Tag: Snapchat

GUEST ARTICLE: The future of brand marketing using influencers

Mumbai: ‘Influencer marketing is the future,’ ‘Influencer marketing helps brands reach millions,’ and ‘Influencer marketing has limitless potential.’ We see such statements across articles, news, blogs, etc. As we dissect the relevance and future of influencer marketing, let’s clarify what it is.

Simply put, influencer marketing uses content creators on social media to craft engaging promotional content to drive traffic and conversions, boosting the brand’s growth and revenue. But is it true? Can we assume that brands can turn towards influencer marketing as the marketing industry’s future? And if so, how is this shift getting suitable returns? How is the integration happening across different mediums? How is it a reliable method of generating high ROI? Finally, and most importantly, what is influencer marketing for brands? In this article, we will unravel this boundless strategy.

One strategy – multiple purposes served

Influencer marketing, with its multifaceted benefits, serves more than one purpose. Some of the objectives of brand marketing with influencers can range from:

1. Building brand awareness: Influencers can amp up the brand positioning and visibility for their respective followers, especially if they’re niche-based with a highly engaged audience.

2. Increase reach: Influencers can help brands reach broader and more relevant audiences across cities or countries. This also helps the audience connect strongly with the brand that their favourite influencers associate with.

3. Drive sales/traffic: Influencers can help brands get more qualified leads and traffic with their content.

4. Improve brand image: Influencers are usually considered experts or key leaders in their niche or industry, and their followers highly value their opinions. When an influencer posts something good about or for the brand, this boosts the brand’s credibility and image.

Sass and Sales are on the same side now-

The evolution of digital marketing has taken over people’s digital privacy, so it’s safe to say that most of the expensive advertisements you’re pushing forward to your potential customers are not even reaching them. As a result, people are now paying to stop receiving advertisements. So it’s no surprise that the marketing industry witnessed the rise of influencer marketing as the hero of marketing, helping brands reach their potential customers on social media platforms with quirky, engaging, and relatable promotional content. Leading creators have mastered the subtle and sassy ways of promoting products or services. Be it Bhuvan Bam’s Myntra collaboration, RJ Karishma’s Hotstar collaboration or KYRA’s boAt collaboration, the content doesn’t just reach millions of people, it also helps people connect more with the brand. They feel the urge to buy the products recommended by their favourite influencer, driving high ROI in sales, website traffic, instals, brand visibility, awareness, and so much more.

Pay Less, Earn More? Yes, that’s on the table

Tired of paying for ads and marketing promises that never yield good returns? Influencer marketing has successfully established itself as a cost-effective strategy. How? Here’s an example: Micro-influencers charge as low as Rs 2,000 for content that reaches 50k potential customers. At the same time, macro influencers charge Rs 40,000 or more for content that reaches five million potential customers. Moreover, influencer marketing can be customised to suit your brand’s budget, ensuring your brand spends less and gains more.

Not just that, some influencers even prefer to do barter campaigns, meaning your brand can give some products to the influencer in exchange for a promotional post for the product.

Rule the digital world? Yes, along with customers’ hearts and pockets!

The digital crowd is hooked on their social media platforms throughout the day. Be it Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. However, the digital crowd is smart, so the selling process has to be more innovative. Customers are no longer attracted to advertisements promoting anything and everything. Brand marketing with influencers can be considered the liveliest form of marketing by simultaneously capturing millions across the globe. Let’s check out some of the leading influencer campaigns across different social media platforms to better understand them.

1. YouTube influencer marketing: Youtube influencers specialise in different niches. Collaborating with YouTubers for brand marketing can add value for your target audience while driving higher conversions. Some YouTube brand campaigns with influencers include live-shopping, review videos, and narrative and reaction videos, among others. Case in point, Open Book launched a regional campaign with influencers to familiarise the brand’s new products with its target audience. The content revolved around experts talking about the products and their solutions.

