India is home to multiple languages and this poses a major challenge for marketers on a day-to-day basis, as they look to connect with their audiences and maximize their reach. To address this issue, marketing experts from different fields and sectors came together for a Roundtable to discuss the topic ‘Communicating in Local Languages on Digital: The Next Big Opportunity for Marketers in India’. The event was organized by DB.com in collaboration with exchange4media in Delhi. Sandeep Kapoor, National Sales Head, DB Digital moderated the discussion
THE DISCUSSION POINTS
. Challenges faced by marketers as they work around the language problem and the interesting insights they have gathered
. Exploring and tapping Tier I, II and III markets. Working out a solution while trying to effectively communicate with users in these markets
. Building a brand on Digital. How to reach the next 200 million audience and how marketers are looking at local languages
Local languages are going to be critical
Local languages are going to be really critical. There are clearly two aspects - one of brand communication, and other acquisition and completing the sales target. There is merit in saying that if there is more content available in local languages; we will see more content being available on the Internet.
Where we stand today, Digital is a Rs 3,075 crore industry and local languages contribute about less than 5%. It is expected that by 2020, the contribution from local languages could go as high as 30% of the overall spends on Digital.
Sandeep Kapoor, National Sales Head, DB Digital
Here are excerpts from the insightful debate.
Manav Sethi: It’s a dichotomy of sorts as handsets have not yet matured, in terms of the input capabilities, for true blue translation. We have come to realise that if you want to capture the language led Target Group, the de-facto form of content could be videos rather than article or text. Which is why all our TVCs have four edits and they are not made purely in Hindi. It’s made in English and then translated into Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. These markets don’t have the spillover effect from the Hindi Speaking Markets (HSM), they have their own dialects and a TG which is significant and scalable enough to create an impact for my consumption.
Saurabh Srivastava: If you look back at advertisements like ‘Thanda Matlab, Coca Cola’ and ‘Ye Hi Hai Right Choice Baby,’ these came into being as they wanted to touch a chord with the audience. The audiences felt that the brand understood them and hence wanted to consume the brand. The philosophy largely remains the same as when you talk to people in their native language, you try to get the brand closer to them. It is all about comprehension and understanding. If your advertisement is in English, you will reach a certain TG in Tier I, II & III towns but you will also be aloof to a lot of consumers who will not understand you the way you want the brand to be understood. When you know that the next 100 million people who will surf the internet on their mobiles will come from Tier I, II & III towns, then language will play a key role in choosing the winner.
Shubhajit Sen: The truth of the matter is that it is still the first 200 million story even today. Everybody is thinking how do we penetrate to the smaller towns and lower economic classes? The challenge is not just of content or having handsets which are cheap. We have got to think about it in two different ways — how do we increase actual penetration i.e. get people on to the internet; and how do we increase consumption of content and branded messages of those who are already on the internet.
Archan Banerjee: The touchpoint that Dabur has is that people call us. We need to have IVR solutions, which need to be in multi-language format and that gives in-depth engagement like what you are looking for? That connects with our audience and most of the times we connect with our audience in Hindi.
Shikher Gupta: During a campaign for Onam in Kerala, we got 300 engagements in one week. The team decided to do something in Malayalam and revamped the campaign in the local language. Within one week, the brand managed to sell 1,500 LED TV sets on the Digital space.
Archan Banerjee: We are actually moving the needle to awareness. We have a plethora of brands in our portfolio and every brand is at a different life stage. Depending on where each brand is at its life stage, we map out the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) they must chase.
Manav Sethi: From a Digital standpoint, language is not a barrier and I don’t see vernacular being a challenge. But, yes from a brand communication standpoint, if you look at what India consumes on Print or TV and in news, none of the top viewed channels or Print circulation is in English.
Saurabh Srivastava: One of the legs of brand communication is the art of storytelling. It does not depend upon what language you are using because of the audio-video imagery that is placed with that. You have to be very clear on, who you are trying to approach and connect with. So, if you are a brand which is right at the bottom of the pyramid, then you are trying to connect with a larger mass and hence language plays an important role.
