Brands slice the message, straddle multiple media for customer buy-in

Advertisers speak in many voices across many platforms to get the message across, as consumers seamlessly flit between offline and online worlds

How does online food aggregator Swiggy speak to potential customers outside the metros, or let them know about the slew of discounts on its app? Use an advertising tool that is more than a century old: pamphlets inserted into the mailbox. Smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi, which built its fan following through ecommerce platforms, is on every billboard on every highway in several cities, announcing its recent market share wins. And brands that were born before the digital era, for example Parachute from Marico and Indulekha from HUL, are aggressively supporting causes or sharing memes on social media.

With the fragmented existence that customers now have, inhabiting multiple worlds at the same time, marketing has blown out of traditional silos with brands leaving no media untouched to push their message. Take social media behemoth Facebook. When it had to assuage users’ fears about the safety of their data, it ran full page ads in newspapers. More recently, WhatsApp is on print, radio and TV asking users to be careful about what they share.  

The agenda is simple: be where the consumer can see you. “Almost a decade back print and TV advertisements would be enough. But today the fragmentation within traditional media itself has grown with multiple channels and OTT content entering the race,” said Anand Chakravarthy, managing director Essence India. Not only do brands have more points of engagement, they also calibrate their use of the medium according to location and demographic profiles of their consumers. “In metros, digital marketing can be very useful but move to smaller cities, the focus will switch to TV and gradually other traditional media,” he added. No brand in India can survive by marketing on a single channel. Multiple media outreach is a necessity. 

For niche markets digital is the preferred mode. But after a point digital customer acquisition gets expensive and brands start seeking out other media. Global research firm Forrester’s predictions for 2019 show that digital transformation will move from super-wide enterprise efforts to a pragmatic view of digital investments with the goal of making incremental and necessary changes to operations. Tangible efforts, such as shifting customers to lower-cost digital channels, launching digital products, monetising data assets, and automating processes to improve margins, will come to the fore. 

Digital retargeting company Criteo has noticed born-digital companies seeking out different forms of customer engagement, even outside digital, especially when they need to reactivate app users. “While brands advertise a lot online, the point of sale may be offline and brands seek help in driving footfalls to their stores and expand their omnichannel presence. Consumer engagement across different media is unavoidable,” said Siddharth Dabhade, general manager, Criteo India. 

Most importantly, a lot of businesses that started primarily online have realised by 2018 that pure play online business is just as risky as pure play brick and mortar businesses. Ditto for their marketing efforts. Hansa Cequity, a digital marketing company, notes two major distinctions in the use of media. When brands are seeking acquisition and preference building, they are more likely to go for traditional media (print, TV and outdoor). Digital comes in more as a way to build recall and customer engagement once they have entered the ecosystem. “What is important for brands is to figure out their sales objectives before they start advertising.
 

Digital space is largely for recommendation and influencing sales today but the traditional media campaigns build the brand image and recall,” said S Swaminathan, CEO and co-founder Hansa Cequity.