Gone are the days when brands used to sell their products through nonsensical, preachy and one directional marketing techniques. Nowadays if a brand is smart, then its target consumers are smarter and do not end up as a prey to its overhyped ATL advertising. Consumers today are not moved by what they see and hear alone, they are moved by a storytelling narrative that they can connect to. But how are brands weaving their brand communication in a narrative is a question often asked. To answer this, "Story telling through experiential marketing- How to build a narrative that speaks to your TG" was the theme of a panel discussion at the launch of BW APPLAUSE magazine. The panelists on stage were Kanika Mittal, Marketing Head, Reebok, Pallavi Singh, Marketing Director, Harley Davidson, Amit Tiwari, Country Head Media & Digital, Philips and the session was moderated by Suchetana Ray, National News Editor BW Businessworld. When asked how are brands trying to weave their narrative around story telling? Kanika Mittal shares her personal experience from Reebok by saying, “Storytelling has become an integral part of marketing today across the world and India is embracing it at a very fast pace. At Reebok, the traditional tools of ATL/BTL cost you around 50-60% of the marketing strategy but what matters is how you position yourself in the minds of consumers. There is a big difference between telling a consumer about the technological attributes of a product and telling them about how that particular product is going to impact their lives. Earlier in the year we launched a campaign called MSD for India, wherein Mahendra Singh Dhoni asked the people of the country for something and the people of the country had to answer what the captain was asking from them? We answered the question after a month that the captain asks you for one hour from your day that you should invest in some sort of a sporting activity that will positively impact the other 23 hours in a person’s lifestyle. The campaign was a huge success and we could have taken the campaign the traditional route and positioned in something around fitness but instead we went through a more engaging and innovative way to deliver the same message and this is way brands are marketing themselves today.” Voicing his opinion Amit Tiwari said, “Storytelling is not just a part of a marketing campaign for brands today instead it has become the heart of all campaigns run by a brand irrespective of them being ATL or BTL. Without storytelling your brand messages can very well end up being noticed and get lost in the already existing advertising clutter.” Pallavi Singh replies to the same question by highlighting an integral fact about storytelling. She said, “It is not just that storytelling has to be a part of your marketing plan but it has be ensured that the narrative is connected with your brand and is an important part of it. The overall communication that one is trying to send out from a brands point of view should make sense to customers and connect elements of brand, its attribute and the customers.” But since there is no process in place to determine the ROI on experiential marketing spends is that an issue why investments on experiential by brands are so low? To this Kanika Mittal responds by saying, “Unlike a Digital Campaign spend where you can track the level of engagement and number of impressions yes experiential industry is comparatively new and you actually cannot calculate the ROI on it. The reason behind why one cannot calculate the experiential marketing ROI is because one starts with experiential marketing at a very small scale. You cannot expect to engage masses through experiential marketing, it is a movement that starts at small and takes a little time to generate ROI. What marketers need to do today is maintain a balance between traditional marketing activities that help in increasing the awareness about your brand, increasing footfall in your stores etc. and some experiential activities that help elevate the cool quotient of your brand. For me the balance will be keeping the experiential initiatives at around 30% of the overall marketing plan 60% through traditional message delivery.” Pallavi Singh answers the same question by saying, “Through experiential marketing, what we have seen is that passion drives people. Of course there have to be metrics to everything however in today’s day and age a customer is much smarter than brands themselves and through experiential marketing we create events that instill such passion in people. For experiential marketing to work it is important to know what a consumer wants and then engaging them accordingly to give them that experience.” Sharing his brands philosophy on experiential Amit Tiwari says, “For us experiential industry starts from a need. A particular category may require an event where as a particular product category under the same brand name might not need any such marketing. Our marketing strategies vary from the product that we have at hand and the kind of connect we want to create with it.”