Shubhajit Sen: The first 200 million are now used to English. We are now thinking about the next 200 million because that’s where the increase in penetration will happen. Our bestselling range of Micromax phones is called Unite and we have sold over three million phones. What we found was that a lot of guys were moving straight to Unite and this is not an entry level phone but a mid-range phone. When we dug deeper we realized that when you go beyond the top two million, there were actually three big barriers. The first was the pricing of data, the second big barrier we found was that they said why should we get onto the internet because they were not comfortable with English and the third thing was it wasn’t easy for a guy to setup a Gmail account if he was on the internet for the first time and it wasn’t easy to navigate through an android system.
Shikher Gupta: We are already present with the main e-commerce players and we are also setting up our own thing. The entire digital thing has been two effects - It helps the customer buy the product and after buying and after buying in whatever help he wants and then even in service. We have the entire digital ecosystem to support that. Our benchmark is five minutes so if anything happens, we have to deal with it in five minutes. We are also working out on how people can buy it online. As of now, people are buying it only in top few cities. I think it will take few more months to get the others interested in that.
Shubhajit Sen: In the durables and mobiles category Digital plays a very different role. What you’re seeing is that you can build a brand only on digital. Micromax has a subsidiary called YU and YU as a brand is only built on digital and it is only sold on digital. There is no real life presence except on digital.
Archan Banerjee: We had a community of 5 million odd people at Airtel and the objective was how do we get people from other services to our service. Our strategy on social media was always in Hinglish. It was picked up by others and then it all became visual in nature. We figured out that no one reads the post anyway, three seconds and then you are out. Performance marketing is actual sales cycle process and the other one is brand building. I don’t think the sales cycle really affects it because you get to see those cues anyway and our consumer is smart enough to figure it out. But brand building definitely does. That is something which localization will help.
Manav Sethi: If you move the needle, the debate is if from an ecommerce standpoint if we reached single digit or near double digit billion dollar value riding largely on. It is again a dichotomy of sorts. It is B&E class towns powering the ecommerce way yet all our UI and interfaces are in English. So the debate is if I change or focus so much on localization would I get my next 100% or not. If you look at it from a consumption standpoint a guy who possibly can write in vernacular language there is a very high likelihood he can write English as well. And if he is not then the question is, is he your TG? So to get the next 200 million what part is it or how much budgets or ROI do I need to look at it. I think that is a very unclear debate and there are no data that is yet out in the open.
Saurabh Srivastava: When we do brand advertising it is a different set of attribute that we’re trying to build and measure. The metrics is different there versus all the performance marketing where you can end to end map it and say which channel is performing. What is the quality of each for these users? The other thing we have realized is that on our website or app the minute somebody does the third transaction, the lifetime value is much higher. And that guy is going to do a lot more transactions. The crucial part in performance marketing is how do you make those guys do the third transaction? Between the second and third transactions there is a huge drop. That’s the real challenge for marketing in terms of performance marketing, between the second and third transaction how do you improve that metrics. The other part is discount could just be the carrot at times. This is very interesting and what we have seen is discounts leads to fewer sales. And that’s very apparent because guys who are there do not believe this is the latest trend or latest season that you’re trying to sell on a discount.
Manav Sethi: At the end of the day, India as a market is still led by discounts. Anywhere you get those Nike shoes for Rs 200 cheaper, it doesn’t matter if I am buying it from Snapdeal or Flipkart. At the end of the day, the site that brings me that product in the size, shape, form and colour as I ordered it, I am happy. Consumer loyalties are yet to be built.
Shubhajit Sen: We are in a zone where we say how do we capture the next 100 million if not the next 200 million. Which is where, for us, the language discussion is far more important than just saying let me do better with the first 200 million. Our strategy is slightly different, which is how do we update a feature phone into a smartphone? Because that’s where the growth is.
Shikher Gupta: If you look at other countries, they straight off started internet in their local languages. India didn’t have that. Google, Microsoft came in English only. The other versions have also not been in our language. That’s why the masses have not hooked on to the internet as it started as an English thing. So while digital isn’t a new animal. It’s just a matter of time when the ecosystem evolves and digital also evolves and starts using all the languages. But the important thing is that we should be happy with the entire ecosystem because even if the ad message is in a vernacular language but it lands off in English. What needs to be done is the whole ecosystem needs to be encouraged to support that because in isolation it will just be a message that does not catch the attention.
Feedback: ravi.bansal@exchange4media.com
