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Tag: GroupM India

  • The morning and working hour timings of World Cup matches have made millions of sport lovers follow the action on dedicated websites, apps and social media

    More ads go digital as ICC World Cup action shifts to sites, apps

    By Vijaya Rathore & Ravi Teja Sharma

     

    The morning and working hour timings of matches in the ongoing cricket World Cup have made millions of sport lovers follow the action on dedicated websites, apps and social media, prompting several big and small brands to latch on to digital advertising like never before.

     

    Brands across industries, including Lufthansa, Accenture, Tissot and Hero are looking to catch the on-the-move consumer on a variety of platforms including official broadcaster Star India’s starsports.com, social media sites, cricket portals and apps such as Hotstar.

     

    “Some of our clients have looked at digital very seriously. Hero, for instance, has bet heavily on digital and it is really doing well for the brand,” said Praseed Prasad, national director for digital trading at media buying firm GroupM India. Another client of his, Pepsi Lays, has chosen to do more on the digital side and only advertise on television during select matches in the World Cup this year.

     

    A spokesperson for Star India says they have seen an exponential growth in consumption online. This World Cup, Star has got around 35-40 advertisers, including Lufthansa, Accenture, CarTrade, Tissot and Hero for its online platforms, with about 20% of those exclusively on the digital medium. “Revenues from digital will be significant this time,” the person said.

     

    Hero is the co-presenting sponsor of the World Cup 2015 digital. “The medium has seen exponential growth in terms of traffic,” a Hero MotoCorp spokesperson said. It is the lead sponsor on the property with branding/inventory in terms of video inventory, logo presence, banner ads, special sections such as replay and match insights, and has also launched a dedicated app, Hero Super Skipper, the spokesperson said. “This association is a strategic move, owing to a perceptible shift in viewership patterns in favour of digital medium.” The India-Pakistan match at the beginning of the tournament, for example, got over 25 million views on Star’s digital platforms, the highest in the world for a single game.

     

    Firms such as DishTV have created fresh campaigns around the World Cup. “Most digital campaigns are either in the form of graphics or extension of TV campaigns but we created one especially for the digital medium and that has helped us reach the young consumers, the millennials,” said Salil Kapoor, COO of DishTV.

     

    He said the interactive nature of the digital space helps consumers to make purchases by routing them to the firm’s call centres if they wish to. Also, a television ad campaign costs at least 3-4 times more than a digital campaign, Kapoor said. DishTV has shot a campaign with brand ambassador Shah Rukh Khan to promote their HD channels during this world cup.

     

    Digital adoption by brands is on the rise with large companies now allocating significant spends to this medium. “From about 2-3% of a large company’s marketing budget, digital is now in double digits,” says Ahmed Naqvi, CEO at digital and social media agency Gozoop.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2015, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.

    All Rights Reserved, Licensed to republish

     

  • Presenting an extract from the GroupM India Digital Playbook 2014-15 and an interview with Tushar Vyas, Managing Partner – GroupM Interaction South Asia

    The Technology Imperative In Marketing

     

    Media investment conglomerate GroupM released the GroupM India Digital Playbook in an attempt to guide brand advertisers on the fast evolving digital media space in India.

    To help brands in this endeavour, GroupM has got some of the best digital minds in the country to come up with 7 actionable opportunities in the coming year – like mobility, real-time content and media, digital and experiential platforms. The playbook further details several milestones – including creating a matrix of outcomes and drafting a mobile first view- that brands should aspire to achieve this year to capitalize on these opportunities. The playbook recommends that brand advertisers adopt a holistic insights and data driven approach with integrated marketing technology framework as the key enabler.

    We publish here with permission one of the chapters from the book –  titled The Technology Imperative In Marketing (the book may be downloaded at http://indiadigitalplaybook.com/IndiaDigitalPlaybook2014.pdf) and bring you an interview Tushar Vyas, Managing Partner – GroupM Interaction South Asia

     

    Marketing was perhaps the last discipline to get impacted by technology. While business functions such as finance, accounting, manufacturing, and even human resources adopted technology, marketing remained as the ‘last man standing.’ Technology has now become a critical element in marketing, so much so that large organisations now have a designated role of ‘Chief Marketing Technologist.’