2. Instagram influencer marketing: With Instagram, brand marketing with influencers usually focuses on campaigns that aim to earn brand mentions, product reviews, content sharing, and contests. With the rising popularity of Instagram in the last decade, the creator pool has successfully implemented content curation and creation strategies that boost brand awareness, sales, brand visibility and more. Case in point: Paragon collaborated with mega influencers to target the youth audience and depict the brand as the go-to footwear for all occasions. The content revolved around reviews and product experiences, with a hint of humour.

3. Snapchat influencer marketing: Snapchat marketing with influencers is often considered the ace of social media due to the high rates of conversion, genuine interaction, and two-way content engagement allure it holds. Case in point: In 2020, Dunkin’ Donuts launched the most extensive campaign on Snapchat. To put a smile on its customers’ faces, it launched a campaign on National Donut Day. The brand’s Snapchat channel was taken over by influencers who posted snaps from Dunkin’ Donut outlets. To enhance their customers’ experience, they also devised a “Geofilter” that visitors could access after signing up with the store, driving high outlet visits.

Over the years, we have witnessed brand marketing with influencers on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, etc. It is safe to say that the trend has seen a glorious rise, and the future of brand marketing with influencers is ripe with possibilities and opportunities. Most brands have started adopting and adapting as per the latest trends and updates, staying in-vogue with campaign strategies with the “WOW” factor for the digital crowd, like boAt with its first-ever campaign with virtual influencer KYRA or L’Oreal revamping its influencer marketing strategies in a relatable way. One thing is sure: influencer marketing plays a vital role in the growth trajectory of brands. It won’t be long before most leading brands shift their strategies to adopt influencer marketing as a core strategy.

The author of this article is The Good Creator Co. co-founder Rahul Singh.

October 29, 2022
MTV India & Fully Faltoo announce a strategic partnership with Snap Inc

Mumbai: Viacom18’s Youth, Music and English entertainment (YME) cluster announced a strategic content partnership with Snap Inc. The cluster aims to provide its clutter-breaking content and innovations from Fully Faltoo and MTV India to Snapchat’s widespread user-community.

Snapchatters will get to enjoy snackable content and snackable clips of select content across genres and a variety of youth fiction and non-fiction shows—from Parodize Station and Bad Breakups from multi-format content destination Fully Faltoo, to pop-culture and genre-defining MTV offerings such as Splitsvilla, Hustle 2.0, new seasons of action-adventure reality show Roadies and more.

Speaking on the partnership with Snap Inc., Viacom18 YME cluster digital partnership lead Tarun Saxena said, “As we continue to scale up, we aim to close the fragmentation of touchpoints and offer our cluster’s rapidly growing content inventory to our audience through a multiplatform strategy. Engaging with the dynamic generation of Snapchatters, we see a great opportunity to achieve meaningful reach and deepen engagement with the youth across yet another canvas.”

Snap director media-partnerships-APAC Kanishk Khanna added, “At Snap, we are committed to localising the app experience for our Indian community and driving relevant, interesting content for them. Our partnership with Viacom18’s Youth, Music and Entertainment cluster will add value to Snapchatters and reinforce our local-first content strategy.”

As short-form content continues to permeate and significantly redefine mainstream consumption, snackable content has become the mainstay of audience engagement and transmedia storytelling. Riding this wave and surpassing its own benchmarks with a swiftly growing content library, the YME cluster is all set to revolutionise the category with unique digital partnerships.

August 3, 2022
Global ad expenditure to grow 8% in 2022: Zenith’s Report

Mumbai: Global advertising expenditure is expected to grow 8 per cent in 2022, according to Zenith’s latest Advertising Expenditure Forecasts report, which was released on Wednesday. This represents a minor downgrade from a little over 9 per cent growth rate provided by Zenith in December 2021.

The Winter Olympics, the mid-term US elections, and the soccer World Cup, which will be held for the first time in the most advertising-intensive period of the year, the run-up to Christmas, will all help to boost growth. Faced with this difficult comparison, the growth will slow down to 5.4 per cent in 2023, before the Summer Olympics and US presidential elections help boost it to 7.6 per cent in 2024.

