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Tag: Pratik Gupta

  • FoxyMoron bags digital mandate for Jim Beam India

    FoxyMoron bags digital mandate for Jim Beam India

    MUMBAI: Following a multi agency pitch, FoxyMoron has won the digital mandate of Beam Suntory’s top bourbon whiskey brand Jim Beam.

     

    The mandate includes digital duties, while also building and strengthening Jim Beam’s digital presence through strategic insights and unique solutions that engage its young urban consumers. 

     

    Jim Beam India marketing controller Ankur Bhatia said, “Although the Bourbon Whiskey market is still nascent, Jim Beam is witnessing exciting growth in India, given early adoption by new younger consumers. India being one of the biggest markets globally in terms of social media usage and growing digital/mobile penetration, we are excited to partner with Foxymoron who bring in brilliant expertise and consumer insights in this space.” 

     

    FoxyMoron co-founder and director, new business & Innovation Pratik Gupta added, “Whiskey is breaking the ‘old man’s drink’ cliché in India and Jim Beam is trying to use that insight and target the urban youth of the country. We presented a fresh perspective that revolves around creating awareness about Bourbon whiskey and promoting the versatility and mixability of the brand. It’s a great brand to work with and will continuously challenge us to innovate and execute unique digital strategies.”

  • Brands engage with Twitter influencers to reach out

    Brands engage with Twitter influencers to reach out

    MUMBAI: According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), as of March 2013, Twitter had 33 million users across the country. An Economic Times report said that Twitter is eyeing India’s over 500 million mobile consumers as potential users, given that its service can be used on feature phones.

     

    With statistics like that, no wonder brands are milking the popularity and reach of the micro-blogging site, albeit through people called ‘influencers’.

     

    Earlier this month, a national dairy brand created a Twitter splash with the help of 50 influencers, with the campaign being the most talked about at the time. Similarly, Mahindra has identified an ‘influencer’ for its SuPer Milo in actress Gul Panag, who connects with the brand at many levels and campaigns regularly on Twitter.

     

    So, who are these influencers whom brands are increasingly seeking out in order to grow their consumer base and widen their reach?

     

    Social Wavelength joint CEO Sanjay Mehta says that there are three types of influencers. Firstly, the celebrity kinds, who may generate influence across many different areas and people; secondly, subject matter influencers, who are domain specialists and wield influence in specific categories such as automobiles or gadgets or fashion; and thirdly, peer influencers, who may not fall in the first two categories but have good influence over a sizeable group of tweeple (people on Twitter) who interact with them.

     

    Mehta points out that of late, several brands have been engaging with influencers, in big or small ways; be it getting influencers to talk about their new mobile phone or getting them to initiate a tweetinar (a seminar on Twitter) on a topic of relevance. “At the end of the day of course, it is about getting engagement with the influencers, and through such engagement, managing to get an amplification of the brand via the wider network reach of the said influence,” Mehta explains.

     

    A common perception among social media enthusiasts is that Twitter influencers are those who have a huge follower base. While FoxyMoron co-founder, director – new business Pratik Gupta, is of the view that while this is a crucial criterion and an influencer must have at least 1,500 followers, other factors too need to be taken into consideration. “The brand must select an influencer whose opinion and tone is in sync with the brand philosophy. The content tweeted must be consistently of good quality and at the same time, be memorable and valuable. Also from a brand perspective, it is important to ensure that the chosen influencer has not endorsed a competitor in the past. The final criterion one must look out for is dedication; the influencer must regularly and religiously tweet in order to keep his/her followers intrigued,” says Gupta.

     

    For instance, for Maybelline New York India, Foxymoron identified a core group of influencers and called them the ‘Beauty Brigade’. This was done in order to create better products and a unique identity in a highly competitive market. Members of the brigade were the first to receive product samples and hear about contests. They played a major role in promoting brand awareness and product loyalty.