     

    Jaldi 5 Q&A with Tushar Vyas: More and more marketers will take a hard look at media investments from the lens of outcome and not output

     

    The Group M India Digital Playbook aims at providing a blueprint to help guide marketers through the twists and turns that await us, says Tushar Vyas, Managing Partner Interaction South Asia. An exclusive interview with MxMIndia.com on the release of the GroupM India Digital Playbook 2014-15

     

    01. Despite the mobile turning ubiquitous and a fairly number of people embracing digital in the way they conduct their professional and personal lives, the adspends on Digital is still in single digits. What would you attribute the reasons for this?

    Digital is the highest growth medium in media mix currently – almost 3x the AdEx growth. In many categories like BFSI and auto the number is significantly high. This is an indication that we are reaching a tipping point. The complexity of the digital ecosystem and still evolving KPIs/Benchmarks are current challenges. Through the Playbook we are trying to address these.

     

    02. While almost all media and creative agencies have embraced digital either organically or inorganically, marketer who otherwise spend loads internationally are still content with the TVCs on TV or even the traditional print advertising. Comments?

    Today, the discussion on digital has moved away from “Why digital ?”.  You rarely hear this question. However, in many cases digital is still on the side of the plate and treated as an add-on. Brands need to start looking at an integrated approach towards media and define the role of digital. Digital medium scores pretty well on efficiency as well as effectiveness parameters. We need to continue the education process and build empirical data as well, to support the claim for higher digital media mix.

     

    03. While the number of avenues of advertising is limited on TV and print or outdoor or radio, in digital there are many – the good ol’ banners, to search, to social, to  mobile? Do you think the multitude of opportunities could have taken away from the focus on hte  platform?

    Multiple mediums and formats are converging into Internet and that’s making the process complex.  Again, it’s important to start with the objective/ expected outcome clear in your mind. Too many marketers are caught in the output driven metrics (like GRPs,Clicks) while in reality they should just be milestones in the journey. What matters is the outcome- be it consideration, affinity, sales. This year, more and more marketers will take a hard look at media investments from the lens of outcome and not output.  This will certainly lead them to invest time and money in mediums like digital where customers are engaging heavily.

     

    04. Your report talks of the scope for videos in India. But the connectivity speeds is still a huge problem here, right?

    India is the third largest online video market globally in spite of the constraints . That’s a reflection of the potential that exists in this market. The growth will be multifold from here on as  penetration of smartphone/ devices, content ecosystem and connectivity improves. Even today we have a sizeable active base and online platforms like youtube are already part of top 10 television channel list for most target audiences.

     

    05. There is a statement in the study that’s interesting: Mobile Internet will undoubtedly become the superhighway that connects rural India to the world. But given literacy levels being low in rural India, don’t you see that as a challenge?

    The web is becoming more visual (Image and Multimedia) and that’s where literacy levels may not be important. Same is the case for audio on the Internet and voice based solutions. Today a significant part of the content getting consumed is on recommendation rather then self-discovery— in a way your peer/ social group will help identify and filter content which is relevant for you in terms of common interest or cultural context. Audience will naturally gravitate towards content that is suitable for them.

     

    Impact of technology in marketing is at two levels. First it is an enabler in ‘story-telling.’ Essentially, that is all the technology that can deliver consumer experiences while telling a story-whether it is interactive screens or your sneakers talking to your phone. This is fuelled by consumer adoption of technology, which is faster than business adopting technology. An interesting data from a survey says “72% of 18-24-year old know how to connect a device to Wi-Fi. Only 8% know how to poach eggs.”