Zenith’s forecasts for North America, MENA and Western Europe this year are unchanged at 12 per cent, 7 per cent and 6 per cent growth respectively. Latin America was downgraded slightly from 9 per cent to 8 per cent, but the Asia Pacific was upgraded from 6 per cent to 7 per cent, thanks to a very strong performance from India.

Severe disruption in Russia and its closest trading partners after the invasion of Ukraine will lead to a 26 per cent decline in ad spend in Central & Eastern Europe, even though most other markets in the region will continue to grow.

Ad spend has remained on track despite the macroeconomic headwinds that emerged this year. High inflation, concentrated in essentials like heating, petrol, and food, is forcing consumers to reprioritise their spending, particularly the less well-off, and has led to a drop in consumer confidence.

But for now, consumer spending continues to grow, as consumers demonstrate their strong appetite for the travel and entertainment experiences that were denied to them over the pandemic. Business confidence is generally high, corporate investment is rising, and there is little evidence of widespread cost-cutting.

India to lead growth with 21 per cent expansion this year

Global ad spend is expected to increase by $58 billion in 2022, rising to $781 billion from $723 billion in 2021. Most of the new ad dollars will come from the US, which is forecast to expand by $33 billion in 2022, driven by continued, rapid digital transformation, accounting for 57 per cent of all the money added to the ad market this year.

China, Japan, and the UK come next, supplying 9.1 per cent, 6.2 per cent, and 5.8 per cent of new ad dollars, respectively. India is in fifth place, accounting for 4.6 per cent of the growth in ad spend this year, even though it is only the 12th largest ad market. India will be the fastest-growing market in percentage terms, expanding by 20.8 per cent, driven by election advertising and the resumption of festivals that were cancelled at the height of the pandemic.

Zenith India chief executive officer Jai Lala said, “India continues to have a robust adex growth on the back of digital and TV. Key categories continue to be led by FMCG and the new app-based clients in the area of fintech, edutech, food tech amongst others.”

Higher prices in traditional channels accelerate shift to digital alternatives

The sustained growth in demand from advertisers is pushing up media inflation, particularly in television, where the supply of audiences is falling steadily as viewers switch to alternatives. Price rises vary widely for different audiences in different countries, but the global average cost of television advertising across all audiences is expected to rise by 11 per cent-13 per cent this year.

Online video prices are expected to increase by about 7 per cent, although in this case the supply of audiences is rising. Other digital channels where supply is climbing and volumes are flexible are inflating only modestly, with three per cent average price rises forecast for social media and other digital displays.

Out-of-home and radio prices will go up about four per cent this year, while print prices will remain stable, because demand for advertising in printed publications is falling as rapidly as readership.

Brands that simply buy broad audiences to reach targets will not be able to avoid having to spend more to reach the same audiences. But brands that use first-party data to identify their most profitable customers, and combine it with third-party data to target their best prospects in the most efficient channels, will be able to mitigate much of the effect of media inflation.

The huge and growing volume of digital content consumption is making it more effective for brands to scale by aggregating digital audiences. Zenith predicts 62 per cent of ad budgets will be spent on digital media in 2022, up from 59 per cent in 2021, and that this proportion will reach 65 per cent in 2024.

Zenith Global Chief Strategy Officer Ben Lukawski said, “In a world where trading is becoming dominated by auctions, competitive advantage is achieved not by scale, but by data.”

“Inflation will hit cheap reach buyers hard, but brands that make smart use of their data will manage costs and grow their business at the same time,” he added.

Online video overtakes social media as the fastest-growing channel

Online video is now predicted to be the fastest-growing channel over the next three years: Zenith forecasts it will grow 15.4 per cent a year on average between 2021 and 2024, driven by the rapid development of connected TV, ad-funded video-on-demand, streaming and other video formats.

