MxMIndia

Category: Digital

  • The ad illustrates how their business can grow from local to national by selling on the platform

    ShopClues unveils ad directed towards merchants

    By A Correspondent

     

    ShopClues has unveiled its new TV ad campaign, targetted at merchants across the nation. Conceptualised and created by Enormous Brands, Mumbai, the TVC aptly highlights the benefits of selling on the platform with its high reach and immense popularity. It makes a robust call-to-action and encourages local merchants to become national-level sellers by signing up on the site.

     

    Radhika Aggarwal, Co-Founder and Chief Business officer at ShopClues.com said, “Our new TV merchant ad campaign aims at bringing new sellers on board, on a journey of mutual growth at a stellar pace. India is a land of traders with innumerable small businesses across the country with wide variety of great products. They are however, rarely able to expand beyond their immediate geographical area because of the high distribution costs and other impediments. With this campaign, we aim to show them how they can achieve the pride of being national sellers and also help them discover the ease of selling online.”

     

    “Shopclues has a reach that cuts across geographies and across socio economic profiles. With crores of people shopping at the platform every month, it is the best way for a manufacturer or trader of quality goods to in an instant expand his footprint of operations. Shopclues with its easy registrations also makes it simple for people to access this vast set of consumers. The commercial highlights the fact that a particular trader may not have a footprint that would go beyond his immediate vicinity. However with shopclues.com, the entire country is viably his playground.” said Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner at Enormous Brands.

     

    The ad film opens with a young boy breaking a lamp with his cricket bat, followed by a dog, a heavy breeze, an angry wife, a careless maid and several other regular occurrences causing lamps in different homes to shatter. The next shot focusses on a shopkeeper in a small town who ends up selling all his lamp shades within seconds. The Voice Over highlights how he has achieved this success: Dhanda khulke muskurayega jab woh shopclues.com pe aayega. (Your business will shine when it is listed on ShopClues). This is followed by appearances of several small traders on screen who witness quick turnarounds of their business. Eventually we find out that all of them are actually operating out of the ShopClues website and this is how they are so successful.

     

    The TVC is specifically in a mix of Hindi and English with a very light-hearted character to appeal to the local merchant. Its tone is direct and conversational to engage effectively with its target audience. The target group comprises smaller businessmen across geographies in India who are selling low-ticket items, unstructured product categories, regional products that are unique and highly sought-after and those who have scale of production but not adequate reach. The objective is to show them that ShopClues.com offers a hassle-free on-boarding process and will enable them to sell in the 25,000 cities it serves and to its over 50 million monthly visitors.

     

  • The firm is now focusing on driving growth and new acquisitions through mass media brand building activities

    MediaCom bags mydala media account

    By A Correspondent

     

    Close on the heels of winning SAB Miller from Starcom, MediaCom has won the mydala.com media business following a closely fought pitch against IPG’s Lodestar. mydala is the largest online and mobile coupon and discount marketing platform site in India, and is now focusing on driving growth and new acquisitions through mass media brand building activities.

     

    Commenting on the win, Anisha Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, mydala, said, “We are happy to announce this association. mydala is growing at a phenomenal pace and working with MediaCom will help in pushing the boundaries and reaching out to our customer base in innovative and creative ways.”

     

    Says Niti Kumar, General Manager, MediaCom Delhi, who led the pitch “Ecommerce is the buzziest category on media today, and working with a unique model like mydala will be a great learning experience for the team. We are super excited!”

     

     

     

  • PING Network and ONE Entertainment combine resources to offer interesting digital formats

    Ping Digital, One Network ink alliance

    By A Correspondent

     

    PING Digital Network has announced a strategic alliance with One Network Entertainment. As part of this alliance, PING Network & ONE are launching the first of its kind ‘The Creators Collective’ to provide creators everything to become successful publishers.

     

    ‘The Creators Collective’, is an initiative designed for creators to produce content, collaborate with other creators and more importantly learn the art to becoming a publisher. With regular workshops by experts, sessions by and for brands/advertisers and creators, this will become a vibrant content creation hub.ONE and PING now boast of about 10,000 sq ft of studio cum office space in the heart of Mumbai’s media district of Lower Parel with top-notch creative teams, state of the art equipment with live broadcast facilities, production facilities and edit suites along with all the resources that creators require to showcase their talent. Inpsired by the You Tube Spaces, The Creators Collective will enable Talent to hone their skils & collaborate with other talent to create break through content.

