Mr. Srinivas, as someone who has been in the industry for a while, how do you feel media is evolving as compared to older times?
There has been a fair amount of evolution in the media space in the last 5 to 10 years and we have been setting up networks in India. So apart from having standalone media planning and buying agencies and were planning on buying agencies which share a similar portfolio. We have also gone ahead and invested in a host of specialist units in areas of trading, content, activation in experiential and data analytics. Over the last few years we have upgraded our specialist units and it reminded me of our early years when we were setting up the networks we referred to the planning and buying business as the ‘core’ business and experiential as the ‘non-core’ business and that is an indication of how we have evolved. None core is now called the new core which is where most of the driving forces is coming from.
What is the role of experiential marketing in building brands?
Today experiential marketing plays an important role in brand building. With the fragmentation and inflation of media, especially mass media, it is difficult for advertisers to get a return on their investment, which is one factor. The other factor is the attention deficit economy we live in; it is difficult for any brand to attain its objective only through traditional advertising. Traditional advertising basically builds awareness of the brand and the products. With the fragmentation of media,where the product is not consumed with as much patience, experiential has a very important role to play. It actually helps the brand fly and helps client actually experience the product and become stronger advocates than marketing and advertising. GroupM has done a lot of work with experiential over the years and has a body of over 200 projects. It also has a unit called Dialogue Factory headed by Balbir Singh, a known figure in the field of experiential marketing. He and his team are doing a great job within the company and providing value to our clients.
So what do you think that brands are not understanding about the role of experiential marketing?
The barriers with experiential marketing are different for different clients. Some are hesitant to get into experiential because they bring up measurements as part of the issue but solutions are available today thanks to technology and to mobile media. There are ways of measuring this and another way is to build a link between what you with an investment in experiential marketing and what that does for a brand. Over the years, in our own body of work we have seen that with our knowledge and expertise we can advise clients on what could be their returns on their investments. One thing that is important in experiential marketing is that to know and be clear on what their objectives are such as figuring out or revising a campaign. We have been in this space for long and built up a body that guides the clients in setting up the right objectives in the first place to the strategy and implementation coming back right at the end to measure the impact of the cycle.
How have you equipped yourself to specialize in experiential marketing?
We believe very clearly in media planning and buying especially traditional media when it comes to brands engaging with the category developing and so on. We were the early movers in the areas of activation and content. We have a robust offering pretty much all of these areas and mentioning earlier, this is the new core and are providing value to our clients and these categories are working closely with our existing media planning and buying team that is able to provide diversified services to the client; a very holistic kind of a product which is the need of the hour.
At the Mobile Marketing Association, do you have any announcements to make for us?
Yes, I’m delighted to let you know that Madhouse which is our brand marketing partner is bringing the MMA conference to India. They have done fabulous work across the world and this is the third country that the MMA is coming to after China and Vietnam. Madhouse investing in and set up this body and hopefully we can work with other industry partners and help grow the advertising base in India. It is the most under leveraged medium in the country but with the highest penetration and which offers a lot of unique advantages to the advertisers. I am hoping that associating with MMA and working with the rest of the industry will be able to extrapolate the overall marketing base.
