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Tag: Deepali Naair

  • A successful campaign is not necessarily one which is present across all platforms and vehicles and is seen everywhere, Deepali Naair, Chief Marketing Officer, Mahindra Holidays

    BTL Baatein: Deepali Naair, Mahindra Holidays… Powered by VISCOMM

    Deepali Naair began her career in 1993 as Senior Officer at Tata Motors, following which she was Marketing Manager at BPL Mobile Communications. She has worked as Group Head – Account Planning at FCB Ulka, Marketing Manager at Marico and was a consultant with the EMM Group. After this she held the post of VP and Head of Marketing at HSBC Global Asset Management. Prior to joining Mahindra Holidays, Deepali was the Country Head – Brand, Customer Service and E-Commerce at L&T General Insurance. In October 2013, she joined Mahindra Holidays as Chief Marketing Officer. She also leads the Digital Marketing Training for the Mahindra group as a member of the Group Mahindra Sales & Marketing Academy. In 2015 Deepali was awarded the ‘Content Marketer of the Year’ award by DMAi for designing unique digital content to promote Club Mahindra. In 2014,www.socialsamosa.com listed Deepali as one of the top 8 futuristic brand heads in India. In 2013, Deepali received the ‘Leading Woman in Insurance’ Award and also “50 Most Talented Brand Leaders of India”. In her spare time she teaches at S P Jain Institute of Management and Research and is also a very keen social media influencer. In this edition of BTL Baatein, Deepali Naair in an interaction with Dyanne Coelho spells out the importance of BTL activations in the consumer goods and services space and explains how Mahindra Holidays keeps up-to-date.

     

    Are there any specific products or services for which BTL activations are used at Mahindra Holidays?

    We do a lot of activation programmes to engage with our members on a one-on-one basis. These are an integral part of our marketing mix.Some of the campaigns we have undertaken in the last financial year are –

     

    1. The Suitcase campaign

    We ran a special campaign where a locked suitcase was sent to 150 of our Mumbai-based customers that had booked a holiday with us using a gift voucher (GV) in the last one year. In order to unlock the suitcase, they had to invite our sales executive home for a product presentation. This activity was a great success with a response of 12%. The campaign won Gold at the DMAi India Echo awards and Silver Abby Award in the Dimensional Mail category at Goa Fest 2014.

     

    2. Passport to Magical Moments

    Passport to Magical Moments’ was a unique experiential event organized by Club Mahindra especially for kids at a suburban mall in Mumbai. Here, the kids along with their parents got a chance to experience the fun of a Club Mahindra resort and its myriad activities. Four destinations were showcased through four different zones /set ups – Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan & Dubai and each zone engaged kids with an activity that was representative of that Club Mahindra resort/destination – a simulated jet ski in Goa, meeting a virtual elephant from Kerala, rappelling down a wall and watching a live puppet show from Rajasthan and racing ATVs on the sand dunes of Dubai.

     

    3. ‘Dil Dhadkne Do’ Meet & Greet for Members

    We partnered with the latest multi-starrer, Dil Dhadkne Do, to promote our Cruise offer which was on from January to June 2015. As part of our association with the movie, we organised a Meet & Greet event in two cities – Delhi and Mumbai. At this event some lucky members joining the Club Mahindra family during the offer got a chance to meet and interact with the superstars of the film, including Farhan Akhtar, Ranveer Singh, Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah, director, Zoya Akhtar, and producer Ritesh Sidhwani.

     

    4. ClicPic

    In an effort to socialise member experiences, Club Mahindra launched a photo contest at its resorts using Instagram. Members visiting the resorts were asked to upload their holiday photos on Instagram with hashtags. We have seen an overall increase in tagging #clubmahindra to pictures on social media.

     

    Do you prefer to do this through BTL agencies directly or via your existing creative/media agency?

    We do a lot of innovative work across different mediums in the ATL and BTL spaces. For these different activities we work with specialized agencies.

     

    While sales and salience are good indicators of its success, what are the attributes you look at to measure the success of a BTL campaign?

    Choosing a medium or vehicle depends on the objective of the campaign and the target customer one is aiming to reach. A successful campaign is not necessarily one which is present across all platforms and vehicles and is seen everywhere. While there may be a large number of vehicles available, the choice should be made carefully and based on its interactivity and effectiveness in connecting with the target customer.There is never just one solution that meets all requirements. Therefore the best measure of success is the achievement of the initial objective set at the beginning of the campaign.

