Need of the hour: Nimble Marketing Communications
Marketing Communication is the cornerstone of marketing mix while pursuing any marketing strategy. Several traditional channels of communication proved to be guiding principles for devising new communication with the advent of technology. Technology has provided mass communication tools that leverage the personal selling technique. It has become imperative to be relevant in terms of consumer’s needs and preferences. Hence, agility in marketing communications becomes a pressing need. The recent trends, especially Internet marketing, are adaptations to contemporary marketing regimes. The enormous reach of social media has brought Digital marketing to the forefront.
Social media is the space where there are no regulations or bounds in terms of geography which is why it creates enormous content and its users react to almost each of the incidents. Therefore, Meme Marketing has been a hit amongst millennial customers who spends over 200 minutes online every day.
In the Netflix era, entertainment audience has become ad-averse. This has challenged the existing models of Social Media Marketing, where users hate to see highly commercialized brand’s advertisement in their feed while enjoying their leisure time. Consequently, advertisers have gone about this by piggybacking the meme culture. There have been enough creative memes that communicate the value proposition in a terse and sharp manner.
Pidilite Industries Ltd made the best use of gung-ho around Prince Harry stepping back from Royal Family, to promote their brand Fevicol. Pidilite took a dig at Royal Family saying “Kohinoor nahi, Fevicol le jaana chahiye tha”. Though the meme looks pretty crisp and pointed, it managed to communicate the value proposition by resonating with India’s cultural dispute of ownership of Kohinoor diamond. The Product Integration was well curated with the meme as the break away from the Royal family was first of its kind, and proliferated over social media for several days. Thus, Pidilite tried to convey its brand’s benefit of strong adhesive which can stick anything but families. Pidilite being an Indian conservative company must have struck the chord with likeminded individuals and thus improved the brand recall.
There are many other examples of firms using Meme Marketing very aggressively. Netflix, Skore India, Kitkat, etc have been latching onto mainstream memes each day to stay relevant on social media. This space has been growing organically and professionals firms like Youngun India have already forayed into meme’s marketing.
Few services businesses have been entirely relying upon digital marketing. There are new trends in Digital marketing shaping up each day due to its best ROI model vis-à-vis other communication channels. One more example to uphold the Digital trend can be India’s largest services marketplace UrbanClap.
UrbanClap, a mobile marketplace for hyperlocal services, was founded in 2014 with the unique value proposition of hiring professionals from highly unorganized service markets of Indian cities. Also, it could curate the service categories well to implement the model of price discrimination. UC has recently launched international operations after a huge imminent success in India owing to its perfectly pointed marketing campaign. It divided the target market into segments such as students, working professionals who are aged between 18-45 years and are looking for exceptional customer experience. Since the target customer base was educated class and social media users, digital marketing was aptly chosen as the communication channel. They could easily see the customer’s journey and answer questions like: How customers found them for the first time? How many times does he repeat the service? What services are hard to scout for? This kind of customer survey would not have been possible in any other traditional communication channel in this little time. Another benefit came from seasonal marketing wherein it could quickly latch onto seasonal offers. It could plug and unplug the advertisements during the festival seasons to maximize the ROI opposite to sticky billboards and print media adverts.
Moreover, commanding consumer’s attention is becoming increasingly challenging on the face technology, though they seem to be working in symbiosis from a distance. Traditional information-loaded video clips fare poorly for grabbing attention. Emotional Branding has come to the fore bigger and better in the world of ad-blockers. Consumers are ready to forego their screen time for any emotionally intriguing advertisements.
The classic example can be taken of tearjerker Thai Life Insurance TVC. The advertisement titled “Unsung Hero” reduced the audience to tears and became the 9th most shared video in the world. The advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok tells the advertisement delivered the core value of the brand ‘Value of Life’
The emotional branding holds the audience captive and implants the message significantly deeper into the minds. Though, there has been a constant criticism of brands using emotional branding as part of their marketing communication. Few have tagged the Thai Life Insurance commercial in the debate of communism saying crony capitalism can’t sell itself alone.
Reflection: In this ever dynamic world of volatilities, uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities, Marketing Communications have to adopt the design thinking to be relevant and to solve the toughest marketing challenges.