Festivals are about shared celebrations. This festive season however presents a special challenge of economic uncertainty where consumers are re-evaluating their relationships with categories. Consumer shopping this season may be about more considered choices that may impact spending. Brands can play a special role in igniting celebrations in this context. Discovery and inspiration, and reminding consumers of the emotions their favourite brands evoke, can unlock brand growth. To be discovered, brands need to be where consumers are and digital, particularly Facebook and Instagram, are platforms where India discovers joy and inspiration. The recent BCG study found that digital influence has risen to ~70% due to the ongoing pandemic and nearly 80% of Gen Z and millennials say that their festive shopping is influenced by Facebook and Instagram.
It’s no surprise therefore that industry experts recommend marketers leverage social for driving brand discovery this season. With discretionary spends decreasing and value-consciousness increasing, marketers need to nudge consumers and to enter the consumer’s consideration set, eventually helping consumers in their purchase decisions
In this light, industry experts from Facebook, Ogilvy and GroupM share critical insights about driving brand discovery, understanding evolving consumer media habits, and leveraging creative story-telling on digital.
Marketers are looking forward to turning the tide this festive season. How can they drive brand discovery and business growth in this season that is unique in many ways?
Sandeep Bhushan: With the drastic alteration in media consumption, this festive season offers opportunities for marketers to connect with consumers like never before. Consumers are discovering brands on social media, and businesses need to focus on solutions that are relevant for the new normal, such as hyper-localisation, creating virtual experiences, re-looking at the media-mix to build efficiency, and focusing on truly incremental business outcomes.
With the rise in digital, are there new creative strategies which marketers and creative teams need, to drive brand discovery?
Kunal Jeswani: The rise of mobile gives marketers and creative teams new ways to bring storytelling alive, making it more engaging and more effective. That is why we developed a Creative Playbook in partnership with Facebook - to help marketers leverage mobile marketing better. To tell better brand stories, to engage consumers better on the platforms on which they spend the most time, to drive commerce, and to build brand experiences. The devices and platforms on which consumers are consuming content are changing. The way we tell stories needs to change as well.
How should marketers leverage creative storytelling on digital, especially Facebook, to drive business outcomes in the festive season?
Sandeep Bhushan: In the age of reducing attention spans, advertisers need to tell compelling stories through short-form Thumbstoppers and leverage fast-growing formats like Instagram Stories and Interactive Ads. This season, brands should leverage influencers as authentic voices, across marketing tasks like new launches, brand-building, and driving purchase. Facebook and Instagram have become a natural home for partnerships between people, influencers, and brands to come to life. With continued social distancing, brands need to leverage new innovations like Augmented Reality to bring alive the in-store experience creatively and help consumers in their purchase decisions.
Are there new creative principles for marketers to connect with consumers in this digitally-influenced festive season?
Kunal Jeswani: We approach all mobile communication development with a few simple principles that make it easy to respond quickly and yet create work that is on brand, connects with the consumer and leverages the best the platforms have to offer. (1) Be true to the platform. This may seem like a throw away motherhood, but I’ve seen brands discard everything the brand stands for on digital in the name of being contextual or cool. Our desire, as an industry, to keep churning out bucketloads of social content means we often stray from the brand platform. Create less content but keep it on brand. (2) Engage relevant consumers. Again, this seems simple enough, but we often see work that is lazy and does not do enough to leverage the full targeting capabilities of each platform. (3) Leverage the device capabilities and the full suite of advertising assets available on the platforms. There are also 5 simple hacks. (1) Build a consistent visual language. (2) Keep the content short – just as long as you need to drive the story home. (3) Use the full mobile real estate available – think Square and Vertical formats for social. (4) Make the creative interactive. Make sure your call to action is clear and your creative is designed to drive action. (5) Make your creative work in mute.
Do you see marketers adopting the digital creative best practices already, or do they face any challenges in adopting these practices?
Prem Narayan: Most marketers are extremely engaged with the new practices of storytelling on mobile phones. We often hear about the debate between brand building and short-term sales on digital platforms. Some of them believe that digital is predominantly for performance marketing. According to Les Binet & Peter Field's report on " Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era", there should be a healthy mix of about 60:40 between brand building and sales. While Facebook offers interesting formats, the creative idea is the most important. Huge proportion of what works on these platforms is a combination of brand and what they communicate. The common challenge for marketers is to tell the story in a short time, and we are seeing adoption of short-form Thumbstopper films in recent times.
Consumer media habits have evolved significantly due to the pandemic, with the acceleration of digital adoption being the most noticeable habit. Tell us your thoughts on how the brands should re-pivot their media strategies to drive discovery in this festive season?
Prasanth Kumar: Digital influence has increased significantly while the e-commerce adoption has accelerated by 2-3 years. There is massive growth in digital video and gaming. Digital is no more a support media platform but is central to the media plans. GroupM and Facebook partnered to develop the Media Playbook to help brands and businesses with efficient media strategies to drive business outcomes in the current times. The evolving consumer trends like the rise of the smart shopper who spends time on 2-3 channels before making the actual purchase, the acceleration of e-commerce adoption, and bringing outside inside because of continued social distancing norms, have a strong influence on the new media principles
What’s top-of-mind for marketers/media teams as they craft their media strategies in the current times?