Connected TV is now a mainstream video platform in the US, with a higher penetration than cable TV, and is becoming established in other markets, especially in Western Europe and Asia Pacific. The introduction of cheaper ad-funded tiers by SVOD services like Netflix and Disney+ will boost growth further by providing new high-quality environments for brand communication.

Mixed video-on-demand models that combine subscriptions with advertising will also help online video audiences continue to grow across the world by recruiting consumers unwilling or unable to afford the growing roster of subscription-only services. Zenith expects online video ad spend to rise from $62 billion in 2021 to $95 billion in 2024.

Online video will overtake social media, the fastest-growing channel for the previous nine years. Social media ad spend (which includes video ads in social media feeds) is still forecast to grow at an average rate of 15.1 per cent a year between 2021 and 2024, propelled by rising competition among platforms that is driving continued innovation on formats and closer integration with commerce.

Meta’s share of social media ad spend outside China has been falling steadily since it peaked at 89 per cent in 2019, reaching 85 per cent in 2021 as TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest gained market share. Zenith forecasts social media ad spend will rise from $153 billion in 2021 to $187 billion in 2022, when it will account for 25 per cent of expenditure on advertising across all media.

Cinema and out-of-home will take third and fourth place among the fastest-growing media, averaging 11.9 per cent and 8 per cent annual growth between 2021 and 2024, respectively.

These are still recovering from the deep losses they suffered in 2020 and 2021 when cinemas were closed, and consumers were confined indoors. Cinema and out-of-home have a lot of ground to make up, however, and are taking their time to do so. Many brands that were forced to find alternatives, often digital, have found them effective, and see little need to shift their budgets back again.

Zenith expects cinema ad spend to reach $3.9 billion in 2024, well below its pre-pandemic level of $4.8 billion in 2019, while out-of-home will reach $45.0 billion in 2024, exceeding the $42.3 billion it achieved in 2019 for the first time.

Linear television advertising will grow by 1.1 per cent a year on average between 2021 and 2024, from $173.6 billion to $179.2 billion, as price rises continue to compensate for loss of audiences. This ongoing decline in reach and efficiency will drive brands to digital channels, however, including online video. Television’s share of total ad spend is forecast to fall from 24.6 per cent in 2021 to 20.8 per cent in 2024, while online video’s share increases from 8.8 per cent to 11.1 per cent.

“Online video is growing by creating new opportunities for building brand awareness, complemented by social media’s capacity for cost-effective targeting with low barriers to entry,” said Zenith Head of Forecasting Jonathan Barnard. “Online video is steadily narrowing the spending gap with television, and will be half as large as television by 2024.”

June 8, 2022
Punjabi most popular regional language, Korean leads international: Iplix

Mumbai: Punjabi is the most popular regional language, while Korean takes the lead as the most preferred international language in India, revealed Iplix Content Consumption Survey. 52.5 per cent of respondents spend an average of two-four hours per day on social media. Among the platforms, maximum time was spent on YouTube, followed by Instagram and Snapchat, the study further revealed.

With the growing affinity for regional languages, Punjabi emerged as the most preferred regional language with 24.3 per cent of users opting for it. Marathi was at 9.9 per cent. Among popular international languages, Korean took the top spot, validating K-Pop’s craze in India. Comedy was the most popular category, followed by travel and technology. Infotainment (43.3 per cent) and gaming (31.1 per cent) were the most-consumed categories.

52.5 per cent of respondents spend an average of two-four hours per day on social media. YouTube took the lead in ‘time spent on platforms’ (87.5 per cent), followed by Instagram and Snapchat. In further bifurcation, 57.3 per cent of people consume 5-15 minutes-long content on YouTube, and 54.3 per cent consume short-form content (reels) the most on Instagram.

Influencer marketing and talent management agency Iplix’s Content Consumption Survey was carried out with over 14600 respondents, the majority of which came from metro cities (40.6 per cent), followed by Tier-II cities at 35.2 per cent. 86.8 per cent of the respondents were Gen-Z (less than 25 years of age).

