The role of the marketer is now changing in India. The predictable money is still going towards the marketing tasks, but there are challenges. According to the Storyboard's editor, Anant Rangaswami, this is just a beginning of a very exciting journey, but the consensus says that it is a little bit in the future.
To know the answers of those inevitable questions Rangaswami met two of India's biggest marketers, Chandramouli Venkatesan from Cadbury, and Visa's Shubhranshu Singh.
In Singh's view, one of the fundamental shifts that happened is that we have moved away from a broadcast era to something that demands engagement. "Finally, the consumer is at the centre and this half-way mix between entertainment and advertising is here to stay", he adds.
Earlier it was between the brand owner and an entity, now there are many people involved, says Venkatesan. Hence, he believes that often a role of the marketer is not in just putting the partnerships together, but in engendering the behaviors in those partnerships.
Below is the verbatim transcript of his interview to CNBC-TV18
Q: At Cadbury are you looking at stuff like this right now? I don't really know what to call it, is it an ad or activation?
Venkatesan: I think all of us are now in this journey of what you can call is holistic consumer engagement. For different brands we are doing different stuff. However, at the core of it what it calls for is a degree of experimentation, a degree of trying to do different things. While at the same time trying to have an idea, which integrate so many things that you do.
Q: You are also experimenting now. You did your last debit card commercial, which sort of broke some rules within your own company. How do you react to this?
Singh: The bigger challenge is how do you engage and reach consumers everywhere across the country and in the world indeed. One of the fundamental shifts that's happened is we have moved away from a broadcast era into something that demands engagement. Engagement will happen only when you are interesting to people. So, this half-way mix between entertainment and advertising is here to stay.
Q: There are extraordinary new demands on the marketing professionals now. Today, it looks like you the marketer is going to be at the centre of all such communication as oppose to an agency because there are so many vendor partners you will have?
Singh: Yes and I think that's true. But I would quality that by saying that it is not really the marketer who is at the centre of it all. I think finally, the consumer is at the centre. I call it the shift from what used to be the rate card era into what's now the wild card era.
We have now moved to an era where there are people who are putting out content. If they like what you put out they will spoof it, twist it, steal it and you in turn will applaud that saying look that's evidence of success.
So, I think from the era where there was no filtering for quality and if you are willing to cut a fat cheque everything good or bad was being put out into the broadcast machine that's now fundamentally changed.
Q: What about you? How has your role changed?
Venkatesan: I think the integrated communications model, if I can use that word does call for change in what I would call as an ecosystem that creates it. I think earlier, the ecosystem was linear. It was between the brand owner and an entity, which was often the agency and then you manage.
I think you have a little more of a non-linear model right now. There are many people involved. Hence, I think it is not just the nature of relationships, but the behaviors of people that is starting to become crucial. The attitude of being collaborate is genuinely big ideas click, when multiple entities come and make it work.
Hence often a role of the marketer is not in just putting the partnerships together, but in engendering the behaviors in those partnerships.
Q: Now both of you have commercials that continuously hit high numbers, in the high millions. So when you see so much of free media coming to you, you would rethink your media plan itself? Your media spends?
Venkatesan: No, to start with for example numbers. We have had commercials, which have hit 10 million and we have also stuff that has done 50,000. So, clearly, there is viewership out there. At this moment, I think there are two kinds of content we are putting out. TVC, is really treating digital as an alternate channel.
Now, when one does a TVC it is not just about the creative and the message there are also business imperatives behind it, in terms of the time in which it must have impact. One has got lined up business initiatives, sales initiatives, trade initiatives. Hence, I think basic television advertising becomes important where there is a little more certainty to how we ramp up.
The fact that one can deliver X value within a certain time period is still very important. However, there is alternate stuff, which I am doing. For example, if one goes back to one of the big efforts we had done was to get Cadbury Dairy Milk to be used post-dinner as a 'meetha'.
Now the alternate kind of us while mainline TV advertising there was huge amount of engagement. The nature of engagement was we were actually sponsoring parties at consumer homes. These were dinner parties, which was followed by a chocolate dessert. This used to be entirely edited into a nice film and we used to put them on YouTube. Now that kind of stuff is only on YouTube.
So, I think one has three kinds of stuff. One is where you do mainline TV, where YouTube is an add-on. The second is really of the nature where it is truly multimedia and third where one is really leading from YouTube and saying this is how it builds.
Q: How are you seeing your paid media versus…?
Singh: I don't think we should be looking at this stage because of evidence of early success to suggest that we can substitute a traditional way in which we built a plan. However, I do want to say is pretty much the end of what would be called lazy marketing. One cannot buy attention off, of a rate card anymore. I think it is something to be celebrated because the medium is not being decoded fully.
So, why it has to be a Kolavari Di, Gamgam Style, Skyfall or a Harlem Shake and why not three others. Till that happens conclusively we have to depend on conventional advertising.
