With a degree in Economics from Westminster College, Columbia, Chris Weil is the Chairman and CEO, Momentum Worldwide and believes that experience creates the connections that lead to loyalty, advocacy and sales. He leads Momentum in imagining and creating those memorable moments for brands, as the Total Brand Experience. Weil believes that what a brand does is more important than what it says and that these days people demand more from brands than just products or service – people need these relationships to have meaning.  We present to you the ‘BTL Baatein’ of the week which is powered by VISCOMM with Santosh Jangid speaking to Chris Weil about Below The Line (BTL) advertising and the balance between ATL (Above The Line) and BTL
How important is BTL to the overall marketing plan of a brand?
Just the term BTL to me is really antiquated and does not make sense from a consumer perspective. First, you have to look at what BTL stands for. It is an accounted term. It was Below-The-Line what was not commissionable back in the day when agencies were commissioned. Secondly, the consumer does not distinguish between Above-The-Line or Below-The-Line or Through-The-Line or online or offline. The consumer looks at a brand in totality. What is the total brand experience that I have with a brand is what dictates my love, loyalty, warmth or coldness towards a brand and whether or not I am going to recommend it. If we talk about all the touch-points that I as a consumer have with a brand and one of those could be television which is a tactic, one of those could be experiential, one of those could be print, or online. It doesn’t matter but all of them together is what adds up to what a brand is.
Can you also specify the range of activities that you undertake as part of the below-the-line advertising and promotion for your clients?
We are blessed that we work with some of the best brands in the world. Brands like American Express, Coca-Cola, SAP, Verizon wireless in the United States, Microsoft on a global basis, Procter & Gamble, etc are our clients. The ones that really get it are the ones that understand that experiential marketing is at the core of any brand. Outside of the core product or service that a company has, the experience is the most important thing. We try to look at what is the customer’s overall experience and what is the customer’s total brand experience for our clients.
In terms of generating results especially from consumers and in B2B, do you find BTL a more sure shotavenue than ATL?
I don’t think you can look at ATL or BTL but you have to look at the total brand experience for a customer because each one of them ads up to what is the important factor of creating brand love and driving sales and you cannot segment  them and say, this is what we are doing Below-The-Line and this is what we are doing Above-The-Line because there is no line in the consumer’s mind. It’s not you as a consumer say, that’s my online experience with the brand but my physical experience with the brand is different or this is my Above-The-Line television experience but if I get a Below-The-Line it’s different. It is all the same. So we as marketers have to look at things that way.
There are many organisations that often do new launches almost entirely on BTL aided with an outdoor and/or digital blitz? Your views on this.
For every brand, it is going to be different so there is no set formula. Let’s take two different brands of soft drinks for example – Coca-Cola and Red bull. Coca-Cola grew up in the age of modern media and it helped define them in a lot of ways through their iconic classic television advertisements not just in the US but around the world. Red Bull, on the other hand. up until recently had not done any television commercial. They built the entire brand around experiences. Every bit of that brand was built on experiences. They are two very different brands in the consumer’s head. So, is one better than the other, I don’t know about that but they are just two very different approaches but they also grew up in different time. Red Bull had the ability to utilise the extensions of new media.
Given rising media costs, do you see BTL managing on its own, without ATL?
There is definitely a change in the media environment going on right now and where that dollars flow we will be the interesting part of the business. When we get past looking at things such as, this is the cost of my experience or that is the cost of a television ad but instead look at is as this is how I reach X number of consumers, that’s when we will see the expansion and as we look at it, it is paid, owned and  earned. What is it that we do that can earn media as opposed to just go out there and paying for it and owned is what you have inside your organisation. One of the biggest expansion that we will see in the coming years is around earned media. It doesn’t matter what a brand says, it’s what a brand does that matters.