     

    Rajeshree Naik, Co-Founder & Director, PING Network, says “We are delighted to partner with ONE Network Entertainment to further strengthen our proposition of being a one-stop shop for the best digital video creators in India. This alliance is also a testimony of our own DNA as creators making us the preferred platform for the creator community. Through this partnership we also add the much sought after genre of comedy to our exisiting content making it more attractive for brands & advertisers. We now become a network of over 550 channels with close to 85million views a month bringing huge scale to the both creators & advertisers.”

     

    Abe Thomas, Co-Founder One Network, says “ONE Network with over 70 mn views and a distribution network across 20+ global video platforms, is very enthused with the synergies that we can jointly exploit with an MCN like PING Network. We believe that through this partnership we will be able to collaborate with brands/advertisers and provide them with opportunities to interact, collaborate with a wider range of creators.” Adds Suresh Menon, Co-founder One Network, “ We are a Talent First media company and believe that we will discover the new stars of tomorrow through ‘ The Creators Collective’.

     

  • Shine.com has also added an exclusive feature on its mobile app that lets jobseekers discover their personal networks

    Shine revamps mobile app with new features

    By A Correspondent

     

    With increasing role of mobile phones in the job search domain, Shine.com is targeting to become a ‘mobile-first’ company where the entire registration and job search process for a jobseeker can happen on a mobile phone. Apart from simplifying user flows on mobile, Shine.com has also added an exclusive feature on its mobile app that lets jobseekers discover their personal networks to find people in companies where they want a job.

     

    Commenting on this unique feature, Zairus Master, Business Head – Shine.com, said, “For us to give value to jobseekers and recruiters, we make innovative uses of technology that would take the industry ahead. Our research pointed us to a seminal study that says that your next career move is likely to come from people who are not our closest friends but are likely to connect you to professional circles that you don’t have access to. Building on this insight, we have added a new feature to our mobile app which let candidate discover their network to improve their job chances.”

     

    While talking about the idea behind the new campaign for this product, Rajan Bhalla, Group CMO, HT Media Limited, said, “With our focus on the mobile first approach, the key benefit which we wanted to highlight was that now jobs are available at your fingertips “Anytime & Anywhere”. This demanded the brief to be sharp enough to articulate benefit in the most clutter breaking and creative way. We have created a series of films where we have shown an innocent character, enacted by Javed Jaffrey, who always gets into funny and awkward situations which threatens to undo everything good that he has done in his job. In other words, ‘Uski Vaat Lag Jati Hai’ and at this opportune moment, Mr. M, the brand mascot, comes to his rescue to find his next job using the new Shine.com mobile app right then and there. We are launching this campaign across media – TV, online, print, radio, social media and outdoor – and looking forward to connect with large numbers of people among jobseekers and recruiters.”

     

     

  • Other than trends-watching, the 11th IAMAI Marketing Conclave saw a discussion on the changing role of the CMO in the digital era

    Getting set for the mobile as the first screen

    L to R: ​​Prashant Singh, MD, Nielsen, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network ( South Asia), Tushar Vyas, Chief Strategy Officer – South Asia, GroupM, Ravi Dixit, Head – Market Insights, Google and Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India.​

     

    By Dyanne Coelho

     

    The eleventh edition of the Marketing Conclave organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) saw industry stalwarts from across platforms highlight key trends in the marketing world from the digital evolution, the changing role of the CMO, cross-platform marketing and the dawn of the mobile as the ‘first’ screen.

     

    Day One kickstarted with a keynote address by Tushar Vyas, Chief Strategy Officer, South Asia, GroupM. “Today’s consumer doesn’t believe in the values of yesterday,” he began talking about how the mobile has taken over the internet and created a complexity in advertising.Rajesh Jain, Founder and Managing Director, netCORE Solutions emphasised that the trend of tracking consumer behaviour has grown mainly in the digital era. There is little or no data tracked in an offline world, like what a consumer goes and picks up in a grocery store, he said. “We ought to start thinking customer journeys,” Jain added. CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM South Asia delved into the challenges of marketing in the digital age.“There’s so much talk about digital, we forget that at the end of the day we’re in an ideas business,” he said, talking about how at times we get so overwhelmed with data that we lose focus of our core competency. “We ought to be able to change mindsets, not just technologies,” Srinivas added.

