The coming decade is being seen as India’s digital decade, though ad spends are still very low on digital
By Simran Sabherwal
(With inputs from Shobhana Nair, Saloni Dutta and Priyanka Nair)
Log on to any website and what greets you is a pop-up, banner or other platform with a brand message. Play a game on your smartphone, and chances are that you will not be able to proceed to the next level without seeing an advertisement. Digital marketing has become an intrinsic part of our digital experience today, though surprisingly, advertisers in India allot only a minuscule part of their marketing budget - barely 5% to8% of their total ad spends - to bombard us with ads in the digital domain. In many countries, this figure is close to 30%-35%. Nonetheless, the coming decade is being seen as India’s digital decade. According to the FICCI-KPMG India Media & Entertainment Industry Report 2013, the digital advertising industry in India is projected to touch Rs 87.2 billion by 2017, up from Rs 21.7 billion in 2012. That’s a whopping growth of 32.1% in just a span of five years (compared to Television and Print growing at 14% and 10.6% respectively in the same time period). While sceptics say that the high growth would be due to the low base, marketers are still struggling to integrate digital advertising with their traditional marketing mix. So how effectively are brands using the digital platform to reach out to their consumers and are they getting it right?
INNOVATION : SOME GUIDELINES FOR MARKETERS
AN EXTENSION OF ATL
Until recently, digital advertising was at most an afterthought for most advertisers. Today, it’s a completely different story, especially as the number of people accessing the Internet, especially on their mobile phones, is rising dramatically. Marketers too are following consumers online with loosened purse strings. United Breweries is one company that is betting heavily on the digital platform, and has doubled its spends on social and digital, mobile, WAP enabled marketing initiative every year for the last three years. Says Samar Singh Sheikhawat, Senior VP, United Breweries Limited, “There are things that we do only in digital that we do not necessarily do on ground, but almost everything that is done on ground is done in the digital world as well. We have taken the lead on debuting things on digital, so digital is now being approached as a very critical standalone element and in many cases a lead element of the marketing mix as well.”
While marketers are increasingly integrating and blending digital with offline media activities, offline media still garner the largest chunk of the ad-pie. As Sanjay Chitkara, Head, Corporate Marketing at LG India says, “Even today, most companies’ approach is to conceptualize campaigns from the ATL perspective and then extend it to the digital medium. There has to be a change of mindset whereby digital marketing should be part of the campaign conceptualization process from the very beginning. Only then this medium can be truly leveraged.” Marketers are also grappling to figure out what is the most effective medium to use to reach their target audience as the digital marketing environment has become more complex. In this scenario, marketers need to have a clear strategy of how the brand’s business objectives can be achieved online. Explains Abraham Alapatt, Head-Marketing, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, “Thomas Cook India has a clear and integrated web, media and social marketing strategy that is focused on generating queries, leads and transactions on our comprehensive travel services through www.thomascook.in. So from SEO, SEM, affiliate marketing, e-mail shots etc, our focus on digital media is the convergence of fulfilment via the portal.”
Why Digital works
Digital marketing trumps the traditional advertising mediums as it is a highly cost effective method vis-à-vis traditional methods – here, low investment can generate high RoI. The results can be measured effectively to determine the actual impact of the campaign. Digital marketing tools also provide the facility of Precision Targeting which is derived from the analysis of media usage behaviour, content consumption and geo-location. This in turn helps the brand engage the customer more effectively and provide customers with what they exactly want. Ashish Gupta, Director-Marketing, BlackBerry India says, “The engagement with the customers is on a one-on-one basis which creates avenues to establish a personal connect with them. Brands become more integrated with their lives.” This point is echoed by Sanjay Gopalakrishnan, AVP-Marketing, Fiat Chrysler India, who says, “Digital marketing enables the brand to go closer to the customer. It can help us understand the customer in terms of his psychographic behaviour. We are able to converse with the consumers on their likes and dislikes.” And, it is this connect with the end-customer which is forcing even traditional brands to test the waters in digital. Usha International, a brand primarily associated with sewing machines, has utilized the digital space in its recent brand make-over. Neelima Burra, Head, Marketing (Appliances and Sewing Machines) ,Usha International says, “While the focus was not much on mobile in the last one year, we have integrated mobile for our IPL 6 campaign with our digital media campaigns. We have seen a steady rise in mobile traffic on our site last year where the percentage of mobile visits increased from 5% in April 2012 to 12% in March 2013. This year, the team is focused on taking mobile marketing to the next level.” Another example of this is packaged water major, Bisleri, which has dipped its finger into the digital platform for its latest campaign “With the ‘Kiss to Drink.” In the Bisleri 500 campaign, we have just begun exploring the social media space. We see a lot of potential for Bisleri in the social media space and have put aside approximately 5% of our budgets for the same,” says Shraddha Nathani, Marketing Head of Bisleri.
