Tag: 22Feet

Twitter and Kingfisher co-created Name Targeted videos for IPL fans

MUMBAI: Wouldn’t it be great to have the celebrity you swear by mention you in a Tweet, or send you a personalised video message? Social media platform Twitter understands the influence an actor or a sports star has in our lives, and how by bringing these stars close to their fans, an amazing engagement can be created. Riding on this thought, it had devised a campaign for its long term partner Kingfisher for the IPL season. Conceptualised by Twitter India, the campaign allowed the brand to record the star players from six major IPL teams customised messages with fans’ names in them –a first of its kind marketing initiative in APAC, the social media giant claimed.

To make this possible, Twitter went through its archival data looking out for popular first names. Along with it came each person’s preferences and interests including sports.

“We looked into the data and drew a pattern on it. For example, if there are significant number of ‘Amit’s as Mumbai Indian fans, we would add ‘Amit’ to the list of people, and Kingfisher would get the Mumbai Indians team to record a personalised message for all the ‘Amits’,” Twitter India Business Head Taranjeet Singh explained the mechanism behind the campaign.

Though Kingfisher’s IPL campaign on Twitter had started along with season 9, it wasn’t until the season gained momentum in its third and last quarters that Name Targeting was initiated. Once started, it was a high frequency campaign that generated close to 500 odd videos dedicated to fans. Given that Vivo IPL 9 was a pre scheduled event, it allowed Twitter and the creative team from Kingfisher to plan a month ahead. Though most videos were shot before the tournament began, some were done while IPL season 9 was running based on the feedback on the campaign.

While team Twitter worked closely with the brand, the campaign required quick response and production of content to keep up with Twitter’s data base in a very short time which was made possible with the collaborative effort of the brand’s creative agency JWT, and digital agency 22Feet.

“We received excellent feedback for this campaign. With the help of the Twitter team, we were able to create something intangible for the IPL fans, and we could feel their appreciation for the campaign in the form of Tweets and messages. Apart from the paid campaign, the videos themselves generated several organic impressions for us riding on the brand power,” shared United Breweries, marketing SVP Samar Singh Sheikhawat.

While the campaign’s scale otherwise required a significant amount of time and monetary investment, having an existing partnership with Twitter put Kingfisher at an advantage when planning this campaign. Being sponsors for six of the IPL teams also acted in the brand’s favour, as it allowed Kingfisher access to the cricket stars as part of the sponsorship commitment. The initiative was included in the overall budget the brand set aside for IPL 9, which, according to Sheikhawat, could be close to 30 percent of the brand’s marketing budget for this financial year.

This is the second time in a row that Kingfisher has tied up with Twitter India for its IPL campaign. Sheikhawat asserted that this campaign proved to be a great opportunity to leverage the brand’s partnership with Twitter. The fact that the campaign was tailor made for Kingfisher only added to the advantage.

“From day one the response was high for the campaign, with 250 per cent increase in the brand’s Daily Positive Sentiment. Not to mention that the brand interacted with over 85,000 IPL fans over the course of the campaign through the videos,” Taranjeet Singh added.

‘Daily Positive Sentiment’ is a unit or score coined by Twitter that measures the overall sentiments behind tweets targeted at a celebrity, a brand or a handle, or even a hashtag or a campaign.

“Daily Positive Sentiment gives out the general emotion behind most of the tweets on a subject. We use a tool called Crimson hexagon that does the analysis on emotions behind tweets after assimilating certain keywords and other data points,” Taranjeet Singh explained.

In line with Facebook’s reactions the Daily Positive Sentiment score is a powerful tool to gather consumer insight for brands.

When asked if Twitter would be willing to partner with other brands and build a campaign using Name Targeting, Taranjeet Singh responded with, “We don’t work with clients on a transactional basis. We look at their objective and then we come up with solutions on how to shape those business objectives through our platform. If we have a client on board whose communication object requires a campaign and name targeting works to achieve its communication objective, we propose it to the brand. But if its campaign requires other innovations such as conversational videos, tweet camps, and other such initiatives that we have earlier offered our clients, we will suggest those. Or maybe we come up with an entirely new solution.”

In parting, Taranjeet Singh added that the Indian market has become a seat for innovations on the partnership front for Twitter, with many more exciting projects in the pipeline.

