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How do you craft brand communication around a festival for an audience that may not follow it?

Co-written by: 

Prerna Khindri – Senior Associate

To target an audience that doesn’t have any relation and connect with your brand, you need to first understand the nitty-gritties of the preferences of such audience. First of all, a brand manager who wishes to craft a communication plan for the disinterested segment, needs to figure out the places that this audience group visits or the occasions that they celebrate. To target them at the right time in order to build awareness about your brand (a festival in this case), you can first meet them at the events that they attend. Sponsoring or partnering strategically with an event where the “disinterested” group comes, is a perfect idea to garner their attention. Secondly, you can catch their attention on social media. It is requisite to understand that social media marketing needs to have a much-tightened approach. To tap the target audience on social media, the brand needs to thoroughly research on their lifestyle, demographics, psychographics and life choices. It will help you circle the right pages to target on the various platforms, as well as create relevant posts to generate popularity or virility. The approach for social media marketing needs to be objective in order to raise enough response.

The rule for crafting a brand communication for someone who doesn’t form your primary target audience, is to build a plan that resonates with their preferences and choices.

Sijo John –  Consulting Associate

Communication and creativity go hand in hand when it comes to tailor-made messaging strategy around festivals to those who celebrate them and to those who do not. Anticipation and excitement is something that we will need to drive while we try creating engaging content and activities. Creating excitement amongst Indians about a holiday like Halloween might be a challenge, but that’s where creativity kicks in and plays a vital part. Retail, F&B brands, lifestyle brands maximize these kinds of festive opportunities to connect their target audience to celebrate this with them or their products.

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a serious psychological approach that brands drive throughout their communication. Not only does this strongly hold on their existing target group, it helps encapsulates those around them as well since everyone wants to be a part of something ‘cool’. It would be easier for brands to execute an effective communication campaign by making newer audiences feel like they’re insiders and by making a personal connection with them. Most importantly, just because the event is over doesn’t mean your conversation with your audience is. How do you know you’ve been successful? Check your social media!

Tripti Jain – Junior Associate

Preferences of the audience must be the priority for a brand’s communication strategy to come off positively. Promoting your brand amongst a known audience is a cake walk for communication experts. On the other hand, when it comes to dealing with an audience who don’t follow the brand, the going gets tough even for seasoned brand strategists. India is a country of many festivals and that gives a brand ample opportunities to be creative and tap in on the occasion to communicate their message. The audience that do not follow your brand needs to be directed towards it and the ways to do that are diversified. Firstly, marking your target audience is extremely crucial and aligning with their perspective is the second rung in the ladder. Directing the right message to your target audience is the next thing which comes in line. Figuring out the right medium of communication, which resonates with the preferences of your target audience is essential. Online media is the new age for marketing and promoting a brand on the right media is essential. A personal connect in the brand message helps strengthen the brand’s association with the audience and increases the brand’s recall value. A company’s communication strategy is its selling point and its crucial for a brand to be in sync with the target audience.