     

    A panel discussion on the expanding roles of the CMO highlighted a study which said that by 2020, the CMO will be spending more on IT than the CIO. The speed at which the CMO needs to react is increasing, the panelists discussed.The argument of whether digital is being effectively integrated with other marketing media, or is just an extension, was the next hot topic of discussion. The panelists concluded that though the digital medium has taken the marketing world by storm, at the end of the day, it all boils down to how well you know and recognise your consumer and give them what they want, when they want it. The final session for Day One discussed whether we are ready for the transition from ‘mobile first’ to a ‘mobile only’ era. High value products like airplane tickets and high value electronic devices are likely to be purchased on the desktop rather than the mobile phone, the panelists discussed. Anurag Singh, Co-founder and ED – India (Ads Platform), Affle concluded by saying that there is no wrong and right, you have to decide what’s best for your consumer depending on what your product and service is.

     

    Day Two saw industry captains like Kirthiga Reddy, MD Facebook, Satyan Gajwani, CEO Times Internet, Ashish Sahni, Head Digital Marketing Tata Motors, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network, Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC, among others. The bias of the internet towards the English language was discussed in depth, with panelists arguing that an increasing number of regional languages, especially Hindi are picking up and the internet needs to adapt, lest consumers feel choked by the pressure of being force fed English language content online. With availability of cheaper smartphones and accessibility to internet, vernacular content is going to drive growth in digital marketing. Gyan Gupta, COO, DB Digital said, “Hindi as a language is witnessing 40 percent penetration in the online space. With non-metros witnessing steady growth in internet penetration, the vernacular language is certainly the flavor of the day.”

     

    Ways and means of tracking consumer behaviour without being ‘creepy’ was the key point of discussion in the session entitled ‘Digital Footprints’ Data and Automation in Marketing: The modern marketers’ success mantra.’ How much is too much, was much talked about in the context of following consumer footprints in the digital space.

     

    “The first thing advertisers ought to do if they want to undertake programmatic marketing is allocate 25 percent of the total marketing budget to it,” Reem Saied, Business Head, Cadreon India said while discussing ways and means of optimizing marketing efforts for an enhanced performance. The quality of talent that marketers need to hire have changed, Apurva Chamaria, AVP and Head of Global Brand and Digital Marketing, HCL Technologies said. “We now hire statisticians, technology experts and bring them into the marketing team. The pool we hire from has changed,” he explained.

     

    “This is the age of technology where you can get hold of a specialised doctor on an app,” Rathin Lahiri, CMO, Meru Cabs said speaking at the session titled ‘Simplifying the Mobile Marketing Ecosystem’. The panelists discussed the advent of the digital evolution especially in the mobile space. Madan Mohapatra, Head Customer Strategy, Future Group, said, “If we are to look at the global advertising market, the industry around US $600 billion, with mobile advertising pegged at around US $100 billion. In India, mobile advertising is a fraction of global spends. The time has is ripe to increase mobile ad spend as growing captive consumers are found mobile.”The mobile screen has forced the marketing ecosystem to evolve. “Digital is not something you can ignore. If you don’t speak for yourself, your consumers will take you down,” Akshay Sharma, Head – Marketing, Eros Digital exclaimed.

     

    Kirthiga Reddy, Managing Director, Facebook India, highlighted how Facebook is attempting to innovate. “We are constantly and consistently integrating virtual reality. Innovations on the creative side of the real estate industry has provided enormous boost to virtual reality concept.” Talking about Digital Marketing, Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet, said, “Technology allows the platform of digital advertising to enhance and create advertisements targeted at certain consumers. Hence we are seeing the growth of native advertisement, which tears through the clutter.

