Adgully Exclusive | The journey is a joy: Communicate2's Vivek Bhargava

Communicate 2 initially began its operations in the year 1997 as a web development agency. In the year 2004, when SEM (Search Engine Marketing) caught on the team decided to venture into this field. Since then Communicate 2 has evolved as its expertise lies in the field of contextual advertising, lead generation and ROI solutions, catering to some of the largest clients in India and abroad.

The company is now the dominant player in Banking, Financial Service and Insurance (BFSI) sectors in India. Currently Communicate 2 is providing digital solutions to ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, Times Financial, IndiaFirst, DSP BlackRock, Cleartrip, Casino Royale Goa, etc.

Talking about the initial few hiccups, Vivek Bhargava, Managing Director, Communicate 2, tells Adgully, "Initially digital media had a very limited reach, hence digital presence for brands was not an integral part of the branding exercise. We have also witnessed that during the initial stages a client's investment on digital media would be as low as Rs 1 lakh. Later, all the mid-years were spent in evangelising and creating awareness about the medium itself and it has certainly paid off. Now digital media has become an integral part of a consumer's life."

So as the company steadily grew and charted it way to progress, there have been quite a few milestones for the fast growing unit. He adds, "In the early days it was a little difficult to convince the large clients to work with us because we had just started off and our team was fairly small. Convincing big brands and getting them on board as our clients was the first milestone for us. Second milestone was when we became one of the largest Search Engine Marketing agency in India. Moreover we have grown in terms of our team strength and we are also producing thought leadership white papers from time to time."

Bhargava does acknowledge that digital media has faced a few hits in the past but he quickly adds that he is in this business because he is extremely passionate about digital media. So even if hard times camouflage his path for awhile, the journey is a joy. "When for the first time the ".com' trend went bust, we suffered some marginal loses but we learnt that probably we had oversold ourselves to the clients. Taking on from there with our passion and drive to provide digital solutions, when the second recession arrived we made it a point that we spread our reach across other categories of brands and get more clients," he adds.

Bhargava further points out that brand building across the digital media is really catching up. He says, "Content is a very important part of brand building, so instead of spending lot of money on paid media, spend a huge amount of your investment on content creation. Create a perfect mix of content which starts a conversation with your consumers and promote that content. Then gradually one should focus on maximising efficiencies than minimising them. So rather than targeting the traditional category defined audiences, identify your target audiences and then focus on reaching out to your core TG better."

He further adds that "content is king' when a brand decides to start a conversation with its consumers. He also points out that hearing is an important mechanism too; consumers might not drop in to say positive things only. Some consumers might have negative remarks to make, and so a brand should hear it out and further the conversation to a positive note.

Moreover Bhargava says that digital media is seeing a lot of investment from clients. "We are also trying to create awareness about the various digital platforms amongst the senior level management teams of various brands," he adds.

While signing off Bhargava points out that talent acquisition is a challenge right now and that the company has to invest a lot of money on training and talent retention. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]