“Creator Economy is growing at a scale which none of us could have imagined and content is the biggest contributing factor behind it,” stated Iplix Media LLP co-founder Neel Gogia. “We at Iplix Media believe in the power of content and are constantly working with brands and content creators to bring the best quality content to the audience. This content consumption survey is an initiative towards furthering the same vision and mission. We came up with it to help our stakeholders- brands and content creators, understand the audience and their changing preferences better.”

February 23, 2022
Snapchat premieres new Creator Shows with Anushka Sen & Vir Das

New Delhi: Snap has announced the launch of its first local and original Indian Creator shows produced by Qyuki and featuring television actress Anushka Sen and comedian Vir Das.

Powered by relatable characters made for Snapchat’s mobile first audience, the shows will air exclusively on Snapchat Discover. They were first announced in October 2020 alongside a slate of other exclusive and Snap Original content.

In What’s On My Plate, Sen will be seen making some of her favourite dishes in the kitchen, whilst taking on a series of cooking challenges set by her ‘Food Wheel’ Snapchat Lens. The weekly series premieres 19 June with new episodes coming out every Saturday and will feature special appearances from Sen’s family and friends who sample and rate her food creations.

In Vir Das – The Most Epic Max Show, Das will take on seemingly impossible and new challenges, pushing his boundaries and trying different things. Each challenge is either ‘Epic’ or a complete ‘Fail’, but either way, he makes it a fun learning experience. The weekly series premieres 24 June with episodes coming out every Thursday and each episode will give viewers a glimpse of the real Das and a sneak peek into his life and friends.

Like all Shows on Snapchat, episodes average three to five minutes in length, are full-screen vertical and paced for mobile. Each series is available to more than 70 million viewers in India who have watched Snapchat Shows in the last year. As of March 2021, Snap’s daily active user base in India grew by over 100 per cent every quarter for the last five quarters, it said on Thursday.

“Shows on Snapchat are designed to both inform and entertain: created to reflect and celebrate the diverse voices, experiences and passions of the global community of Snapchatters. Snap’s unique original programming is locally nuanced for the Indian viewers. We’re thrilled to launch these two new Creator shows – each one a window into the lives of some of India’s most popular creators,” said head of Snap Originals, Vanessa Guthrie.

June 17, 2021
Snapchat India ropes in Poonam Nikam as communications lead

KOLKATA: Snapchat India has roped in Poonam Nikam as communications lead. Prior to this, Nikam was associated with ByteDance as global communication manager.

In her long career, she has worked with renowned companies including Airtel, Sony Music Entertainment. Nikam is an alumna of St Xavier’s College and a graduate from the Symbiosis College of Arts & Commerce.

Snapchat which has reached over 500 million monthly active users has seen over 100 per cent (year-over-year) growth in daily active users (DAUs) in each of the last five quarters, announced recently.

Nikam is a professional specialising in consumer, corporate, crisis and internal communications across consumer tech, music, lifestyle and telecom sectors. She is a believer in adopting new age tools in communication in order to engage with different external stakeholders, a passionate storyteller with a constant hunger for developing engaging and enthralling stories.

May 24, 2021
Snapchat taps into the TikTok market with ‘Spotlight’

MUMBAI: Snapchat has rolled out its own version of the short video format platform, ‘Spotlight’, presumably for a slice of the TikTok pie in India. While the multimedia messaging app had launched the feature with its own dedicated tab in the app in November last year in 11 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia, it has only debuted it in India now.

Just when we thought there were too many players in the user-generated video content market, Spotlight entered the scene with a dedicated tab to the format in the Snapchat app. The videos – or Spotlight snaps, as they are referred to – surfaced in this section and can be up to 60 seconds long. To entice people to post snaps regularly, it will even pay creators to post viral content on the platform.