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In a strategic alliance with Everything Experiential, EEMA (Event and Entertainment Management Association) is all set to launch the EEMAX GLOBAL Experiential Black Book on the day of EEMAX GLOBAL 2015 on 21st September in Mumbai. The Black Book will feature leading experiential agencies in India and showcase the best of their work. It is slated to be an annual benchmark publication that will define the growing nature of the Indian event’s industry. Through this partnership EEMA empanelled agencies can look forward to reaching out to Everything Experiential’s expansive network of brand-side marketers and, as a result, reside on the desks and display shelves of the clients and advertising fraternity. The book will also be promoted online to reach the global community encouraging partnerships between featured agencies and international event management companies This initiative is being co-produced by EEMA in association with Everything Experiential to be circulated with their latest publication BW APPLAUSE that was launched recently on 5 September 2015. The EEMAX GLOBAL Experiential Black Book will feature: Special coverage on the events industry and its aspirations. Special features on the industry and the services provided. Focus on EEMAX GLOBAL shortlisted entries The EEMAX GLOBAL Honours that are being presented to global events and projects. Focus on the EEMAX GLOBAL Jury and their thoughts about the industry. Focus on key clients and understand from them what Events and Experiential Management needs to focus on. Focus on celebrity artistes and understand what event managers do, don’t do and should do. Plus more All EEMA agencies are being offered equal opportunity to showcase themselves in a standard prescribed format created by Everything Experiential that will feature an overview of the agency, its philosophy, key clients, national and international operations, contact details and a visual display of some signature projects. Agencies can look to be featured by way of a one page creative advertisement, a one-page write-up or a two-page write-up. The last date for confirming a feature in the Black Book is 10th September. To know more about securing a space in the Black Book please write to sunil.mehra@eemaindia.com or vishakh@everythingexperiential.com
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In a gripping finale, Nandini Diwakar and Sanjeev Gakhar beat six other finalists in a live-cook out session to win India’s one of a kind online culinary talent hunt, Lufthansa #cookandfly contest held in partnership with The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts. Nandini and Sanjeev were announced winner at the grand finale ceremony at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon. Rajni Kaura (Paneer-e-husn) and Simmi Sareen (Upma Polenta cakes with mushroom coconut sauce) won the first and second runner up titles respectively. The winning recipes – Nandini (Murgh Noore Bahara with Mawa Pulao) and Sanjeev (Masala Aloo aur khatte pyaaz) will be featured in Lufthansa’s inflight menu. Lufthansa #cookandfly contest is Season 2 of Star Chef Contest where the nationwide hunt for India’s largest online culinary talent is conducted by MasterChefs Kunal Kapur and Vinod Saini of The Leela and Lufthansa’s culinary expert for the Asian region, Chef Thomas Brockenauer. Conceived under Lufthansa’s “Non Stop You” positioning and “More Indian Than You Think” philosophy, the Lufthansa #cookandfly contest celebrates India’s cultural and cuisine diversity and aims to engage with target audiences on a topic close to their heart – their food preferences. Hosted on Facebook, the contest also harnessed the power and reach of social media and received overwhelming response with entry submissions pouring even after the submission timeline was over. Mr. Wolfgang Will, Director, South Asia, Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, said, “Lufthansa’s presence in India of 60 years gives it an unparalleled understanding of the needs of its Indian customers. The brand has made huge progress towards embracing Indian culture and its needs and the contest provides the right opportunity to not only help us understand India’s food preferences but also help our Indian customers see the brand’s “Indian” side and connect with the brand even more. We are also happy that our decision to host the contest on a social media platform helped us reach out to a wider target audience especially the younger audiences and connect with a new target group. Our brand philosophy of “Nonstop You” gets very well integrated with the contest as the winning recipe becomes a part of our inflight menu. This definitely goes on to reflect a more Indianized version of the brand. We are also very pleased to partner with The Leela for the second season of the contest and are thankful to our esteemed jury members, MasterChef Kunal Kapur, MasterChef Vinod Saini, and Lufthansa’s culinary expert for the Asian region, Chef Thomas Brockenauer, for their invaluable expertise and advice in planning and putting together this contest.” Commenting on the contest, Mr. Rajiv Kaul, President, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts said, “We are delighted to expand our partnership with Lufthansa to showcase the hidden culinary talent of India and help them spread their wings. The Leela reflects the essence of India and our Master chefs Kunal Kapur and Vinod Saini take pride in bringing the finest Indian culinary experiences from our signature Kitchen – Jamavar - to the skies. We have brought this ethos to the campaign to help celebrate the diverse culinary heritage of India.” Kunal Kapur, Executive Sous Chef at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon, added, “I am really happy to be associated and judge the Lufthansa CookandFly contest, as I believe it's a great platform to bring in the hidden talent and gems from all over India. As I believe cooking is the only art which evolves all five senses and a great meal needs to impress them all.”