June 15, 2016
Twitter and Kingfisher co-created Name Targeted videos for IPL fans

MUMBAI: Wouldn’t it be great to have the celebrity you swear by mention you in a Tweet, or send you a personalised video message? Social media platform Twitter understands the influence an actor or a sports star has in our lives, and how by bringing these stars close to their fans, an amazing engagement can be created. Riding on this thought, it had devised a campaign for its long term partner Kingfisher for the IPL season. Conceptualised by Twitter India, the campaign allowed the brand to record the star players from six major IPL teams customised messages with fans’ names in them –a first of its kind marketing initiative in APAC, the social media giant claimed.

To make this possible, Twitter went through its archival data looking out for popular first names. Along with it came each person’s preferences and interests including sports.

“We looked into the data and drew a pattern on it. For example, if there are significant number of ‘Amit’s as Mumbai Indian fans, we would add ‘Amit’ to the list of people, and Kingfisher would get the Mumbai Indians team to record a personalised message for all the ‘Amits’,” Twitter India Business Head Taranjeet Singh explained the mechanism behind the campaign.

Though Kingfisher’s IPL campaign on Twitter had started along with season 9, it wasn’t until the season gained momentum in its third and last quarters that Name Targeting was initiated. Once started, it was a high frequency campaign that generated close to 500 odd videos dedicated to fans. Given that Vivo IPL 9 was a pre scheduled event, it allowed Twitter and the creative team from Kingfisher to plan a month ahead. Though most videos were shot before the tournament began, some were done while IPL season 9 was running based on the feedback on the campaign.

While team Twitter worked closely with the brand, the campaign required quick response and production of content to keep up with Twitter’s data base in a very short time which was made possible with the collaborative effort of the brand’s creative agency JWT, and digital agency 22Feet.

“We received excellent feedback for this campaign. With the help of the Twitter team, we were able to create something intangible for the IPL fans, and we could feel their appreciation for the campaign in the form of Tweets and messages. Apart from the paid campaign, the videos themselves generated several organic impressions for us riding on the brand power,” shared United Breweries, marketing SVP Samar Singh Sheikhawat.

While the campaign’s scale otherwise required a significant amount of time and monetary investment, having an existing partnership with Twitter put Kingfisher at an advantage when planning this campaign. Being sponsors for six of the IPL teams also acted in the brand’s favour, as it allowed Kingfisher access to the cricket stars as part of the sponsorship commitment. The initiative was included in the overall budget the brand set aside for IPL 9, which, according to Sheikhawat, could be close to 30 percent of the brand’s marketing budget for this financial year.

This is the second time in a row that Kingfisher has tied up with Twitter India for its IPL campaign. Sheikhawat asserted that this campaign proved to be a great opportunity to leverage the brand’s partnership with Twitter. The fact that the campaign was tailor made for Kingfisher only added to the advantage.

“From day one the response was high for the campaign, with 250 per cent increase in the brand’s Daily Positive Sentiment. Not to mention that the brand interacted with over 85,000 IPL fans over the course of the campaign through the videos,” Taranjeet Singh added.

‘Daily Positive Sentiment’ is a unit or score coined by Twitter that measures the overall sentiments behind tweets targeted at a celebrity, a brand or a handle, or even a hashtag or a campaign.

“Daily Positive Sentiment gives out the general emotion behind most of the tweets on a subject. We use a tool called Crimson hexagon that does the analysis on emotions behind tweets after assimilating certain keywords and other data points,” Taranjeet Singh explained.

In line with Facebook’s reactions the Daily Positive Sentiment score is a powerful tool to gather consumer insight for brands.

When asked if Twitter would be willing to partner with other brands and build a campaign using Name Targeting, Taranjeet Singh responded with, “We don’t work with clients on a transactional basis. We look at their objective and then we come up with solutions on how to shape those business objectives through our platform. If we have a client on board whose communication object requires a campaign and name targeting works to achieve its communication objective, we propose it to the brand. But if its campaign requires other innovations such as conversational videos, tweet camps, and other such initiatives that we have earlier offered our clients, we will suggest those. Or maybe we come up with an entirely new solution.”

In parting, Taranjeet Singh added that the Indian market has become a seat for innovations on the partnership front for Twitter, with many more exciting projects in the pipeline.

June 15, 2016
Integrated Marketing Communication is the future: John Zeigler

MUMBAI: The world is changing and it is the right time to understand the change and make a difference believes DDB Group Asia Pacific, India and Japan chairman and CEO John Zeigler.

He along with Tribal Worldwide Asia president Jeff Cheong are in India to meet clients and converse about cross-pollination between Singapore, India and Sydney to help the region. The visit was planned to meet more talent from the region and get some collaborative work across the table informs Zeigler.

