. Social listening is helping brands in gathering real time insights about consumers’ preferences as well as the type of discourse which is happening on digital platforms about a brand.

 Consumers can be continuously monitored by brands with a right combination of data and tech. With the advent of big data this has become even easier to reach out to the farthest of the target audience. Arrival of big data has changed the game entirely for marketeers and brands; purely through interactions a huge amount of qualitative and quantitative data can be generated which can help brands take right decision at right time. It even helps in designing future strategies for the brand with the help of variations observed in consumer data.

 Big data gathered through digital medium is helping brands in customer acquisition and retention for a longer period as compared to last 10 years. Insights through digital mediums have provided speed and agility to brands in moving ahead of competition. A brand that is slow in understanding the needs and desires of consumers happen to deliver poor quality and ultimately perish with time. A good example of this would be efforts put by Coca Cola by using big data for customer retention. In an interview Justin De Graaf, Director of Data Strategy and Precision Marketing, Coca Cola specifically mentioned data is increasingly playing an important role in in marketing and product development, consumers have shared their opinions with Coca Cola through email, social media or social network that has allowed Coca Cola to hear their voices and adjust their strategy accordingly. Data through digital medium has helped Coca Cola in creating relevant content for diverse audience across the globe. He said, Coca Cola, wants to create different content for different audience across the world based on their interest and emotional inclination towards anything in their surroundings. Some love music or others love sports, this has helped the brand to present in these spaces without any efforts, thanks to digital insights and big data.

 It is not just limited to understanding consumer but also advertisers and promoters. It is common that businesses loose huge amount of money in advertising when it doesn’t have the desired effect on the audience. Big data has saved the day for many businesses out there. With systematic analysis of consumer movements, trends and purchasing behaviour brands have successfully got the right nerve of every type of target audience. This has helped brands in generating content which is more targeted and personalised. Netflix has aced this game quite well, when we open Netflix in our phones and PC browsers we get suggestions for movies and TV series based on our preference. These preferences are different for different audience. That’s how Netflix has successfully retained the position of one of the top online streaming services across the globe.

 Looking at current pace at which digital is boosting the power of consumer insights there is not stopping anywhere soon. In fact, this digital revolution in the domain of insights is going to get slowly transformed and fused with AI and ML which is even more effective. AI and ML could be the key to insights future. Any brand with a combination of AI, big data and digital mediums will be able to stand out of the crowd in terms of understanding the consumers and delivering the experience which every consumer desire from their favourite brand.

 While all the digital revolution in consumer insights are playing a bigger role in grating brands an edge over others and it is going to get bigger with time, it cannot come at the cost of traditional insights and strategies that helped brands in reaching out to millions of consumers and understand their needs and desires. After all, classic never goes out of style.

“But the best way is to get back on the horse as quickly as possible. Perhaps build a business that is a little bit more orientated to modern day developments.”

“Sky’s the limit” in terms of the ultimate scale of S4 Capital, though it “won’t be size for size’s sake”

Two seemingly mundane statements by one of the world’s leading advertising professionals, Sir Martin Sorrell. However, what’s critical is to look at the statements from the perspective of when they were made and in what context and it opens up a whole new Pandora’s box. Both the statements were made immediately post Sir Sorrell’s departure from WPP and pre-MediaMonks acquisition by S4 Capital. 

MediaMonks is currently a pure Digital play company which Sir Sorrell intends to transform into the world’s next big communications and advertising play. One of the key reasons, apart from the financial acquisitions, why Sir Sorrell left WPP is his fight with the company on the premise that they had got so used to their advertising Big Boy hegemony that they had failed to read the times and what Clients were increasingly wanting. He was of the view that if WPP could not change then they would be wiped out. Interestingly and ironically this is the very same charge he was accused of – not moving quickly enough to address the new digital marketplace.

What started with P&G cutting its budgets significantly and the invent of Facebook & Google dominance coupled with growing competition from consultancies such as Accenture & Deloitte, that had moved into advertising, led to several big Clients such as HSBC putting their business with WPP up for review and hat to as recently as in 2017 & 2018. 

As quoted in a Financial Times article dated 11 June 2018, a former executive said: “His business model has come under stress at a time when he is distant from the consumer trends that are putting it under pressure. You won’t learn what 16-year-old girls are thinking about when you hang out at Davos.” 

