“Experiential marketing can acquire more loyal customers who can positively impact biz"

B2B business has always been a challenge for marketers to engage with their audience. They always need to look at something out of box that will entice their audience. In an effort to intensely engage with their audiences Tata Communications decided to go for a unique and well thought out experience centre that sought to deliver an immersive experience to their customers.

Tata Communications is a digital ecosystem enabler that powers today’s fast-growing digital economy. The Experience Centre is a space that brings to life the primary objective of the brand – a Digital Ecosystem Enabler that empowers the digital infrastructure of businesses. This centre provides for immersive and interactive moments, where customers can discover, touch, and truly feel the brand & get excited about the potential value of the TCL partnership to their business. What’s more, the work for Tata Communications, created and conceptualised by Landor & Fitch, has been well appreciated and has won several awards at various platforms.

In an exclusive interview with Adgully, Saugata Bagchi, Global Digital & Content Marketing Head, Tata Communications; Lulu Raghavan, Managing Director, Landor & Fitch; and Vishal Patankar, Executive Director Client Services, Landor & Fitch, speak about the entire concept and thinking right from the day the client briefed the agency to the final execution. They further added that this is just the beginning and this will be soon extended to other cities.

Experiential marketing and branding are important marketing tools. Could you throw some light on how clients view experiential marketing in today’s competitive environment?

Lulu Raghavan: A holistic customer experience encompasses every aspect of a company’s offerings. A positive experience leads to revenue growth, and so, is becoming a top priority for companies around the world. We’ve seen brands with strong customer experience achieve a revenue growth of 17% over a three-year period, proving that experiential marketing can acquire more loyal customers who, in turn, positively impact the business themselves or through their word of mouth. Especially post-COVID, the need to engage experientially and emotionally with customers has increased manifold. Brand-led customer experiences are paving the way for creating maximum business value. Businesses that identify and evaluate the role that each touchpoint plays in shaping brand perceptions and are strengthening relationships will reap rich rewards. When customer experience is defined, designed, and delivered through the lens of the brand, the differentiation increases.

Tell us more about Landor & Fitch’s association with Tata Communications? What was the brief shared by the client for their experience centre to create a strong digital ecosystem that will give the customers an immersive experience?

Vishal PatankarTata Communications powers the connected world. They bring key components of an organisation’s digital ecosystem to businesses across a huge breadth of industries. Solutions that make it possible for live F1 racing action to be simultaneously beamed to multi-millions of viewers with near zero lag. 

The Experience Centre was commissioned to demonstrate Tata Communications’ capabilities as a digital platform and solutions provider. Since their products are non-tangible digital solutions, our challenge was to establish a balance between the credibility and capability of the organisation. 

Through this balance, we needed to showcase their ability as a consultative problem-solver with customer-first approach and establish Tata Communications as a strategic partner for the industry with best in class services software defined connectivity, secure enterprise network, migration to cloud, managed security, mobility services and their media and entertainment services. 

The broad questions we had to solve for revolved around presenting Tata Communications as a solutions provider across industries and existing database of clients and developing a consistent experience both-online and offline.

What was the objective behind creating this experience centre? How did the idea come up for creating an experience centre both online and offline?

Saugata Bagchi: The Tata Communications Experience Centre is designed to deliver unique and curated journeys to our customers, partners, industry bodies and the media. The conversations are focused on:

  • Positioning Tata Communications as a Digital Ecosystem Enabler: Building awareness about the diversity of solutions the organisation has created and how they enable our customers to deliver Secure Connected Digital Experiences to their employees and customers.
  • Demonstrating the global presence of the organisation: The Phygital nature of the centre allows delivery of experiences at scale to visitors globally, while maintaining the exclusivity of each conversation.

How will this experience centre help Tata Communications?

Saugata Bagchi: Discussions in the Experience Centre help our visitors appreciate how critical, future-ready, and scalable networks, migration to cloud, enhanced cyber security measures, IoT solutions, and enterprise mobility are for their Digital Transformation journeys. These conversations help us further strengthen our existing business relationships and build new ones.

Conceptualising an experience centre from start to finish is a huge challenge. How did Landor & Fitch go about seamlessly finishing the task and what were some of the challenges you faced?

Vishal PatankarTata Communications was in a position to activate key components of the customer’s digital ecosystem and provide for a more consultative approach that would combine their current ecosystem for optimum output. To enable the shift from a product to a solutions provider, the first step was to understand and strategically analyse:

  • the robust offerings such as the Digital Ecosystem Enabler and the technology they offer;
  • how their relationship with existing clients has evolved;
  • the credibility they hold across industries and regions and their sales process globally.

We landed on a central idea of ‘The Summit’. The Summit implies a dual meaning – being at the highest point and meeting of leaders. We felt that the idea showcased the years of experience in delivering network services from a ‘vantage point’, as well as positioned Tata Communications as the link to achieving new heights for businesses around the world. This concept was strategically plotted through a customer journey which was then applied to the physical and online experience.

We did it all! We worked on positioning a well-established brand from a product to solutions provider, developed an experience for a non-tangible digital product, introduced innovation through digital touchpoints, and generated relevant dynamic content. After months of coordination between Tata Communications and the L&F APAC team, we managed to deliver an extraordinary experience amidst the global pandemic.

Lulu Raghavan: Traditional B2B experience centres demand customers come to them and focus on what they have to offer. But we wanted to shift the conversation away from being all about the experience centre to being all about their clients and what could be achieved for them. Our solution is a world first, revolutionising the traditional B2B experience centre, transforming it into a fully flexible kit of parts that meets you wherever you are, delivering a hyper-personalised experience that’s just right for you, IRL or online. Both physical and digital experiences merge seamlessly through the platforms, revolutionising the B2B sales process, making it boundaryless. Meaning that no matter where Tata Communications clients are, they can be too.

Landor & Fitch’s work for Tata Communications has won several awards at various forums. How do you feel after winning these accolades especially in the B2B category where getting recognition with awards is a challenge?

Vishal PatankarWorking for the Tata group, particularly in the B2B segment, has been a pleasure and an incredible experience. For an agency, it is always an honour when the work is recognised and awarded – especially one that came with myriad challenges due to the pandemic. Sincere thanks to Saugata Bagchi and Ajit Nair for their dedication, patience, and belief in L&F.

Saugata Bagchi: It feels great and is undoubtedly an outcome of the strong partnership exhibited between the brand and the L&F team. After nearly 18 months of hard work, done remotely, the Phygital project is being recognised. The fact that the awards have been won competing against top shelf brands, make them more special. Congratulations to every colleague who contributed to the project!

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