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Everything Experiential celebrated its 2nd year anniversary on 5th September 2015, opening a new chapter with the launch of BW APPLAUSE- a magazine focused at the experiential marketing and events industry in India. The launch took place in a glittering extravaganza at Hotel Shangri-la’s Eros, New Delhi last Saturday, and saw in attendance the country’s leading event planners, marketers, agencies, event services providers and other stakeholders of the industry. The launch kicked off with the esteemed presence of Shri. Maheish Girri, Member of Parliament from East Delhi constituency, who in his opening remarks chronicled the importance of varied experiences in shaping one’s life. Shri. Girri, who is also the National Secretary of BJP, spoke in his inaugural address about the outstanding campaigning by Hon. Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi earlier this year that changed the entire world’s perception of Indian politics and events. [caption id="attachment_20111" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Shri Maheish Girri, Member of Parliament[/caption] Speaking on behalf of the event planner fraternity, Mr. Sabbas Joseph, President Event and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) and Co-founder Wizcraft congratulated Everything Experiential on its new initiative as he addressed the full house of event planners in a keynote address. Mr. Joseph stressed on the need for media platforms such as BW APPLAUSE and further elaborated on how the industry as a cohesive unit was getting stronger with each passing day. The day also served some exciting developments in the event licensing front that were shared by Mr Joseph in his address. [caption id="attachment_20104" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Mr Sabbas Joseph, Founder, Wizcraft & President EEMA[/caption] BW Businessworld Chairman Mr Annurag Batra in his address spoke about his journey as a media owner and the significance of events in his life. As he took to the dais with his signature wit he set the mood for the rest of the evening. [caption id="attachment_20106" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Mr. Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor BW Businessworld[/caption] Yamini Singh, Executive Editor, BW APPLAUSE shared her joy on the launch of BW APPLAUSE and expressed heartfelt gratitude to the industry stakeholders who had flown in from different cities to be a part of the launch event. The evening also witnessed four insightful panel discussions addressing the need of the experiential marketing industry. The first panel of the evening was themed "Story telling through experiential marketing- How to build a narrative that speaks to your TG" and featured Kanika Mittal, Marketing Head, Reebok; Pallavi Singh, Marketing Director, Harley Davidson and Amit Tiwari, Country Head Media & Digital, Philips. The panel was moderated by Suchetana Ray, National News Editor of BW Businessworld and highlighted how marketing trends currently had evolved from one way messages to a two directional communication chain. [caption id="attachment_20101" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Amit Tiwari, Philips, Pallvi Singh, Harley Davidson, Suchetna Ray, BW Businessworld and Kanika Mittal, Reebok India[/caption] The next panel discussion was chaired by intellectual properties creators Sanjoy Roy, Director, Teamwork Arts, Jaideep Singh, Sr VP, INS, Live Viacom18 and Jamie Stewart, Commune Sports & Entertainment who spoke on the subject of “Breaking the monotony in an experience”. The panel was moderated by senior political journalist Mr. Bhupendra Chaubey and highlighted how consumers today needed something more than the traditional buying and selling process for more evolved and engaged experiences. [caption id="attachment_20108" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Arts, Jamie Stewart of Commune Sports & Entertainment, Bhupendra Choubey, Senior Journalist and Jaideep Singh, from Live Viacom18[/caption] Next on the panel were event agency planners Rajesh Varma from CRI Events, Ankur Kalra of Vibgyor Brand Services, Sanjiv Pasricha from C S Direct and Rajeev Jain of Rashi Entertainment. The panel was moderated by Everything Experiential Editorial Head Yamini Singh and aimed at decoding the client and his expectations from an agency partner. [caption id="attachment_20107" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Sanjiv Parischa of C S Direct, Ankur Kalra from Vibgyor Brand Services, Yamini Singh, Executive Editor BW APPLAUSE, Rajesh Varma from CRI Events and Rajeev Jain of Rashi