"Experiential marketing is a huge opportunity" – MG Parameswaran, Founder, Brand-building.com

Q- What is your new book, ‘Nawab, Nudes, Noodles’ all about?

A- The book is about observing changes in Indian society through the lens of advertising. It highlights on how the Indian society has changed as observed through advertising.

Q- Your thoughts on experiential marketing?

A- I think connect with the consumers is very important. Advertising plays a role of spreading awareness and building some level of conviction on what the brand is all about. Very often the last leg is when we perform is experiential marketing. So if you go back to 50’s and 60’s, Dalda was facing a health backlog, when people said it doesn’t taste as good as ghee, you can get heath problem by eating Dalda, etc. Dalda actually rolled out an experiential marketing campaign at that time. They had hundreds of test kitchens set up in big and small towns in India to get consumers to taste Dalda. So probably that was the oldest examples of experiential marketing where they actually took the product to the consumer and made the consumer touch, feel and try the product with a hope that the consumer will buy the product. Brands use experiential marketing as an added link to build conviction within the consumers.

Q- What are the best ways to measure the impact of an advertisement or an activity?

A-There are technical ways to measure the impact of an advertisement or an activity. I feel, at the end of the day, it is all about the sales and it is the final metric to measure the success of any kind of marketing/advertisement initiative. Through this we also get to measure parameters like brand awareness, brand image, your brand versus competitive spends, etc.

Q- What parameters should be kept in mind from a creative point of view of designing any advertisement/campaign?

A-Everything should be built on a fundamentally good strategy. Any good advertisement /campaign has to be likable and there should always be some surprise factor in it. All the good advertisements that may be of Titan watches, Amul, Fastrack, etc. fulfill these parameters and are highly enjoyable.

Q- Tell us more about your venture, ‘Brand-Building.com’?

A-Throughout my professional journey, I have always been a consultant and I wanted to leverage my skills. That is how I started ‘Brand-Building.com’. It is a brand advisory firm where I offer my services to the clients to improve their ability to do branding.  So we have engagements for startups who do not have core competencies in branding and who want an outsourced branding expert’s view. Also, a lot of my clients have talented brand managers, but they need extra inputs. So that is the brand coaching that I do for them and this is something I am actively involved in. It has been just been 3 months that we have started and we have some very good contracts already!

Q- How do you find your journey as a Consultant?

A-I have always believed that I am not only in the business of creating advertisements for my clients, but I am involved in building their business. The reason being that if their business doesn’t grow, they will not continue working with me as their consultant. I was always focused on the bigger picture. I remember one of my clients asking me if I was having sleepless nights and I said yes! He asked why and I replied that you are not having the desired sales for the last six months and I am worried about it. On this he commented that now when you are worried, you will find a solution to it. I am a brand advisor and brand strategist.

Q- Which brands do you think have set their strategy right?

A-A lot of global and Indian brands are doing it correct. They have defined their goals extremely well and I had the fortune of working with several brands across categories as diverse as automotive, FMCG, OTC, entertainment, B2B etc. Numerous brands have done an outstanding job in building their brand against tough competition.  Look at Parachute, Airtel, Hero,Dabur, Santoor, Amul…. Indigo airlines is another example of a very well managed brand. People only talk about Apple, Nike, BMW, but I think if you look around in every single category Indian brands are doing very well. Be it hospitality, airlines, two wheelers' or any other industry for that matter. A brand like Royal Enfield which was completely dead has come back and emerging as an iconic brand. I don’t think there are too many countries in the world where you can name a domestic brand which is number one or number two in every category. In India, you take two wheelers', its Hero; telecom, it is Airtel; food, it is Amul and so on.

Q- Your most interesting assignment?

A-The most interesting and enriching experience was with Tata Indica. When it was launched I was closely involved with it. We launched Indica, it had issues. Then we launched Indica V2 and then Indigo. Tata Motors grabbed 22% of the Indian car market share and that was a highly satisfying. We did an outstanding work for Tata Motors as it was strategically sound, effective in building the brand and a profitable business for the client and as well as for the agency.

Q- What should be an ideal marketing mix for a brand?

A-As such there is no perfect marketing mix. Every brand has to decide what is right for them. Today interestingly, we do get a lot of data about consumers and sales. This can be disaggregated down to district level and city level. A lot of smart companies are today working on Market Mix Modelling. To figure out what works best for you and then fine tune your budgets accordingly.

Q- Is using only one medium of marketing ideal?

A- It depends! Red Bull for an example doesn’t do any traditional advertisements. They only do stunts and that works very well for them. In India, brands do a lot of things. While some say that I will focus only on TV, I feel as digital and experiential grow, more and more brands will be shifting towards them.

Q- What do you think is the future of experiential marketing?

A-Experiential marketing has a very high potential. One of the biggest reason for it is the growing number of malls in the country. Just for an example, Vijayawada, which is a small city had only one mall five years ago. Now it has five malls. Interestingly, malls are now equivalent to old melas’. Brands now have an opportunity to have a conversation with a diverse set of customers on a weekly basis. I am not sure whether all the brands are doing it correctly and efficiently, but yes, it is a huge opportunity to explore.

Q- How has the customer changed?

A-Customers earlier were very satisfied as they had a very limited choice. Either it was Ambassador or Fiat or Maruti. The customer was very delighted to just have a car. Today, customers are more sophisticated, demanding and knowledgeable which puts tremendous pressure on marketers’. If a customer is upset, he will post about it or tweet about it. In short, he is going to make a lot of noise. If we go back when Mercedes Benz launched their first car in India, 20 years ago, they made a mistake of launching an old model in India thinking that Indian customers’ will not be aware. They thought that they will not be able to make out the difference between the old and new model. They forgot that the customer to whom they were selling were travelling abroad. So we need to understand that the customers now are exposed to what is new and latest. A yesterday’s product sold today will be rejected by the customer. The marketers’ now have to keep a track of consumers, competition and have to be always agile.  It is tremendously challenging as well as exciting time.

Q- Where do marketers’ go wrong?

A-I follow a brand building pentagon which has 5 steps – Brand Appraisal, Brand Definition, Brand Articulation, Brand Measurement and Brand Expansion. As per me if you follow these five steps meticulously, you can improve your chances of success. A lot many times, brands go wrong at the very first step of not appraising the market. For example, food delivery is a big area so everybody is jumping into it, but you need to know what unique benefits are you bringing in. In fact, the first two steps are extremely critical. You should be well aware of who is your target consumer, your competition, how will you play in the market, etc.  If you don’t know that, you can spend crores, but it will flop. It is actually something that is happening in e-commerce space. Many apps came in food delivery and are gone. First, create your space. We have a lot of fairness cream brands, but Emami said that I will focus on men as my niche and it succeeded.  DEFINE AND DOMINATE!