     

    Having an absolute, standard method for measurement of the attributes of all digital platforms is the need of the hour the panelists discussed at the session entitled ‘Establishing a common digital standard’. “Cross media measurement has been talked about for a while. We keep measuring the media, we forget to measure the consumer,” Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network (South Asia) stressed. India is still far behind in trying to understand the consumers’ buying behavior, Prashant Singh, Managing Director; Nielsen said adding that the next step is for BARC to look at digital. BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta said it may not be correct keep citing examples of progress of digital in the US and the UK because “they may not be the best one can have”. “95 per cent of videos are still consumed on television sets in the UK,” he added.

     

    Thoughts, ideas, statistics and case studies made the two-day conclave an insightful and informative event. The programme brought together some of the brightest minds in the marketing fraternity together on one platform and thus enabled an educative exchange of thoughts and ideas to light the path forward for marketing in India.

     

  • Interesting data thrown by the Facebook & Times Internet CEOs at the 11th IAMAI marketing conclave

    Fear of Being Offline & other digi-facts

     

    By Dyanne Coelho

     

    The first Indian Facebook employee, Kirthiga Reddy, now Managing Director, Facebook India left quite an impression on the audience with her talk entitled ‘Winning in a mobile first world’ at the 11th Marketing Conclave organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). FOBO or the Fear of Being Offline is a new term that is picking up in this day and age, she said. On Mother’s Day, India had the second highest ranking in terms of interactions with 1.8 billion interactions on the network. The older generation did exactly the same things we do, she explained, the only difference is that they did it in a different way.

     

    63 percent of young people would prefer to give up TV rather than their phone, she said of a study. 62 percent of young people feel lost if they are not connected to social media. An IAMAI-BCG report estimates that by 2020, a whopping 500 million people will be connected to the internet. Back in the day, your kirana shop owner knew exactly what you needed when you walked into his store. That personalisation is missing today with the advent of the mass media, Reddy explained.

     

    Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet, backed her up saying, “Technology allows the platform of digital advertising to enhance and create advertisements targeted at certain consumers. Hence we are seeing the growth of native advertisement, which breaks clutter and stops disruptive ads.”

     

    “Facebook is constantly and consistently integrating virtual reality. Innovations on the creative side of the real estate industry has provided enormous boost to virtual reality concept. Brands are focusing on reaching out to consumers in a personalised and creative manner. And the digital platform provides the best solution,” Reddy said. Out of 1.44 billion people who are on Facebook, 1.2 billion connect to it on a mobile device; she informed highlighting the genesis of a mobile-first world. There is also a growing trend of visual communication, Reddy added. First it started with text, then photos and now the world of video is expanding. Reddy cited the example of Facebook’s feature that allows a user to watch videos without sound on the mobile phone. The feature that is one of the latest, plays a video without sound as the user scrolls through his newsfeed. This will allow users to watch videos on their phones even during a seminar or meeting at work, she joked. Marketers ought to strive to drive awareness and retarget their audience, she said. The ‘cookie’ the dominant web metric used to track customer behaviour online will soon be ditched as it doesn’t correctly evaluate business results, she explained. This is the mobile first world and if we don’t adapt, we will be left far behind, she said.

     

    There are 150 million smartphones users today, and that number is expected to go up to 500 million by 2018. Digital is the new advertising paradigm, Gajwani explained. The internet is driven by smartphones and the amount of digital content being created is skyrocketing. “The 300×250 size banner doesn’t have the same impact today, spots don’t have the same impact either,” Gajwani said. Smart and targeted advertising and marketing with precise solutions is what will drive the numbers, he added. We ought to be enablers and educators of what’s working and what is not. “The opportunity to get creative is here and is bigger than ever before,” he concluded.

     

  • awards recognize outstanding work, in advertising and marketing communications in the digital space

    iProspect Communicate wins 4 Metals at IDMA 2015

    By A Correspondent

     

    iProspect Communicate 2 from the Dentsu Aegis Network has won four awards across three categories at the India Digital Media Awards 2015. These awards recognize outstanding work, in advertising and marketing communications in the digital space.

     

    The honours included two metals in the ‘Best PPC’ category, with the agency picking up Gold and Silver for their Kotak Mahindra Bank and HDFC Life campaigns respectively. They also won a Bronze for the ‘Most Effective Use of Digital Analytics’ in Social Media for the Big Bazaar campaign. As well as a Bronze for ‘Best Use of Technology’ for Koovs.