Entertainment[/caption] The final panel of the evening saw senior media experts AP Parigi, Group CEO, Network18 and Jawahar Sircar, CEO, Prasar Bharti engage in a discussion with BW Hotelier Executive Editor Bikramjit Ray on how media is responsible for the best experiences served to an individual. [caption id="attachment_20102" align="aligncenter" width="612"] AP Parigi, Group CEO, Network18, JawaharSircar, CEO, Prasar Bharti and Bikramjit Ray, BW Hotelier[/caption] The special address of the evening was served by Ranjivjit Singh, CMO, Samsung India, who spoke about experiential marketing as an integral tool for brands today. He said, “It is only the experiences that you have in your life that stay with you and nothing else and thus brands today needed to sell experiences with their products and not the products alone.” [caption id="attachment_20105" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Ranjivjit Singh, CMO, Samsung India[/caption] Guest of Honor for the evening was Sh. Sunil Arora I&B Secretary who thanked the BW Businessworld group chairman Mr. Annurag Batra on launching an initiative like BW APPLAUSE and also opined how the events industry and its growth was a positive sign for the country. [caption id="attachment_20110" align="aligncenter" width="612"] Sh. Sunil Arora I&B Secretary[/caption] Sh. Sunil Arora then joined Mr. Annurag Batra, Mr Ranjivjit Singh, Mr. Sabbas Joseph and others to officially launch BW APPLAUSE. A gala evening of entertainment ensued.
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Move away angry birds; angry babies are here! Hoardings across prominent locations in the country are plastered with grumpy baby faces. Private life insurer, IDBI Federal Life Insurance has launched its funny, yet hard-hitting, outdoor campaign to promote its child plans category – Childsurance. The angry baby photos attract your attention and lead you to an important message – the child will not look this cute when he /she is angry at the age of 18 years! With inflation in education costs ballooning year after year, it is important that young parents systematically plan for the future needs of their little ones. The outdoor campaign created by The Social Street, like the other campaigns from the company, adds a bit of humour to communicate an important message. The campaign spans 105 towns in the country. Explaining the objective of this campaign, Mr. Aneesh Khanna, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, IDBI Federal Life Insurance, said, “According to a survey, about 60% of Indian parents are worried about the rising education costs. According to the National Crime Records Bureau statistics, an Indian dies in an accident every 90 seconds. With such uncertainty and rising costs, the biggest worry in the minds of today’s young parents is, whether their goals for their children will be fulfilled, especially in their absence. Our children’s insurance solutions address these concerns effectively. The plans not only help customers build a sizeable corpus, but also offer life cover. The waiver of premium benefit ensures that the plan continues even in the absence of the parent and children’s future needs are secured no matter what.” He adds, “The message of angry babies is so strong and striking at the same time that we thought an outdoor campaign would effectively communicate the campaign thought. The best part about this campaign is that while it gives a gentle nudge to young parents to plan for their children’s future needs, it takes does so by taking a complete departure from regular advertising featuring babies. While you would see happy baby faces in most advertising, ours features angry babies and this has caught the attention of the audience.” Say’s Pratap Bose Founding Partner and Chairman of The Social Street … ’’The Childsurance campaign from IDBI Federal is indeed an intriguing one, as the cute angry babies immediately draw your attention. Large scale formats in the OOH space, enables the imagery of the visual to be disproportionately large, so as to draw attention and drive home the point that your child’s insurance is certainly not something that you can take for granted’’ Nitin Rastogi Associate Vice President The Social Street adds “We executed The Childsurance campaign in 105 cities, with more than 900 billboards pan India in Phase 1, we planned & shortlisted each and every media considering the creative, even the way the baby looked towards the traffic as per the positioning of each site. The beauty of the outdoor is that you can use the creative suitable to each and every medium, which no other medium offers, and we’ve tried to explore this