If this is a battle that was going on at one of the biggest communication conglomerate’s in the world, it really got us a budding boutique agency thinking. Are we doing the right thing? Are we reading the trends right? Do we really know what our Clients would be needing 2-3 years down the line say in 2020 and are we structured / equipped to deliver that?

While the writing on the wall is clear to all that data, technology and content will be the big play over the next decade, as is evident from Sir Sorrell’s acquisition of MediaMonks, his first big play at S4 Capital, there are many more subtler hints that are to be deciphered from his recent statements and all that has transpired between WPP and Sir Sorrell. There is a lot to analyse and learn but then that is a whole new blog on its own, and something that we would like to articulate. So look out for this space over the next fortnight. Till then happy pondering…

by Bhushan Astulkar

Crisis communication is a method of communication with people and organisations during a crisis situation with information that will be required to respond to the situation. Crisis situations in communication is all about preventing the bad from getting worse, make the most out of the situation through learning and creating opportunities. Yes, that’s right, crisis gives the best opportunities for a communication professional to grow professionally and personally. While handling the crisis mandate for one of our clients I realised it is not just about media relations and training your client what to speak during such times but, also about bringing the real you out and face the challenges which are not even anticipated on ground by anyone. That’s where you create the real magic turning every challenge into an opportunity.

When we talk about opportunities created by crisis, it is all about learning and developing yourself into a communications professional and being better as compared to what you were a couple of years back. During a client crisis situation, you tend to be always alert and ready to walk the rope to balance out the situation for the stakeholders involved viz. media, customers, and client. While handling on ground media during a crisis communication mandate we got to understand the real media situation on ground. The type of tonality and sentiments they have for the brand as well as the relationship they share with the brand. Being in a different territory it is very hard for an outsider to understand the psyche of the local media and during such situations you get to understand and learn about the media traits. Being a media professional, it is mandatory to keep track of every nerve of media from different regions. 

A crisis situation not only provides an opportunity to understand the ground reality of the media but also provides an immense scope in face to face interaction with the media publications. The experience of speaking with the heads and leaders of media houses is completely different from speaking with a journalist on call. You tend to learn the subtle art of convincing the editor about the “goodness of your brand” despite of it being in neck deep water of crisis. At this point of time you have to keep your facts and details right and need to understand what card needs to be shown. This is a situation where you must keep the most vital information related to crisis to yourself but at the same time get the job done through the publication with desired results. 

Communication crisis is the arena where you must expect the unexpected and always keep a plan-B ready. It teaches you to be great at anticipating things and situations where it can go wrong. Handling a crisis situation mandate teaches you the art of anticipation which is a must have when you are dealing with stakeholders who are as unpredictable as weather. While you have set the chords right with the publications and gave the required information to set things right for the brand, it may happen that the publications will print exactly opposite of what you expected them to publish for your brand. This is where the plan B comes into picture for you to get on your toes and start sprinting to fire fight the condition. While handling a crisis situation for my client, I learned a lesson which is not only useful for me in my professional but personal life also. During one of my meetings with editors I was assured that the information which I had shared will be published in the newspaper about my client’s launch program. As soon as I got out of the office of the editor the client which I was handling got a notification from government about a penalty which was going to be levied on them. This news turned the table entirely and I was on a run with my plan B. The launch plan was in danger as I had to keep the negative news out of media or at least share a counter release with the media which will neutralise the effect of the negative news. We immediately created a press release about the launch and mentioned about the aim and objective behind the launch. The next day both news stories were carried by publications across the city on same page adjacent to each other. This act neutralised the effect of negative news on fine by the government and the launch also received a great response from the media as well as from all the invitees. 

According to Martha Whitley, Adjunct Professor at College of Communications and the Arts, Seton Hall University, crisis communication is like Olympics of public relations. It is a different type of public relations, but it is exciting, and it gets your adrenaline going”. True to the core, it provides you with an immense opportunity of showcasing your true talent and learning abilities. Along with providing you with an opportunity to be a good communications professional it helps you in becoming a keen observer, a great negotiator, impeccable planner and the one who can anticipate the future of the campaign. When you are in crisis communication you get your hands dirty, but the rewards are more than a trophy. It turns you into a PR powerhouse which is a requirement of the time