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One hears a lot of digital speak from companies today. Are they really utilising the platform well?
It varies from company to company. In our case, globally and in India, we use digital mainly for three purposes -- to drive further passion, excitement and fizz, and advocacy for our brand.
Everything we are doing around the Indian Premier League (cricket tournament) is an example.
That then leads to being able to drive the brand health and up the purchase intent.
An example would be the work the Pepsi India team did two years back, around the cricket World Cup. They not only created the campaign but also measured its effectiveness.
The third reason why we are doing everything digitally is to drive sales.
In some countries, it has gotten fairly simple to understand the offline sales impact of an online campaign.
In a country like India, it is a lot harder, since a lot is still unstructured here.
How do you measure the impact of digital campaigns?
There are a few ways in which we do it, varying across countries, depending on the capabilities.
The easiest way is to use the large-scale loyalty programmes of modern trade chains like Tesco, Kroger and Marks & Spencer, where they are present in countries like the US and UK.
One can directly match the loyalty data with the campaign’s participation data and understand how the purchase behaviour has altered, post the digital campaign.
In countries like India, in the absence of such loyalty programmes, the best option is to do the A to B testing.
Let’s say we have done absolutely no marketing in Jodhpur but run a digital campaign in Delhi.
We compare the sales data for the two cities following the campaign, to get a view on its efficacy.
This will be at least directional, if not statistically accurate.
Digital media is known for its ability to give brands a shot at a two-way communication. Are you listening in to your consumers?
Absolutely! We do a lot of social listening, as everything we do begins with the consumer.
We deploy a lot of tools for the purpose. Some are publicly available.
A small example of insights that social listening can provide: We were running some ad spots during the Golden Globe Awards in the US and watching in real-time how our consumers were responding to the advertising by tracking Twitter and the blogs. We saw whether they liked it or did not like it and what were the messages coming out of it.
What is interesting is that we could also see when the consumers began getting tired of the advertising. Historically, there has been no way of knowing in real-time how many times one can run an ad till fatigue sets in.
With regard to digital campaigns, such real-time insights can be factored in almost instantaneously.
Sometime back, we were advertising during a baseball match in the US. While the game was on, a famous music artist launched an album and we could see all the conversations in social media shift to that subject immediately. We quickly moved our advertisements to that event to capture the frenzy.
Can there be a truly scalable global idea for digital? Or does it need to stay regional or local in its approach?
I think there can surely be a scalable global idea for digital. The thing about platforms like YouTube and Facebook is that our feeds are far more global than we give them credit.
And, great ideas spread across cultures and languages. Last week, we launched a campaign with singer Beyonce on a global scale. We’d established a creative partnership with her, to create a truly global moment to be launched at an appointed time.
In the days leading up to it, her team just teased viewers and readers, saying she’ll be making an announcement on the said date at the said time.
That set off frenzied speculation. And, when we finally unveiled our campaign, a music video recorded by her for us, we were trending globally almost instantaneously. Just 35 per cent of the conversations and impressions about Pepsi and Beyonce were from the US. The rest came from other countries, making it a truly global campaign.
Do digital campaigns always need to be created around big moments in bursts? How do you engage with the consumer on a more daily basis?
As time passes by, engaging with the consumer on a more regular basis is going to become more important than the big moments. We speak to our loyalists on a regular basis, 365 days of the year.
We send our consumers around the world thousands and thousands of pieces of content through the year.
These everyday surprises and delightful messages embody our brand. The smaller messages are, in fact, some of the most powerful ones.