     

  • Held in Mumbai on Tuesday (June 30), the event saw a cross-section of mediapersons and well-known personalities talking on the rise of the platform

    Discussion on emergence of Twitter in storytelling

    By Dyanne Coelho

     

    Popular microblogging platform Twitter hosted an interactive and informative conference entitled #RiseWithTwitter highlighting the future of mobile storytelling in India and the emerging uses of the platform. Held in Mumbai on Tuesday (June 30), the event saw a cross-section of mediapersons and well-known personalities talking on the rise of the platform.

     

    For instance, Meghna Pant, Indian literary fiction writer and financial journalist shared an inspiring tale of how she tweeted the Mahabharata in just 100 tweets.

     

    Times Now Editor-in-Chief, Arnab Goswami  joined Rishi Jaitley, Market Director, India and South East Asia in an engaging session to discuss the applications of Twitter in the world of journalism. The Lalitgate hashtag (#Lalitgate) coined by Times Now after the recent expose, has earned 43.2 million tweets in a six-day period, Twitter revealed. “Television gets me an audience five times bigger than digital,” Goswami said but added that both mediums are now working in a complementary fashion. “We’re six years away from a digital explosion,” he said of research and he advised that if you are working in the field of digital, hang in there, things are going to explode with change.

     

    Balu Nair, the creator of the Twitter handle @BloodDonorsIn explained how Twitter as a medium is being used for a cause. If any patient is in dire need of a blood transfusion, the family or friends can tweet at the handle with the requirement. Nair explained that kind souls have even travelled cross city to donate blood to those in need thanks to the handle.

     

    MN Reddi, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru in the session ‘The Mobile Microphone’ moderated by Mid-Day Editor Sachin Kalbag pointed out the advantages of Twitter for himself as a person of authority and responsibility. People feel safer because they feel connected to the Commissioner and they get immediate responses to their queries and/or complaints, however rumours are still a huge issue in the world of social media, he said. Henry Jenkins, American media scholar and professor of communication and journalism at USC, brought to note that many scandals would not have hit as hard as they did if it depended only on the media. It is the people who have created the buzz on social media and brought issues to light he said. He cited the example of the hashtag #CNNFail a few years back that trended on Twitter, and which was created by the public to express their disappointment of CNN’s coverage of the aftermath of the Iranian election coverage. Sunil Chhetri of the Bengaluru FC football team highlighted the negativity a platform like Twitter brings to him as a player and to sportspersons in general. “When we lose a match, I dread looking at my phone, because the fans tweets are further depressing. So I check them only a day after once I have calmed down,” he explained.

     

    While people like sportspersons or celebrities can afford to wait a day to respond to tweets, brands don’t have that luxury, Deepali Naair, CMO, Mahindra Holidays said. For brands what is important to engage in conversations that matter to people, she said.Abu Mathen George of the Ministry of External Affairs discussed how his team handles multiple Twitter handles to cater to various needs of Indian citizens. Twitter was used extensively to carry out the evacuations of Indians from Yemen, he explained. People could tweet at the handle about their whereabouts and the Ministry would respond with nearest ports or planes for them to get to. A similar strategy was used during the Nepal earthquake. The importance of engaging the audience on a mobile global platform is key, the panelists Manan Mehta, VP, Yash Raj Films, Abu Mathen George of the Ministry of External Affairs and business journalist Shaili Chopra discussed in a session moderated by Anant Goenka, Director of the Indian Express group.

     

    Nitish Tipnis, Director Sales and Marketing, Hover Automotive India, Deepali Naair, and Shivnath Thukral, Group president, Corporate Branding and Strategic Initiatives at Essar engaged in audience  in an interesting discussion on humanising brands on social media. Whether you are a relatively formal brand like Essar, or a fun brand like Mahindra Holidays, it’s all about keeping the conversation casual on a social media platform, yet getting your word across to the right target audience.

     

    “India is one of the leading markets in terms of user base,” Taranjeet Singh, Country Business Head, Twitter India, said. “Growth in India has been phenomenal. We work with over 600 brands and we have recently launched TV targeting as well because we realised that many people tweet about the content they are watching. Twitter India is way ahead of the business plan in terms of revenue,” Singh revealed.