I am opposed to the word agency, says Gozoop CEO Ahmed Aftab Naqvi

We like an equal seat from where we can influence business decisions, Ahmed Aftab Naqvi tells Shubhomoy Sikdar

Gozoop has recently retained the integrated marketing duties for Dabang Delhi Kabaddi Club, the Delhi-based franchise of the Pro Kabaddi League. What are the specific challenges of marketing for the sport?

After cricket, the maximum amount of fan participation we have been able to create for any sports is Kabaddi which has taken a quantum leap. A lot of things are coming together for it. We have seen that there is city-based loyalty but at the same time, there is loyalty towards the people involved with the franchise — be it the star players or the star ambassadors. The creative route that you take has to emotionally connect with the city and digital marketing and offline activities need to integrate a player with the fabric of the city, link him to the spirit of the city.

Given that you have a large and diverse list — from market leaders to start-ups — how do the focus and brand strategies change?

The strategy has to be both creative and effective — it should achieve the business goal. We have helped scale up some very small start-ups that started from scratch to large VC funded businesses. We had an advantage that we started as a digital first agency and had a great deal of data to work with. This is helping as we move towards becoming a full-service agency offering integrated solutions.

The  transformation that you spoke of is happening elsewhere too where we see more players in the industry offering integrated solutions rather than specialised ones. Why is this re-bundling happening?

Yes, for the past four years we have seen this reversal because clients are expecting more holistic solutions from us. The digital ecosystem has matured in India. It is about “what is right for my brand” rather than going into compartmentalisation and to understand what is right for the brand, it is best to go to someone who has an understanding of the medium and the marketing. Some of our award winning campaigns such as Aami KKR where we changed the tagline of the brand by giving it a hyper local touch or Asian Paints’ “No place like home” were conceptualised when planning, creative and media heads sat together. The same is true with the choice of media itself. Gozoop has invested heavily in talent from mainline agencies. We try to understand the brand rather than giving them a platform and that’s why we are designing TVCs, outdoor, print and radio content just as well as we do digital and new age marketing.

What is the strategy moving forward? What are the new emerging areas you can venture into?

We are committed to the Indian market for what is now happening is forward integration where Gozoop enters as a consulting brand before being a marketing brand. So, we understand the business at the inception stage and help the clients with their business plans, even for large enterprise clients. It helps in long-term brand management before even marketing happens as it helps us understand the product and the business plans. And then we will also do the marketing for them, we are doing digital transformations for them. That is why I am very opposed to the word agency. We like calling ourselves partners and advisors. We like an equal seat from where we can influence business decisions and with our expertise, help it grow.  

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and even YouTube have been there for a while. It is now well established that over-the-top (OTT) media services are gaining ground. How much of a tweaking would the strategy need?

Digital is a fast moving ecosystem but for OTT platforms we cannot simply replicate what we do on other forums. New ways of advertising are coming as platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar or Sony Liv have gained some kind of unique reach to clients. Brand objectives have to be equally unique. For some brands, Amazon activity is important as that platform offers both content and a selling platform and it is a crucial part of our media plan to seek the right fit for the brand. Our approach is return on investment (RoI) driven. RoI is most important for both creative and media use. Digital data is important but the metric is such that there has to be a 80-20 mix of data and dil (heart) where data will be the crucial but you need to give audiences something new by predicting behaviour.