effectively in this campaign, in phase one we integrated the campaign with radio, and in phase two we’re planning to take it a step further with on-ground activation & digital” The company has also tied up with BIG FM 92.7 radio station for its radio efforts for the campaign. It will cover 11 towns – these are towns with high radio listenership and affinity with the target group. Radio campaign will be divided in 2 phases – in the first phase, IDBI Federal Life Insurance will run a radio contest and in the next leg it will engage audiences with interesting ideas like radio films and counseling sessions. The company also has plans to have activations and digital engagement to promote the campaign further.
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In an interesting move Omar Qureshi – Bollywood & Media Expert and has joined the Viiking Media & Entertainment Group as “Chief Creative Officer & Business Head”. Viiking is an Entertainment and Media conglomerate with business entrepreneur, filmmaker, actor, Sachiin J Joshi as its Chairman. It is part of the Viiking Group, that has business interests in Film Production, Beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic), Spas & Health Products, Gymnasiums, Spring & Mineral water, tissues, Sports (he has a huge shareholding in the star cricket enterprise - CCL apart from owning the team ‘Telugu Warriors’); has recently forayed into luxury hotels by bringing down the famed Planet Hollywood hotel to Goa luxe. Viiking is also the producer of several big ticket films like the Aishwarya Rai – Bachchan starrer ‘Jazbaa’ and Ram Gopal Verma’s next, ‘The Secret’ among others. With Omar Qureshi coming on board as CCO, the Group now enters the sizzling hot Digital Media and Creative Content market. For TV, web, mobile and the big screen of movie production; including marketing, promotions and distribution. As well as a focus on music verticals. Omar Qureshi brings with himself a humongous experience across numerous media platforms- in print (as Editor of the famed ‘Stardust’ magazine); web, mobile and on-ground – launching a glut of products with Indiatimes.com of the Times Group – as Entertainment Editor for the Group. Making Indiatimes a highly valued company with his contributions. His initiations with Aamir Khan’s ‘Lagaan’ spun off many businesses for Times Internet Ltd. And helped in it becoming India’s fastest ‘Superbrand’. In 2008 he was asked by the Times Group, to head zoom TV as Editor-in-Chief. Omar’s Review show on zoom was also one of India’s most watched shows. Commenting on Omar’s entry Sachiin Joshi, Chairman– Viiking Ventures and Viiking Media and Entertainment – “This is the most fabulous handshake to happen in the business of Media and Entertainment in a long time and will remains so for a long time. We, as a Group, are expanding in the areas of Movies, Movie content, short and long form content for digital. Movie Production, Marketing and Promotions across all our properties. And who better than Omar – with his immense experience in all these zones – to spearhead these areas. He is a household name with Bollywood and a known face with TV, Media and even the audiences. His experience and expertise shall only add greater value to Viiking as a Company. We intend not only to become the biggest players in the Digital Content space out of India, we will also have the in-house expertise to select and make the best possible content for Movies and the music space, that seem to be suffering from dearth of enough creativity. Omar is a master of that territory and we are very excited.” Speaking about his new professional outing Omar says – “When smart business meets smart content the result is a spark that can set benchmarks and blaze new trails. With the kind of Group support and resources at the disposal of The Viiking Group, the ventures we are looking at shall be The Place to visit, for sampling any kind of content across genres. With a focused eye on Bollywood and Entertainment, we shall also foray into other genres. And with niche TV viewing going through asphyxiation by the larger GECs, and with content suffering from scarcity of originality, we hope to create shark tanks of expert teams, the best of breed in their domains, who will create businesses that will become a landing page for most consumers. Also, with the Group’s interest in Bollywood and Tollywood movies, also looking internationally, I see a beautiful synergy and an exciting new zone that shall be the mother of all Digital Content, hopefully, sooner than we think. With the kind of vision, 70mm foresight and drive that Sachiin Joshi has, this seems immensely doable.”