     

    Gupta says that these days, brands engage with influencers in different ways including product sampling, reviews on blogs and DIY YouTube tutorials. Influencers give their opinions in the form of reviews and connect with their followers on a personal level. So, they tend to gain the trust of their followers apart from adding advocacy to brand campaigns. “They support the brand by enabling it to tap into their own fan base. Every consumer then becomes a potential word-of-mouth marketer, which is one of the biggest benefits to the brand. This becomes a win-win situation for the brand and the consumers”, explains Gupta.

     

    That said, most brands are not very open about engaging with influencers on social media. And still, part of the success of the brand on Twitter campaigns definitely goes to its influencers!

  • Viral on your mind?

    Viral on your mind?

    A‘Kolaveri Di’ kind of video with the capacity to go viral doesn’t happen every day, and that’s something marketers and the junta might do well to remember.

    There have been enough and more cases of online campaigns that fell flat on their face just as there have been instances of campaigns that fared considerably well in recent times (Dove’s real beauty, Flipkart’s Nation wants to know, Dhanush’s Sachin anthem).

    Content is king

    So what are the ingredients that make for success? First up, it’s the content. GroupM ESP national director (sports and live events) Vinit Karnik opines that videos like ‘Kolaveri Di’ and ‘It’s your fault’ are an engaging and entertaining way to disseminate a social message and build awareness.

    Watch the video: Boost pays tribute to Sachin’s 23 years of stamina!

    Gasoline founder and chief creative officer Anil Kakar says the first rule of creating online content is that it needs to be worth sharing. “The potential reach shareable content can offer is enormous and brands are currently only scratching the surface,” he says.

    Referring to two recent viral videos ‘It’s your fault’ and ‘I quit’, Draftfcb Ulka Interactive (digital arm of Draftfcb Ulka) creative head Sudarshan Sudevan says: “These two videos share different lights in the context of one’s feeling, one is targeted at the mass and the second, targeted at a single person….her boss. But the common platform that they share is – being vocal about it. That’s the lesson you can learn from it. Exercise your freedom of expression to the maximum… without fear. You can be a total stranger but your voice is surely heard if it has a message. That’s the power of this digital medium.”

    Not to do list

    Successful online content is often disruptive, based on a powerful insight and more importantly, follows a set of rules in social media that are way different from other forms of media.
    Experts believe the most common mistake that someone/some brand can make while launching a digital campaign is to create it to go viral. According to Infosys global head (digital marketing) Ashok Lalla, that is the biggest fallacy. “Virals happen. Of course, one can help them happen through content which is very high quality and well produced, and also through extensively promoting the content. For example, Idea’s Honey Bunny was promoted across media and that drove the viral-ness of the video online,” he points out.

    Similarly, Everest Brand Solutions president Dhunji Wadia says if one tries to create a campaign to go viral, there are a million ways to go wrong as there is no fixed formula or template for these videos. “You just have to click with the consumers, literally! Firstly, if it doesn’t impress me, how will it impress the world? One can get carried away with an idea, which does not make as much sense after production as much as it made on paper. Don’t hesitate to start fresh in such a case. Secondly, is the product/service forced into the communication? Sometimes there is a ‘disconnect’ between the product/service and the ad concept. If the two are not inter-twined, the product will be left hanging after a great concept.  It will hardly be noticed. Try to find a common ground between the two.”

    Highlighting mistakes marketers/advertisers tend to make, Sudevan adds: “Low budget for a promotion to be launched ‘asap’ plus maximum output demanded (for example say 1 million likes) and hence resorting to social media leads to bad ideas and bad execution, considering the time the agency gets to churn this out in that shoe-string budget. Also, no research of the ecosphere of social media or what or how much a campaign should cost or the time it should get competed within leads to selection of bad ideas presented by some smart agency.”

    With or without social media

    All said, the social media universe is swelling and no advertiser or marketer can afford to ignore it. Besides, with the dipping rupee and dwindling economy, conventional Indian media is facing the heat, rendering social media the smartest option in the current scenario. 