     

    The objective of the Indian Digital Media Awards 2015 is to recognize, celebrate and encourage the work being done in the ever-growing advertising and marketing communications activity in the digital media space specifically, internet, mobile, gaming, social media and the blogosphere.

     

    Vivek Bhargava

    Vivek Bhargava CEO of iProspect Communicate 2 commented, “It is a privilege to have our work in the digital space recognised by IDMA. As a team of extremely dedicated professionals who work endlessly, to offer our clients the best online solutions, it is wonderful to have our hard work recognised and I would like to thank IDMA for these honours.”

     

  • Letsgomo Labs provides end to end mobility solutions to businesses that are looking to harness the power of mobile

    Snapdeal acquires Letsgomo

    By A Correspondent

     

    In a move to further strengthen its leadership in the m-commerce domain, Snapdeal has announced that it has acquired Letsgomo Labs, a mobility solutions company.

     

    Letsgomo Labs provides end to end mobility solutions to businesses that are looking to harness the power of mobile. Founded by Manav Kamboj and Vikas Banga, the 76 member team with expertise across mobile technologies, design and strategy; consults businesses right from building mobile strategies to conceptualization of applications and mobile sites to implementation and hosting. The company also works with leading e-commerce companies to help them strengthen their mobile capabilities.

     

    With the acquisition, Letsgomo team, now a part of Snapdeal family will focus on further strengthening the organisation’s mobile technology capabilities. Mobile is one of the key growth drivers of e-commerce in the country and building a robust mobile commerce platform has been a key focus area for Snapdeal. With the acquisition of Freecharge in April 2015, Snapdeal has become the largest m-commerce company in the country. Already, 75 per cent of the orders on Snapdeal come via mobile based transactions. The recent acquisition of Martmobi – a mobile technology start up, was also a step towards further strengthening Snapdeal’s mobile platform.

     

    Rohit Bansal

    Speaking about this, Rohit Bansal, Co-Founder, Snapdeal said, “Mobile is one of our key focus areas and in a span of just 2 years, the medium has proved to be one of the biggest growth drivers for the company. Delivering a great user experience across varying data connections and numerous handsets being used in the country is the guiding principle for our mobile initiatives. Over 75% of our sales now come through mobile platforms and Letsgomo team becoming a part of our family will further propel our efforts in this direction.”

     

    Manav Kamboj, Co-Founder, Letsgomo said, “Snapdeal is focused on building strong mobile capabilities and we are truly excited to be a part of the Snapdeal family. We strongly believe that new age technology innovations will happen here. Mobile will continue to drive e-commerce in the country and how companies utilize this platform will be a key success determinant. We look forward to building world class mobile technology at Snapdeal and set new benchmarks for the industry in this space.”

     

  • The mobile app is currently available on android and iOS platforms

    ASCI launches mobile app to curb misleading advertisements

    By A Correspondent

     

    Continuing with the mission to address misleading advertisements, Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) has launched India’s first consumer complaint mobile app – ASCIonline, to provide consumer complaint services on a mobile app besides providing the facility online. The mobile app is currently available on android and iOS platforms.

     

    Speaking on the occasion, Narendra Ambwani, ASCI Chairman added, “One of the goals of ASCI is to provide convenient access for lodging complaint and hence this launch of mobile app. Today mobiles devices are more widely used compared to desktops. With growing use of smart phones consumers want apps to put power of doing transactions in their pocket. ASCIonline Mobile App is consumer friendly and can be freely downloaded. It will be very useful as one can track the status of the complaints which he or she registered on our portal with the help of the App.”

     

     

  • The TVC has been launched on popular social platform YouTube. It will be followed by a high decibel promotional drive on TV and social media as well

    With YouTube Offline, ‘buffering’ will no longer be a suffering

    By A Correspondent

     

    In it’s endeavor to improve user experience, YouTube has announced the launch of ‘YouTube Offline’ feature on their mobile app. This new feature allows users to offline their favorite videos on YouTube mobile app and enjoy their favorite videos, whenever they like, on the go without having to worry about poor data connection or data cost and enjoy a buffering free life.