     

    Second, the adoption of marketing technologies drives efficiencies and effectiveness in the marketing function. As of now there are over 1,000 known companies providing software for marketers across 43 categories and 6 classes. These categories are as wide ranging as e-mail marketing, display advertising, testing & optimization, asset & content management, e-commerce, search & social ads, business intelligence, CRM, and sales enablement, to name a few. A Gartner report that says in the next 2-3 years, CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs, does not raise eyebrows anymore. While some marketers are already using some of these technologies, here are a few technologies you just cannot ignore in the coming year:

     

     

    1. Integrated Digital Marketing Platforms.

    This perhaps is the most important-adoption of unified technology platforms. As advertising becomes more technology driven, it is becoming more complex with endless choices of formats, new innovations, and rapid changes. In the process cycle of planning, activation, optimization, and reporting, the planners and campaign managers need to rely on disparate set of tools, data sources, and implementation techniques. For instance, there are up to 20 intermediaries, such as ad-servers, DSPs, exchanges, bid managers, data management platforms, and so on, between advertisers and publishers today. There are display reservation & biddable buys, exchanges, search, re-marketing, video ads, social ads, mobile, and more. There are multiple and dynamic creatives, landing pages, and different call to actions. And finally, there is the lack of a single view of campaign performance metrics. The need to adopt integrated platforms is a necessity to navigate the operational complexity as well as bring efficiency.

     

    Today, an integrated platform like DoubleClick by Google brings together an ad server streamlining workflow for planning, trafficking, and targeting; demand-side platform (DSP) accessing inventory with real-time bidding and creation of audience segments; creative production and workflow tool; data management platform; rule-based ad serving; and a robust reporting module. As digital marketing grows in volumes and complexity, adoption of integrated platforms is a must for marketers this year.

     

    2. Marketing Automation.

    Marketing automation software enables processes such as defining, scheduling, segmenting, and tracking of marketing campaigns. Customers can be scored based on multiple parameters, segmented, and addressed one-to-one with customized messaging.

     

    Early adopters were verticals with large customer database such as BFSI, retail, and telecom. Now with the staggering growth of data-transactional data, call centre data, social touch points, and the like, customer segmentation can be far richer. Other categories such as media, automobiles, and e-commerce are now embracing marketing automation. IBM (Unica), SAS and Oracle (Eloqua) are some of the players in this space.

     

    3. Content Marketing Tools.

    Content marketing has been a buzzword for some time now. Social media has accelerated the adoption of content marketing. As content marketing takes centre stage, technology is again becoming a key driver.

     

    Technology adoption is in the areas of content distribution platforms (tools such as Thismoment, HootSuite, and Uberflip) and content discovery (Outbrain).

     

    4. Consumer Intelligence.

    Consumer Intelligence is normally referred as a subset of CRM and is in relation to the existing customer base. But with the advent of social media, consumer’s collective voice is a source of consumer intelligence.

     

    Some marketers have started using technology for ‘social listening’ to get a better understanding of their consumers and respond with better products and services. Adoption of these tools (e.g. Radian6, Meltwater, and Explic8) will significantly rise in the coming years.

     

    Consumers, empowered like never before; marketers with new tricks of the trade; data, explosive and big; and questions on privacy and security-all these make marketing as interesting as ever and more challenging.

     

    And, technology remains the silent enabler.

     

    The GroupM India Digital Playbook may be accessed at http://indiadigitalplaybook.com/IndiaDigitalPlaybook2014.pdf

  • The concept and execution of this web series has been done by Mash Up, a part of GroupM India

    Mash Up & Blazar get Kapil Sharma to launch new Honda Mobilio

    By A Correspondent

     

    Honda India is all set to launch their new premium 7-seater, the Honda Mobilio in July. Before the launch of its TVC, the car is generating a lot of buzz around the web with a series of four videos with India’s favourite comedian – Kapil Sharma. The concept and execution of this web series has been done by Mash Up, a part of GroupM India. The digital campaign is being executed by Blazar, the digital marketing agency of GroupM India.

     

    This is the first time Honda has taken the route of a celebrity association and branded original content to launch a car. The videos are not product videos, but are designed to announce the launch of the car, touch upon its features and give the audiences a dose of entertainment. Kapil plays a Honda car salesman in the web series.

