Use digital to create proprietary brand content, say marketers

IAMAI's 11th Marketing Conclave 2015 focussed on 'Untangling Marketing Convolutions', with experts highlighting how new-age mediums are evolving and evangelising the marketing world

Aanchal Kohli | Mumbai | June 11, 2015

With digital being integrated with other marketing media, it has become imperative for advertisers to move beyond just 'using the medium for advertising' to 'creating a proprietary brand content'. With an aim to provide insights from industry leaders on the future of marketing, the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) conducted the 11th Marketing Conclave 2015 in Mumbai on June 9 and 10.

The two-day conference revolved around the theme – 'Untangling Marketing Convolutions' – and saw speakers like Kirthiga Reddy, MD, Facebook India; Rajesh Jain, Founder & MD, netCORE Solutions; Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network (South Asia); Dippak Khurana, CEO & Co-founder, Vserv; and CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM South Asia, among others, sharing their insights.

Day one of the conclave saw sessions like 'Expanding roles of a CMO', which highlighted why has it become essential for a CMO to also act as a Digital Media Officer, Customer Experience Officer as well as a Chief Content Officer. While earlier, there was stress on all-round creative skills, now there has to be a balance of data crunching so that quick patterns could be identified and tweaked. As such, what are the other new proficiencies that organisations are expecting from their marketing heads and what should a marketer expect from their digital marketing agency? These were some of the questions that the session sought to answer.

The next session was on delineating the concept of a truly integrated cross-platform marketing, which covered points like whether digital is being truly integrated with other marketing media or is it just an extension; is integration the best marketing strategy or different media need different marketing approaches; can there be a standard metric for marketing/ advertising across channels to gauge the media reach and influence in an objective manner and what are the other measures that the industry could adopt to synchronise marketing processes across channels and more.

Speakers like Kunal Tomar, National Sales Manager, Experian Marketing Services; Satyaki Ghosh, Director - Consumer Product Division, L'Oreal India; Sudeep Kolte, Vice-President, Sales & Marketing - Consumer Paints, Kansai Nerolac; Ajay Kelkar, Chief Operating Officer, Hansa Cequity; Subhrangshu Neogi, Director – Group Marketing & Brand, Religare Enterprises; Naveen Kukreja, Group Chief Marketing Officer and Director - Non Insurance Business, Policy Bazaar; and many more, also gave insightful sessions.

Day two started with the Leadership Address, where Kirthiga Reddy, MD, Facebook India, highlighted how Facebook is being utilised by marketers to reach out to their target audiences. According to Reddy, marketing concepts have changed and marketers now need to unlearn and switch to the 'Digital Chapters'. Clicks today play a vital role and are the dominant web matrices. She said, “Today, the world is moving beyond just the Internet and consumers are constantly changing devices, thus enabling Facebook usage to dominate the mobile world. More than that, mobile, video and measurement are the key words of the industry.”

Satyan Gajwani

The second Leadership Address was delivered by Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet, who shared his views on 'Making Cents of Digital'. He felt that the new advertising paradigm was evolving day by day and hence, it was important to create solutions that were captive rather than creating spots. He added, “Data and numbers are driving the whole ecosystem today and thus, there is a need for smart and targeted solutions to utilise that data in a significant way. A study reveals that 36 per cent of the conversations are from smartphones, while 42 per cent of women are actually a part of online conversations. Today, creative X is the most popular creative and interestingly highest online conversation is registered between 2 pm and 4 pm.”

Moreover, native advertising is also growing day by day and there is much more disruption to be done in the coming times.

In a special address on 'MarTech - Chief Marketing Technologist's Blueprint in the Age of the Customer', Rajesh Jain, Founder and Managing Director, netCORE, explained, “In the wake of a rapidly evolving outlook of the consumer, digital marketing must shift its focus from simply pushing out messages to adopting a more engaging, real-time approach. However, there are big inefficiencies that prevail in the current marketing process to reach out to the right person with the right message at the right time. We believe that marketing technology will help brands overcome this challenge and will change the ways brands and customers interact.”

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