The new feature will piggyback on Snapchat's popularity in the market to gain new users and tap into the void left behind by TikTok’s ban in the region. However it will be competing with Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, MX TakaTak, Bolo Indya, Chingari, Roposo, Moj, to mention a few.

Snapchat’s transition into the short-video space is a clear recognition of the success of TikTok’s short-form viral videos. Instagram too had acknowledged the Chinese app’s popularity with its launch of Reels in August last year. However, unlike TikTok, Spotlight snaps won’t feature a public comments section, and users' profiles are private by default. Snapchatters can, therefore, shield their accounts from public view while still posting content in Spotlight. In fact, anyone can submit their snaps to Spotlight for others to view; you just have to tap ‘Spotlight’ when posting to send it to the section.

Snap’s ‘$1m a day’ program – where the company says it’ll divvy up $1 million between the most popular creators on the app per day – will also be available in India, celebrating and rewarding the creativity of local Indian Snapchatters and offering a chance for creators to earn a share of a $1 million daily fund. This means if someone has a particularly viral video, they might earn a large chunk of the $1 million pot. It doesn’t matter whether that person has a massive number of subscribers; the amount people receive is primarily based on unique views compared to other snaps that day. Users can continue to earn from their video if it’s popular for multiple days at a time.

The videos you’ll see in the section can be up to 60 seconds long and, as of right now, cannot be watermarked. That means people can’t just download their (or others’) viral TikToks and upload them to Snapchat. Snap is instead trying to encourage people to use its own creation tools and prevent monetisation fraud by keeping people in its app. Once you tap into Spotlight, you’ll see snaps programmed to what Snapchat’s algorithm thinks you might enjoy. Spotlight surfaces the most entertaining Snaps from the Snapchat community all in one place and will become tailored to each Snapchatter over time based on their preferences and favourites.

March 17, 2021
Donald Trump barred from Facebook ‘indefinitely’

NEW DELHI: Facebook has indefinitely banned US president Donald Trump from its platform after he tried to incite violence at the US Capitol earlier this week.

Mincing no words, a far cry from the social media giant’s prior treatment of Trump with kid gloves, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the president intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.

“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” he wrote in a community post. As a result, he said, Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram would extend blocks on Trump’s ability to post “until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining…

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, 7 January 2021

Trump is also banned from using Instagram.

Earlier in the day, when Trump made false claims about election fraud and the legitimacy of the next US president Joe Biden, nearly all social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat — locked his account for a brief period. Facebook imposed a ban for 24 hours and Twitter for 12 hours. The latter also asked the US president to remove three tweets for severe violation of its civic integrity policy, and failing to do so would lead to permanent suspension of his account.

Trump’s Twitter account had been unlocked at the time of filing this report.

The diverging actions showed how social media companies were still grappling with how to moderate one of their most powerful and popular users. Trump has routinely used his online mouthpieces to attack others, rile up supporters and disseminate disinformation, and these social media platforms had offered platitudes of “upholding free speech” to defend their inaction in the matter of not curtailing such provocative posts.

YouTube had also removed the video where Trump told his supporters who had broken into the Capitol ‘I love you’ and described the agitators as patriots. The platform also cited that the video violated its policies.

The march was partly organised online, including on Facebook groups and pages. Facebook has mentioned that it was looking for and removing content that had incited or supported the storming of Capitol Hill. The violence at the US Capitol led to the death on one person and several injured.

January 8, 2021
Httpool APAC names Aatsi Desai Jasani as creative agency partner for Facebook

NEW DELHI: Httpool, the largest international partner of major media platforms representing Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and others, has announced the appointment of Aatsi Desai Jasani as Httpool APAC creative agency partner for Facebook. She will report to Httpool APAC co-founder and regional managing director Sunny Nagpal.

Httpool is Facebook's authorised sales partner in eleven selected markets across Asia and Europe committed to providing a first-rate service to Facebook's existing and new clients in these markets.

