Consumers do not like generic communication these days: Subhasis Ghosh

Shrugging off the disruptions of the year gone by, businesses and agencies are looking for a strong revival in 2021. Over the next few weeks, Adgully – as part of our annual TRENDING NOW endeavour – will be presenting the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of 2020.

Subhasis Ghosh, Head – Marketing, Institutional Business and Alliances, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company, speaks about the changes in consumer behaviour due to the pandemic and be prepared to operate in an ecosystem that is wrought with uncertainties.

Outlook for 2021

Consumers do not like generic communication these days – they are more likely to block & unsubscribe the same. To stand out, we need to personalise our marketing efforts. Thus, hyper-personalisation is the way forward if one really wants to drive home a message with the consumers as it goes beyond language, culture and personality. And, this just doesn’t hold true for e-mail campaigns; we need to innovate for the entire customer journey across all touch points, product offerings and marketing campaigns so the consumers can identify with the message.

Great expectations

The year 2021 looks interesting. It’s going to be a race between the virus and the vaccine. From the media perspective, we saw that despite high viewership, traditional media decreased by more than 40% in H1. We expect Television, Print, OOH and Cinema to bounce back after a rough year, especially with tent-pole events like IPL, T20 World Cup, Olympics, Legislative & Assembly Elections spread across the year.

Key learnings from 2020

The biggest learning is that uncertainties are going to be a part of our lives. In our life time, COVID-19 may or may not be the last one. Be as it may, we have witnessed rapid migration to digital platforms driven by the pandemic, and launched tools/ solutions both for customers and distributors to serve them better. We need to be focused in our approach and at the same time be flexible and agile in our execution to meet customer expectation.