LACK OF UNDERSTANDING
The biggest hurdle in exploring the full potential of the digital medium is the marketers themselves, and their lack of understanding of the medium. Ajay Kakar, Chief Marketing Officer, Aditya Birla Financial Services says, “The biggest hurdle is the complete knowledge of this medium as the inception of the Internet was on the basis of sharing information and not reach. The lack of understanding makes marketers look at this medium as a result-oriented one and they don’t engage with the medium completely.” While young brand managers are keen to explore the digital space, larger organizations need to be oriented to align themselves to using digital as a full-fledged marketing medium beyond just a website SEO and SEM. This is corroborated by Rajan Amba, Global Marketing Head, Titan Industries whose mantra has been to be ‘social’ in everything they do. “One of the biggest hurdles for marketers is that they did not spend most of their formative years in the digital era, unlike most of their consumers, who did. Hence, it is sometimes difficult to think from the consumers’ point of view. There is much more to this domain lying untapped. Most of us end up thinking of digital as a medium. It is an exploratory domain. The more you do, the more engagements and avenues are discovered,” says Amba. The Titan philosophy is to be a part of the digital way of life for the consumer and then percolate their communication into the digital scheme of things.
NO TECH, No clear vision
Despite digital ad spends remaining below 10% of the overall kitty, there has been a lot of interest and activity in the digital domain across all brands and sectors. But, digital agencies believe that many brands do not have a clear vision going ahead. Sabyasachi Mitter, Managing Director, ibs says, “Brands seem to be getting bullish on using digital more effectively after seeing the results. While most brands are taking digital seriously, only a few have a clear long term strategy of how they see digital impacting their business objectives.” Mitter also adds that often, clients complain of ideas not getting executed as intended, primarily due to lack of technology support from partners. This is an issue that needs to be addressed for brands to leverage the medium.
Arnav Ghosh, GM Digital & Mobext, Havas Media India, adds, “The definition of `digital’ is warped in using it as a strategic tool vs digital advertising, a big idea which can engage vs buying impressions and clicks. Unfortunately, it has been the latter which has seen the bigger traction since the digital domain today extends from a branding campaign measured in terms of unique reach and CTR to a performance-based campaign capable of fuelling the client’s lead/query requests per day. But, most marketers today have assumed digital media to be a quick fix solution.” Ghosh adds that marketers have to decide what role digital needs to play in the marketing mix - as an engagement or a conversion tool. Marketers are also looking beyond social media. As Sidharth Rao, CEO & Co-Founder, Webchutney, says, “Marketers in India compare digital marketing with likes on Facebook or a video going viral. Focus is slowly shifting to creating quality content and targeting the right audiences but it will be a while before we overcome this hurdle.”
The Digital Ride Ahead
Looking ahead, successful implementation of a digital strategy would require marketers not just to think digital but also integrate digital with the overall marketing process. Brands should also focus on a single brief to ensure a complete digital experience as against the separate briefs currently given for digital and mobile. There is also a need for substantial investments to upgrade skills, build capability and adapt to new technology.
Nevertheless, all the stakeholders are gung-ho about this medium and as Webchutney’s Rao says, “Right now is the best time to be a digital marketer in India since there is so much untapped potential and such a varied and readily accepting audience. We are now seeing brave concepts - whether display or social or video - being used. And the fact that many smaller brands are doing so much on digital media is an encouraging sign.”