It can be recalled that early this year DDB Mudra acquired 22Feet, a Bangalore based digital agency. The agency is aiming to get some great pieces of work out very soon. Cheong is of the opinion that, “India is a talent pool when it comes to technologists and the acquisition of 22Feet has helped us reach greater heights.”

Zeigler who believes that ‘Integrated Marketing Communication is the future,’ also thinks adding human touch in advertising campaigns creates magic. “Creativity is our birth right, humanity is our inspiration and technology is our canvas,” says Zeigler proudly, while elaborating the mantra of the various innovative campaigns the group has done.

The ‘Sorry, I spent it on myself’ campaign done by adam&eveDDB for Harvey Nichols and Heineken Ignite, an experiential campaign launched at the Milan Design Week by Tribal DDB Amsterdam are just a few innovations done by the group to take the message beyond just advertising. “It needs to be about creating influence,” says Zeigler.

In India, the ‘Push the pin’ campaign for Jaago Re before the 2014 general elections allowed users to voice relevant issues from their respective constituencies. Apart from that, the 52 week long campaign for Big Bazaar is a first of its kind marketing communication in the country wherein each week a new TVC is being launched focusing on various products offered.

After its consistent good performance, the network in India is now taking the next step of collaboration and integration within the system.

Given the new order of business and marketing challenges, increasing conversations and demands from a wide spectrum of collaborative and integrated solutions, the DDB Mudra Group, with its 10 agencies and operating units (DDB Mudra West, DDB Mudra South & East, DDB Mudra North, DDB MudraMax – OOH, DDB MudraMax – Experiential, DDB MudraMax – Media, TracyLocke, 22feet Tribal Worldwide, RAPP and DDB Remedy) have re-constituted its executive board.

The new board will see the addition of five more members taking the total toll to eight. The members include: Madhukar Kamath, Sonal Dabral, Anurag Bansal, Sathyamurthy Namakkal, Aneil Deepak, Deepak Nair, Mandeep Malhotra and Rajiv Sabnis.

“We are investing in people who will bring with them different kind of aspects and perspectives to the board,” says the group CEO and MD Madhukar Kamath on the backdrop of the various high management appointments.

Apart from this, the group has also created a group creative council and a strategic planning council. The creative council will consist of Aneil Deepak, Brijesh Jacob, Rahul Mathew, Sambit Mohanty and Vipul Thakkar while the strategic planning council will have Aditya Kanthy, Amit Kekre, Pradeep Ramakrishnan and Ramraaj Raghunathan.

The two councils will be headed by Dabral. “We have formulated the cross-section of talent and it will help us better our work,” he says while adding that soon the group will launch its own creative awards which are as of now tentatively named ‘Bernie’ on the group’s founder, the legendary Bill Bernbach.

The executive council will meet once a month over video conferences and on quarterly basis in either of the offices or at an offsite.

“It is the age of ‘influence’ and we believe in leading the change,” concludes Kamath.

July 28, 2014
Why bigger agencies net smaller fish?

MUMBAI: Passion drives creative minds to set up independent agencies. In a majority of cases however, after the initial burst, resources become a constraint and growth avenues out of reach.

While being able to do what you want, pitch to the client of your choice or leverage the tools of your choice continue to be the perks of going solo, at some point, the smaller independent agency is forced to reflect on how long it can continue to stand alone successfully.

This is probably when selling out to a larger entity seems like the best option. In the past couple of years, there have been several instances of big networks snapping up smaller, independent agencies; the most recent being DDB Mudra’s acquisition of Bangalore-based 22feet. Indiantelevision.com spoke to a cross-section of the advertising industry in a bid to understand what really drives network agencies to invest in independents or conversely, independents to sell out or as in some cases, hold on to their freedom.

Vineet Gupta of 22feet, who will soon take charge as MD of the new entity, 22feet Tribal Worldwide, says mergers and acquisitions (M&A) aren’t necessarily about losing independence. “We have always wanted to outperform and be ahead in the market. And in Tribal, we found a partner which had the same vision like us and hence, we went ahead by joining hands,” he explains.

Praveen Kenneth of Law & Kenneth – at the time Law & Kenneth was integrated with Saatchi & Saatchi – had famously said that Law & Kenneth was born out of passion and had always focussed on adding value to client brands and to the lives of the people it touched every day. The story of Law & Kenneth was an example of the Saatchi & Saatchi spirit of ‘Nothing is Impossible’, and the combination of Law & Kenneth’s stability, proven success and experience in India’s dynamic market place and Saatchi & Saatchi’s iconic status and mystique had resulted in a creative powerhouse called L&K Saatchi & Saatchi.