"As Facebook authorized sales partner in 11 European and Asia markets, we are committed to providing extensive cross-functional support to all agencies and their brands, as well as the SMB clients. With a proven track record of driving creative solutions for brands across the APAC region, Aatsi is perfectly suited to deliver growth locally and regionally for those clients navigating the new opportunities with Facebook. Aatsi's expertise within the creative advertising space will help us provide that additional brand marketing service and leverage Facebook in a much extensive way" commented Sunny Nagpal.

On the appointment, Desai said, "Creative is one of the key drivers for good performance of Facebook campaigns, especially with larger audiences consuming content on mobile devices. At a time when content is growing and people’s attention span shortens, the right creatives for the right target audience can be a decisive factor in the success of a campaign. I am excited to be a part of this amazing and highly energized team at Httpool, and I am looking forward to doing some amazing work for the Facebook family of apps across the APAC region."

Desai has more than 15 years of experience in branding, advertising, and digital marketing. Before joining Httpool, she headed the Brand Solutions team at Affle – India, MENA & APAC region, leading their creative and technology business.

November 24, 2020
Impact of Covid2019 on global ad spends on Indian ad industry

The Covid2019 pandemic has presented serious challenges when it comes to stabilising the overall economy amidst lockdown, one of which is changing industry dynamics. Covid2019 has impacted the way brands, agencies and various other businesses work which disrupted the ever-evolving advertising and marketing industry. The world’s leading economies have witnessed a downfall in the revenue as the businesses are shut. While there is no handbook that one can follow in such crisis, it is essential for advertisers to re-calibrate their entire approach and connect with the right target audience.

Since people spend maximum time staying at home during the quarantine, connecting with them through digital media is convenient. In such cases, advertiser’s needs to know the tactic of how to keep their audiences engaged through right media platforms and how to make the brands invest through them.

Are brands taking a responsible route? Shifts that were witnessed

Restrictions on travel due to lockdown have posed to be a threat for Out-of-home (OOH) advertising and seems to be a medium that has no realistic lockdown replacement as it has majorly been impacting revenues. But what has actively taken over the current scenario during these tough times and has saved brands from sinking is the way online advertising is responding to it. Brands have started focusing on alternative ways of boosting their businesses online by taking a different approach towards dealing with the current scenario.

Is global ad spends sinking?

Spending has now made a shift from the traditional means of advertising from newspaper ads, hoardings, printed pamphlets etc., to digitally active platforms. These include social media like Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and also digital OTT Platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Voot etc.

Global ads are expected to sink this year as the pandemic has led to dip in travel and tourism and entertainment industry among others, all of which has impacted demand. This change in the global ad spending is what is been highlighted in the way brands have chosen to spend particularly on platforms as a means to increase their sales during and post lockdown. One of the major reasons why ad spends are sinking is because of the attitudinal shift in consumer behaviour. Most advertising companies will experience negative impacts on their business as ad revenues are dropping at a faster pace.

Even when sales are at halt because of the pandemic, what was to be noticed is the way how brands did not stop advertising. They continued to create awareness through digital platforms by posting TVCs and coming up with creative ways on Instagram pages which strongly depicted how brands are posing to be with their audience even during these tough times.

Creatives from various brands like Metro, Mochi, Burger King, Swiggy, Zomato, Audi etc., have found different ways and means to stay connected with their audiences on typical topics like lockdown, quarantine, isolated, pandemic while playing around strategically with these terms. Changing their logos to promote social distancing, etc brands like Dominos, Swiggy, Big Basket have even started safely delivering groceries by following WHO's guidelines at your door steps to hold credibility in the eyes of its consumers.

Impact on Indian advertising industry

While industry is actively dealing with the challenges of OOH during these challenging times, advertisers have now realised that digital progression is the only savior. Digital is the best medium for advertisers to reach their end users. We can already see a shift in Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale, Myntra’s end of reason sale, etc has always happened in a particular way, but have a possibility of changing due to the crises.

(The author is co-founder and managing director, Makani Creatives. The views expressed are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)

June 23, 2020