Importance of human touch and purpose shared by experts at Advertising Club's 'D- CODE: 2022'

Experts and leaders from creative, tech as well as marketing backgrounds spoke about the importance of having a purpose and human touch in campaigns at the third edition of ‘D-CODE: The Annual Digital Review’ 2022 hosted by The Advertising Club.

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The Advertising Club hosted the third edition of the event in Mumbai on Friday.

The event required the presenters to cover three areas in 10 minutes each - their own work they are proud of, the work of other brands that inspired them and tips to crack the digital code in the year ahead.

Mansha Tandon, Head, of Consumer Marketing, YouTube India, spoke about the need to study culture and trends for cracking the digital world. 

She spoke about the #JavRun challenge they crafted along with Olympics gold medallist Neeraj Chopra. “It wasn't enough for us to just make a film about Neeraj’s journey and show how YouTube has helped. We wanted to onboard Neeraj as a YouTube creator, and we had to connect the dots with Youtube Shots.”

A question about the campaign was also asked on the popular reality TV show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) on television. She said, “Never did I imagine that Amitabh Bachchan would organically say the name of my brand. I think it's a good example of when a digital campaign seeps through pop culture and actually starts bleeding into offline touchpoints.” 

Tandon further credited Amazon Alexa’s integration with the YouTube talk show, The Janice Sequiera show. “What Amazon did, is that they inserted Alexa into a YouTube talk show to show the human and conversational side of Alexa. I think this is a great example of also how brands and creators can collaborate.”

According to Tandon, digital trends today are continuous and interconnected and cumulative. She advised marketers to capitalise on community creativity. She also said that marketers should tap into the shared passions and sources of fandom among young people. 

PG Aditiya, Founder of Talented, spoke about the ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ campaign. He shared the different challenges of bringing the campaign together. He shared that the idea struck him when he was watching a documentary, called ‘Empires of Dirt’, which showed the intergenerational trauma of colonialism. 

“The idea struck then to actually teleport objects away from the British Museum. Instead of doing a regular presentation, we decided to do an entire film to present to the Vice team. They liked the idea and we went ahead with it,” he said. 

He revealed that apart from memorising the entire layout of the British Museum, through Google Earth, they actually called up the British Museum Help Desk pretending to be visitors and asked about the artefacts' locations. 

He also shared how they had to develop different filters for different weather conditions inside the museum. “Instagram filters actually don’t portray violence in any way. So, you cannot show stuff like guns, bows arrows etc. But because of allies in Meta who supported the discourse, we were able to fight it and get it live,” he stated. 

He further said that the reason they were able to pull off this campaign is that they were not chasing deadlines. He also advised advertisers to give time to their ideas and work. 

Aditya further presented the ‘" target="_blank">Not Just a Cadbury Ad’ executed by Ogilvy India as a campaign that inspired him. “I think all of us, as an industry should be really proud of this. Ogilvy and Mondelez have shown us what can happen if you have a long-term client-agency relationship,” he said. 

Rathi Gangappa, CEO, Starcom, spoke about how they managed to make PharmEasy an easily recognisable brand in the country. “What we did with the brand and how we grew the business, is that we looked at data insights from the plethora of digital signals that are available. The three sources of data were trends on Pharmeasy, trends on the category and looking at the media inputs that have gone in to influence search indexes.”

“By optimising all of the media inputs that will be put in and analysing them, we arrived at what works well for the brand,” she added. 

Avinash Pant, Marketing Director, Meta, spoke about how the Metaverse will actually enhance the real-life experiences of consumers and how marketers can use the opportunity. 

Defining what the Metaverse actually is, he said, “I think the simplest way to understand is a set of interconnected digital experiences, which actually are able to make you feel present. You are able to do it from any device, anywhere with anyone.” 

“I’d like to bust the myth that Metaverse rejects you from reality. The idea of the metaverse is that it takes what you already love about the internet and then takes it to an entirely new level. What we love about the internet today is that it connects us with someone who is not in the same physical space as us. Metaverse can take that experience to a whole new level,” he explained. 

He said when a consumer is able to fully immerse themselves in an experience, that is actually a very powerful tool for a brand. “We really feel we have a fantastic foundation of technology and platforms. The work we're doing in communities, with creators in commerce, is what we feel really puts us in a great position to get this to happen.” 

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