     

    GroupM released the campaign on YouTube on June 24th 2014 at 6pm. Since then the video has garnered over three lakh organic views and over 1.5 lakh likes. This is also the first time Kapil Sharma has associated with any brand. GroupM specifically chose Kapil, keeping in mind his popularity across digital media and his fan engagement on social media.

     

    Shakeel Anjum, Head – Brand Communications, Honda said, “Unlike the traditional advertising, digital is a pull medium. And we for sure wanted to leverage the medium to its best. All the four Honda Mobilio films are buzz worthy content. The first film has already gained social chatter and consumer engagement organically, within just hours of launch. Kapil Sharma is definitely the new benchmark of Family Entertainment. His humour cuts across genres and age groups. Kapil is one of the most searched celebrities on digital with a massive fan following on social media. We believed he was the best fit to launch this Family car on digital media”

     

    Kumar Deb Sinha, head, Digital Content, Mash Up said, “We are extremely thrilled to take Blazar’s long standing partnership with Honda Motors to next level by creating a brand association with Kapil Sharma. The objective is to unleash the full value of digital media and branded content to engage consumers, inducing high sharability amongst users.

     

  • The Porter Prize is one of the most coveted awards in the field of strategy and competitiveness and is supported by the Institute for Competitiveness India

    GroupM India wins Porter Prize for ‘leveraging unique activities’

    By A Correspondent

     

    GroupM India has won the award for ‘Leveraging Unique Activities’ at the Porter Prize2013 event last week. The Porter Prize is one of the most coveted awards in the field of strategy and competitiveness and is supported by the Institute for Competitiveness India.

     

    The Institute for Competitiveness India is an independent international initiative centered in India, dedicated to enlarging and disseminating the body of research and knowledge on competition and strategy, pioneered over the last 25 years by Professor Michael Porter of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School (ISC, HBS), USA.

     

    Prof Michael Porter was chairman of the Jury. There were 88 companies that took part in these awards from various industry sectors of which seven won a Porter Prize. GroupM is the first company from the media and advertising field to win this award. Elaborating the reasons why GroupM was chosen, Dr Amit Kapoor, Honorary Chairman, Institute for Competitiveness India said “GroupM reflects effective rendering of activities across the value chain, how activities reinforce and synergies are created across its range of activities through a interlocking system that becomes basis for competitive advantage and sustainability.”

     

    CVL Srinivas

    Speaking on the occasion, CVL Srinivas, CEO GroupM South Asia said: “This award is testament to GroupM India’s strategic approach to building the business that has resulted in a strong leadership position in this market. The diversified offerings of GroupM have scaled up over the years to become the new core of our agency. Our integrated product helps us provide unique value to clients to build their competitive advantage.”

     

  • Ms Pahwa will be based in India, reflecting shifting global priorities and ppportunities

    Maxus names Madhvi Pahwa as first global talent director

    By A Correspondent

     

    Madhvi Pahwa, veteran media agency executive with extensive experience in talent development and marketing, has been named Global Talent Director for Maxus.

     

    The announcement was made by Maxus Global CEO Mr Kelly Clark, who said Ms Pahwa will be based in New Delhi where she currently works as Managing Partner for Learning and Culture at GroupM India.

     

    “This is a hugely important step for Maxus,” Mr Clark said. “Following our explosive growth over the past few years, we need to improve how we recruit, inspire and motivate our people. Madhvi can help us do this.”

     

    Mr Clark noted that locating the talent director’s role in India rather than New York or London signalled a break from tradition for media agencies, one that provides the agency with an important distinction from its competitors. “I’ve always believed there’s big opportunity for a media agency to take an exciting new direction in talent management, one that really differentiates the agency,” Mr Clark said in a communique. “Maxus can be that agency, and I think we can make that happen with Madhvi’s leadership, advice and partnership. Having Madhvi based in Asia also recognizes the importance of our fastest-growing region to the future of our talent agenda.”

     

    Before joining GroupM in India in 2006, Ms Pahwa has held several senior marketing and brand management roles with marketers including Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola India, where she spent a decade in marketing roles ranging from managing brand portfolios to consumer insights to media planning and buying.