     

    Buffering can actually ruin the whole experience for an online video watcher as it drives the fun out of watching videos. This was the starting point of the campaign conceived by Lowe Lintas Delhi.

     

    Commenting on the campaign, Sandeep Menon – Director, Marketing, Google India said, “Indians love watching videos online, and YouTube is the go-to destination for any video content online in India. We wanted to offer our users a great new way to enjoy their favorite content without having to worry about poor data connections and high cost of data. That’s where YouTube Offline feature plays an integral role and allows users to access content at their own pace. We are excited with the way our new film has turned out and hope that the audiences’ will relate to the common issue we all face on our mobile phones and embrace the offline way to enjoy YouTube.

     

    The TVC is a quirky take on buffering and how it can get people to react in a strange manner while they wait for their videos to download. The reaction from people across the country was captured in the communication, just to re-emphasize how buffering can drive the fun out of you and get you to do strange things.

     

    Commenting on the creative thought process, Shriram Iyer, Executive Director, Lowe Lintas commented, “YouTube, with its Offline feature, has made the experience even richer. Watching videos online comes with a glitch called ‘buffering’. The stalling of a video spoils the experience. The idea really stems from there‎. Our team explored the idea of visually exploring the ‘buffering’ graphic, in a symbolic manner. Human heads rolling in circles, in a way, aping the buffering sign going round and round, was our comic tribute to the problem all of us face every day while watching videos online. The commercial takes a potshot at the problem and then presents YouTube Offline as the solution to this daily grievance.”

     

    The TVC has been launched on popular social platform YouTube. It will be followed by a high decibel promotional drive on TV and social media as well.

     

  • The report also finds that the top 4 Metros continue to account for almost half of the Social Media users in Urban India

    Rural India outperforms Urban India in Social Media Usage

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    Usage of Social Media in Rural India has grown by an impressive 100 percent during the last one year with 25 million users being recorded in rural India. On the other hand, Urban India registered a relatively lower growth of 35 percent with the total number of users at 118 million as on April 2015. According to the Social Media in India 2014 report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India [IAMAI] and IMRB International, there are 143 million social media users in India as on April 2015.

     

    The report also finds that the top 4 Metros continue to account for almost half of the Social Media users in Urban India.

     

    According to the latest report, the largest segment accessing Social Media consists of the College Going Students with 34 per cent followed by Young Men at 27 per cent School going children constitute 12 per cent of the social media users. College Going Students and Young Men still form the 60 per cent of the Social Media users in Urban India.

     

     

    The report further finds that 61 per cent of these users access Social Media on their mobile device. The fact that almost two thirds of the users are already accessing social media through their mobile is a promising sign. With the expected increase in mobile traffic the number of users accessing social media on mobile is only bound to increase.

     

     

    According to the report, maintaining a profile on social networking sites are a top activity of users followed by updating status.  Commenting on a blog site is the third most popular activity among users in social networking sites.

     

  • The Mob will be India's first 'mobile first' agency and will be HQ-ed out of Gurgaon

    The Mob takes charge

    By A Correspondent

     

    Chraneeta Mann, till recently National Creative Director of Rediffusion Y&R, and Nitin Suri, former National Creative Director of Dentsu and till recently Partner at FHO (From Here On) have come together to form The Mob.

     

    The Mob will be India’s first ‘mobile first’ agency and will be HQ-ed out of Gurgaon.

     

    “More and more communication is being consumed through the increasing plethora of devices available at our fingertips, allowing a convergence of brandspeak, digital and interactive communication on what we call the ‘personal screen’ – our window to the way the world lives, buys, chats, works/networks and entertains itself today. The nuance of the mobile is very interactivity driven and weaving exceptional design and ease of interaction into the UI is essential today. We see a big opportunity in crafting content particularly for this space and hope to lead the way in creating mobile solutions that enhance the relevance and impact of mainline communication,” says Chraneeta Mann.

     

    The Mob has already started work on a couple of brands including some initial work with Yes Bank. A corporate identity project is also being done for Sandeep Goyal owned Tango Media. A team of 16 is already on board. “Yes, business is good. We should be signing on at least one larger client next week,” added Suri.