WebChutney, a digital agency founded in 1999, became part of Dentsu India Group when the network agency acquired 80 per cent stake in it in 2013. How has it benefitted the independent agency? Says, the agency’s co-founder Sidharth Rao, “Our unique chutney culture is the same but yes, being part of a global network has helped in terms of new alliances & smarter processes. One of the best parts is that we have access to global learnings which we think will be a big advantage going forward in our journey.”

For Naresh Gupta, CSO and managing partner of Bang in the Middle, the iYogi in-house creative agency that went independent in 2012, the best marriage is when creative and cultural freedom isn’t taken away and bigger agencies only provide support through finance and sources to scale up. “There has to be a cultural match before any formal arrangement is made because a group which has invested too much money in acquiring one doesn’t want it to fall. It will only want it to grow as it wants back the money it had invested in it,” says he.

Publicis’ South Asia CEO Nakul Chopra believes that while cultural and operational differences between the two agencies would never cease to exist, it depends on how well they make the marriage work. “If the home-work has been done well before the acquisition is made and the two are culturally close at the core, there are not many difficulties between them. We at Publicis have a well-oiled and tested process that allows us to achieve that goal,” he says, adding that the acquisition is also about ‘strategic fit’. “Ideally and normally, we would want to acquire an agency when it fulfils multiples of strategic goals. In parallel, we also look closely at the culture of that agency and how well it fits into the culture of our network. Only after this, do we decide on acquiring any agency.” Chopra insists that acquisitions are not like buying a shirt and either the agency is in talks with someone or someone approaches the agency. What matters is how transparent and deeply connected the two agencies feel before shaking hands.

Dentsu India group executive chairman Rohit Ohri echoes similar sentiments. “Network agencies are always on the lookout for a holistic view. There are some or the other gaps which need to be filled-up so network agencies look for agencies which can do so. The fundamental law of any acquisition is that the two parties work closely in the pre-acquisition period to get to know each other’s culture and get a sense of partnership. There has to be a chemistry match otherwise it can lead to a fallout past acquisition or the smaller agency can collapse. There has to be a meeting of minds,” he explains.

On the bigger agency trying to impose its culture on the smaller one, he gives the example of Dentsu’s Taproot acquisition close to two years ago. “The merger has worked well for both of us. Dentsu has been able to work on major accounts (Congress being the latest client) that were won after the merger. Taproot has been a leading light in the creative field and has a strong reputation. So we follow what they set out to achieve. It is the other way round for us. We at Dentsu are trying to assimilate that,” he says.

And not all mergers end on a good note. Remember what happened to Enterprise Nexus? The agency was created in 1996 when Enterprise (born out of the partnership between Mohammad Khan and Rajiv Agarwal in 1983) and Nexus (founded two years later when Agarwal left the agency to launch his own along with Arun Kale) joined hands.

However, what started off great, fizzed out soon when Agarwal and Kale, gave up their shares to Khan, making him the majority shareholder in Enterprise Nexus. The agency was later acquired by WPP and merged with Bates India.

With a few mergers ending on a bitter note, it hasn’t stopped the majority of firms from acquiring others or launching new ones. So does the buck stop at M&A?

According to Anil Kakar, founder of Gasoline, a lean agency structure based on a collaborative model where both like-minded creative talent and projects have been cherry-picked to ensure faster and more cost-effective solutions, “A lean agency structure ensures a greater investment of time and thought into a campaign, a greater control over the creative output, customised solutions, faster turnaround times and access to some of the best brains in the business.”

“Obviously it helps in terms of getting access to a larger client base as well as in leveraging the media strengths of the network. The network consists of a unique bunch of agencies each with their own particular strength which is very useful when pitching to global brands,” adds Rao.

Gupta offers a different perspective altogether. “Acquisitions work both way; most independent agencies don’t want to remain small and want to add muscle and that can be only added either by becoming a network agency or becoming a part of a network agency. Also, it is very difficult for an independent Indian guy to go international and become a network,” he says.

However, agencies that are “okay with what they have” may choose to remain independent. Otherwise, the question “Can I make the business grow?” is bound to crop up from time to time. “Our country is a very competitive one and it is a price-sensitive market. Clients don’t pay agencies for the amount of work they do for them,” he adds.

In sum, you need to tread on M&A with caution: while it is necessary for further consolidation and growth, it can’t be achieved at the altar of the agencies’ DNA.

March 18, 2014