Sandeep Bhushan: Business outcomes and efficiency from media spends are top-of-mind for marketers in recent times. It’s proven by the MMM analysis conducted by Nielsen, done across 53 brands and 14 categories that digital is highly efficient, delivering higher ROI ~1.5x, and Facebook delivers an ROI of ~1.9x as compared to traditional media. Marketers and media teams have access to all the tools to drive business outcomes efficiently. They should embrace the full spectrum of consumer segmentation, master performance marketing, and optimise the media-mix to drive ROIs.
What are the key principles that are outlined in the Media Playbook, which can help marketers drive brand discovery leading to business outcomes in this season?
Prasanth Kumar: The four key pillars are 1) Segmentation, which needs to evolve from ‘broad-narrow’ definition to ‘segmentation to drive business outcomes’ by leveraging the data 2) Performance marketing - Traditional brands are now evolving from just ‘top-funnel’ to ‘full-funnel’ marketing by activating D2C channels. 3) Innovation: Leverage innovation tools like AR tools to simulate ‘touch-and-feel’ experience and drive purchases 4) Media Mix: Leverage digital to optimise media mix and drive business outcomes.
In the post-COVID world, e-commerce adoption has accelerated significantly. How should traditional CPG brands leverage this trend and win with ecommerce in this season?
Tushar Vyas: Marketers should simplify purchase journeys and collapse the funnel by leveraging the right digital tools. Digital offers an opportunity to hand-hold consumers across the purchase funnel. The brand building and performance marketing should not be operated in silos. Facebook offers strong brand-building solutions through video products, and also performance specific commerce solutions like Instagram Shopping ads. Conversational marketing solutions are driven by Messenger, and digital CRM tools can prove to be very effective to engage the consumer and close the purchase cycle
Marketers are optimistic about the festive season lifting the spirits of consumers and bringing back the business growth. What is one key media principle which you recommend to marketers?
Tushar Vyas: The key principle is to optimise the media mix for business outcomes. Marketers should look at the brand and business outcomes and not just intermediate metrics. They should leverage robust measurement models like Media Mix Modelling, to optimise the media monies and deploy marketing spends on the channels offering high-ROI
____________________________________________________________
Discovery through Influencer campaigns:
For new launches in this season, brands can leverage social media influencers to create a buzz. The Hyundai Aura launch campaign leveraged influencers, using Branded Content Ads on Facebook and Instagram, and delivered a +3.7-point increase in brand favourability.
Discovery through Video:
To build consumer engagement this festive season, brands should consider creating social videos to engage with relevant consumer segments and drive brand and business outcomes. Aashirvaad Atta ran a campaign leveraging Facebook’s In-stream ad product. The campaign encouraged consumers to participate in a contest, and delivered a 16-point lift in ad recall.
Discovery through local language content:
For building brand equity and driving consumer resonance, brands can use the targeting capabilities of Facebook to run campaigns in local languages. Cadbury 5 Star launched the 'Do Nothing' campaign with multiple Indian language ads, delivering an average of a +3-point ad recall in key markets.
_____________________________________________________
Quotes:
Kunal Jeswani “Mobile storytelling is a unique opportunity. There is so much you can do. Script to grab attention in the feed. Use the full vertical mobile real estate. Leverage everything the platforms offer you – create custom cuts of your communication for different consumer segments, drive interactivity, and ease the path to purchase. Activate the community”
Prem Narayan “In this festive season, brands that leverage digital to build fame and emotional affinity are likely to gain more than those that just use it as performance marketing, bottom of the funnel medium. It is not an either or. Today each platform has its own 'culture'. Brands that understand consumer and culture within each digital platform and build creative ideas specific to it will gain. Ultimately powerful creative ideas, will be the difference”
Prashanth Kumar “Digital influence has increased significantly. This season, marketers can leverage digital to drive brand discovery among relevant consumer segments, drive performance marketing and ride the e-commerce wave, and build new age innovations to engage with consumers''
Tushar Vyas “Marketers should look at the brand and business outcomes and not just intermediate metrics. They should leverage robust measurement models like Media Mix Modelling, to optimise the media monies and deploy marketing spends on the channels offering high-ROI”
____________________________________________________________
To download the creative and media playbooks, visit
https://www.facebook.com/business/news/festive-insights
__________________________________________________________
Sources:
1. YouGov Study 2019
2. Consumer journey survey by Kantar profiles (Online survey across 2019, 2020)
3. Turn The Tide reports by Facebook and BCG (Automobile, CPG, Insurance, Mobile, Apparel reports)
4. Commissioned Nielsen MMM meta-analysis, 2014-2019. Base: A list of studies compiled by Nielsen. This list includes studies across 53 India Brands across the Total CPG category. Efficiency is Retail ROI, defined as total incremental sales divided by total media spend. The ROI numbers in the claim are spend-weighted averages across all studies for each channel