Brand building should be earliest priority for digital media: Experts

It is imperative for digital agencies to recognise that the world is securely wired to the internet revolution, and the agencies must urgently involve custodians to build brands. These were the salient conclusions of the deliberations of the Seventh Digital Marketing Roundtable, held in Mumbai under the aegis of IAMAI and eBay India, on November 18. At the roundtable, "Common mistakes of digital marketing' were analysed by, among others, Peshwa Acharya, Reliance Retail's marketing and consumer experience head; Lloyd Mathias, Tata Teleservices CMO; and Kartik Jain, ICICI Lombard's marketing and eChannel head.

The discussion, moderated by Ambareesh Murty, eBay India's country manager, yielded the undisputed opinion that digital media, especially the social networks, would draw higher spends from FMCG brands in the near future.

"Digital media has matured over the past ten years," said Manish Vij, the co-founder of Quasar Media and one of the panellists, who opened the session. "Now marketers need to involve digital media when presenting creative thoughts. It is also high time that digital agencies had brand custodians." He stressed that the digital medium should be ready at all times to intercept people searching for products. "But first, we need to change the way we think," he said

Tata Teleservices' Mathias agreed with Vij's observations on brand building. "One of the challenges for marketers is that the digital medium is very result-oriented," Mathias said. "There is a whole new opportunity within digital marketing to build one's brand. The essence of building the brand value, therefore, has slightly diminished. So it is important to have the digital team plugged into the brand thought."

Jain, of ICICI Lombard, emphasised the significance of understanding consumer traits. "There is a need to consider cost per acquisition, to use analytical tools," Jain said. He said it had been established that searches worked better than content advertising. "We need to understand customer search behaviour," he said. "It is also learnt that text ads do better than banner advertising and that e-marketing is just one element in the marketing mix."

As for the cost per acquisition, Vij commented that sometimes clients became so obsessed by it that they lost sight of digital media's strengths, on which Mathias later elaborated. "Digital media has a huge role to play for FMCG brands," Mathias said. "Marketers should start looking at digital media as a platform for their brands because it has the ability to make brands come alive."

The participants' unanimous observations were summarised by eBay India's Murty, the moderator. "The panel has agreed on the need for a balance in ROI with strong resonance on brands being built on consumer insight," he said. "Social media is one of the areas where brands can fit in well. And though internet in India still constitutes a very small market, the medium can no longer be ignored.