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Right when the country was busy preparing to celebrate Teacher’s day on September 4th, a landmark initiative was taken by the Delhi government as it implemented Online Licensing process, making it the first state in India that has set in stone such a path-breaking initiative. The news of licensing process for attaining NOC’s for organizing events being shifted online comes as good news for the event industry stakeholders as now planners can obtain multiple NOC’s required to host events in Delhi through a single window and without a human interface. While the online clearance has been put in place for non-ticketed events in Delhi for now, it will take around another month for the online process to be implemented for ticketed events; that would be another major achievement. A report prepared by the excise commissioner Sanjay Kumar on “ease on event regulations” is currently in Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s office for consideration. The report takes into accounts the views of industry insiders like Rajeev Jain, Treasurer, Event and Entertainment Management Association and Karan Arora, Book My Show and advocates about granting licenses on annual basis to certain venues on payment of certain fees after which permission for every event will not be needed. Commenting on the momentous achievement for the industry, Sabbas Joseph, President EEMA, says, “The decision by Delhi government is much appreciated and now we wait for states like Maharastra and others to follow Delhi’s example.
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It takes months of hard work, diligence and preparation to execute an event. And as soon as that last attendee moves out of the event venue, the organizers think that their job of delivering a spectacular event is over. However, contrary to the popular belief the job of an event organizer does not end here. This time at EE, we are listing down 5 essentials event planners must do after event execution. 1- Send Thank You notes Yes, sending a Thank You note to all event attendees today is equally important as sending those invitations to attend the event. By sending thank you notes an attendee feels acknowledged and special. The best kind of thankyouthat an organizer can send their attendees are personalized.The more customized the thank you note is the bigger and better will be its impact. The retention value of the event in the mind of its attendees is increased drastically through this small initiative by event professionals. 2-Ask for Feedback Even if an event professional has put in their heart and soul into executing an event, there is always a scope of improvement left. Through asking for feedback, event managers can better themselves in the future and incorporate the necessary changes in their overall event planning and execution techniques. Also with feedback asking, the attendee feels that their presence was acknowledged at the event and will probably never miss any of your future events also. 3-Decode Financial Aspects Yes, time for numbers it is. After the event has been executed event managers have to get down towards analyzing each and every penny spent on the event and evaluating the costs which could have been avoided. Also, finding out the exact value of profits made and revenue generated is integral for every event. This particular step will the agencies plan the budget of their future events well and manage the finances better. 4-Internal Feedback Apart from the feedbacks received from attendees, garnering the feedback on the event from your internal team is also important for event managers. It is crucial to find out where did the team face challenges and stumbled, what were the achievements and highlights of the event, who performed the best and what can be the areas of improvements should be the points to be discussed. Through this small exercise, an event planner will be able to better organize events in the future. 5-Unwind Whether your event was a Hit or a Flop, after an event has been executed a planner should always unwind and genuinely relax before the task of organizing the next event unfolds. Without the much needed relief, no event planner will be able to perform their best for the next event. Planning your downtime just as carefully as you plan your events is the key here, with some time off and rejuvenation event planners can gear up again to deliver one more spectacular event.
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