MUMBAI: India will have 410 million millennials by 2020, who will spend $330 billion annually. The Quint, the preferred news and views platform for Indian millennials recently launched its Marketing to Millennials series of workshops to address the challenge of helping brands successfully reach millennials. The first workshop was held in Bangalore on March 26, with future editions planned for Delhi and Mumbai.
As a successful media brand focused on millennials, The Quint has gained unique insights into the millennial segment and the idea behind Marketing to Millennials was to share these insights with the larger community of brand marketers and blend views and perspectives to catalyse a progressive vision.
The key highlight of the workshop was a panel discussion with eminent marketing and content specialists such Gaurav Jeet Singh, GM, Media Services, South Asia at Unilever, Umang Bedi, President of Daily Hunt, Dhanya Rajendran, Editor In Chief at The News Minute, Siddharth Nambiar, Head, Amazon Prime Now and Sudarshan Gangrade, Founder of Lo! Foods.
Ankit Dhadda, Head of Marketing at The Quint& BloombergQuint, moderated the panel discussion that debated ‘The Word, The Visual, The Viral’ – Speakingthe language of Millennials. The panel engaged with a host of issues around marketing to millennials, ranging from whether social media engagement among millennials was an indication of buying behaviour, hyperlocal content and targeting, consumption patterns and language preferences of millennials, handling social media backlash like that faced by Surf Excel recently and building loyalty among millennial customers who are traditionally seen as fickle.
Commenting on the panel discussion, Umang Bedi, President, DailyHunt, said, “A key take away for me was that short or long does not matter (in content). Rather, content has to engage, speak the lingo of millennials and feel their vibe. Connections have to be deep, impactful and honest, and not based on time spent but in impact created.”
Sudarshan Gangrade, founder of Lo!Foods added, “At Marketing to Millennials, we gained some very practical insights into issues that matter to millennials and how start-ups as well as large firms can solve a very relevant marketing problem."
After the panel discussion, the workshop featured brief, yet high-impact presentations on how social media and innovation impact the youth marketing landscape, before concluding with a live brand solutions brief shared by Vineet Singh, head of Marketing, WeWork.The audience of close to 80 marketers then brainstormed around ideal communication strategies for shared workspaces. The winning team won hampers from The Quint & WeWork.
Commenting on the success of the event, Ritu Kapur, CEO, The Quint, said, “With this workshop, our presentiment about the need for a platform for youth marketing is confirmed! This was only the first edition and we are grateful to all the panellists and attendees who have given us valuable feedback that will only help us to make Marketing to Millennials bigger and better.”