       
    Says Kakar: “What makes social media unique is the fact that brands can, for the first time, have a conversation directly with consumers. This is a huge paradigm shift of sorts, which is already testing our collective skills as an industry. Also, for the first time, we can gauge accurate responses through analytics and tools, engage with a select audience, should the need arise, and alter content according to responses. Social media is also a great platform to engage opinion leaders or ‘feeders’, who help promote content onto blogs, twitter, facebook and other platforms for a multiplier effect, generating free PR, which would have otherwise cost an arm and a leg for an advertiser.”

    Watch the video: AIB seeks an answer to whose fault is it anyway?

    FoxyMoron co-founder and director – new business and innovations Pratik Gupta seconds Kakar saying: “A lot of brands want to reach out to their audience and it might be as simple as uploading a TVC on YouTube. One must remember that a TVC is watched by the entire family, out of which, not all could be the target audience wherein the people who will click on social media are the correct viewers.”

    Gupta gives the example of the campaign Baby Lips Kiss Song featuring Alia Bhatt that FoxyMoron recently did for Maybelline. He says there are many brands that are utilizing the platform to the fullest to reach their TG.  He also talks about the YouTube channel Q-tiyapa by TheViralFeverVideos saying they are doing everything right to strike a chord with the youth.

    And what do advertisers have to say about digital platforms? “Advertising is a 360-degree experience. That’s when a user feels the brand in totality and since every medium has its own plus points, it’s best to design any campaign keeping in mind the purpose of the campaign,” say advertisers.

    Then again, there are the naysayers who feel digital media and by extension, social media is still not a mass channel of outreach in India. Statistics for internet usage vary between 70-140 million and those for social media are a subset of this. So, it’s unlikely to be the medium of choice for all brands for all seasons. At best, digital/social media may be the medium of choice for a younger, urban-centric demographic concentrated in major metros and towns across the country.

    Whatever be the case, one thing is clear that with the medium encouraging conversations on various social platforms, the movement of content from ‘airing’ to ‘sharing’ can catalyze the internet audience to great effect.

  • FoxyMoron is now in Delhi

    MUMBAI: Digital marketing firm FoxyMoron is growing by leaps and bounds as it announced the geographical expansion of its business in the national capital.

    Starting with a team of eight to ten people, the Delhi division will be headed by business head Akshay Gurnani, an export from the Mumbai office.

    The five year old agency already services clients like McVities in Delhi and is looking at partnering a couple more over the next month or so.

    “A major chunk of the out of Mumbai enquiries we get are from Delhi and so it just made sense to start an office there. Also, in a dynamic medium like digital, it is necessary to be present in the city as well. Since Delhi and Mumbai are our core business centres, we decided to we needed to fly to the capital,” explains FoxyMoron director – business development and innovations Pratik Gupta.

    Another reason for expanding geographically is to be able to handle competitor brands since the two teams (Mumbai and Delhi) will be working on separate projects.

    It‘s actually a kind of double whammy for the fast growing digital agency as it has moved into a new bigger office in Mumbai as well.

    So will we be seeing a lot of FoxyMoron offices sprouting across the country? “While we do service clients from all over India (Fosters in Bengaluru and ITC in Kolkata for instance), we intend to manage and service these clients from our hubs in Delhi and Mumbai. We would however like to grow our business offerings over the next 18 months and provides a wider plethora of services to our clients,” informs Gupta.

    Some of the verticals that the agency aims to explore over the next year and a half include production (since audio visual is becoming popular in the Indian digital space), activations in the digital medium and online PR.

    Considering the rapid spate of digital agency acquisitions that are taking place, one cannot help wonder if FoxyMoron is on the anvil“ for any such merger. While the agency has been approached by quite a few agency networks, it is yet to find the perfect match. “Let‘s just say we are at a stage where we have nothing to lose and are enjoying our stint. If someone comes along and makes an offer that lucrative and acceptable to our sensibilities, we might take it up. Till then, we‘re flying solo and loving it!” says a confident Gupta.