Giving an immersive & experiential delight has been Dolby’s forte: Sameer Seth

Dolby, a leader in immersive entertainment experiences, has released a consumer campaign in India that aims to educate consumers about the Dolby difference available on mobile, on audio wearables, or in the living room. The campaign is based on the insight that – if you haven’t seen it or heard it in Dolby, you’ve missed out on the complete experience. The creative direction creates a sense of FOMO in our audience to pique their interest, making them realise that their experience is incomplete without Dolby. With the realisation that you don’t just hear and see, you experience and feel entertainment come alive in Dolby, the campaign hopes to induce the purchase of a Dolby-enabled device – #BuyInDolby.

In conversation with Adgully, Sameer Seth, Director, Marketing - India, Dolby Laboratories, elaborates on the recent campaign, ‘Dolby Mein Dekha or Suna Kya’, the co-marketing strategy followed by Dolby, providing Dolby experiences everwhere, and more.

What is the creative thought behind the ‘Dolby Mein Suna Kya’ campaign? How was this creative proposition arrived at?

Our single goal for Dolby Atmos as a brand is to make entertainment come alive. This campaign – ‘Dolby mein Suna Kya or Dekha Kya’ – tries to educate Indian consumers on life-like experiences that are available in Dolby on noble audio wearable devices or even in the living room. Eventually, the objective of this campaign is to induce purchase of Dolby-enabled device. The creative direction we have taken in this campaign is to create a sense of FOMO in the audience and making them realise that their experience is incomplete without Dolby. Once this realisation is done, that you don’t only hear the content, but feel and experience the content, entertainment comes alive in Dolby. We use #buyindolby as the CTA you’ll see in the film.

What was the creative brief given to the agency and how did you come up with the idea?

There were three consumer studies that we had done that gave us the confidence to do this campaign.

The first study shows that consumers recognise that high-quality sound and visual experiences can have a huge impact on their viewing experiences and can make their viewing even more exciting. We have seen this from consumer study that consumers of late are investing in two prompt upgrades – first, they are updating their devices by buying better phones, better televisions, and better PCs because they are consuming a lot of content; secondly, they are investing in upgrading their subscriptions to services. Earlier, you were using a device with a Standard Definition subscription to a service, now you are upgrading to a High Definition multi-device that supports Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

The third study that we have done is when we speak to our partners, like e-commerce or estores where we listed Dolby as a brand, they are told that the keyword search for Dolby while buying any device is really high. The whole creative thought behind this campaign is based on this colloquial reference that we make to our friend, like “Tune Yeh Suna kya or Dekha Kya”.

How has Dolby’s performance been in 2022 in terms of revenues and growth?

Dolby collaborates with ecosystem partners. First, we work with content creators to begin our journey. We have content creators like Film Makers, Musicians, and Music Mix Engineers. Second is the delivery platform that delivers the content. We do a lot of work with broadcasters, streaming services, Audio Visual Sets, and podcast sites.

The third piece is playback when a consumer sees it. When they experience it on any gadget, there is a huge ecosystem that goes in and that is where we focus and put a lot of our effort in collaborations and partnerships to deliver the best experience.

If the content is created in Dolby, Delivered in Dolby, and Played Back in Dolby, then you get a complete experience. That is what we have been doing over the years.

Our business model from a revenue point of view is that we offer A/V technology as a license to technology OEMS.

What are the focus areas for Dolby Atmos?

In India, our music journey started with AR Rahman, when he created 99 songs music album just before the pandemic in Dolby Atmos. We work with all musicians in India and globally. Films that release in India are also the major focus of Dolby, and the music in the film. As we already mentioned, Creation, Delivering and Playback are our major focus areas.

Many audio podcast sites like Near Shot, Awaaz.com, are associated with Dolby Atmos. You can also experience Dolby Atmos Services when you are flying with Spice Entertainment. So, this is how we operate from music perspective, and we also focus on sports, movies, and many other standards in same way.

Giving an immersive and experiential delight has been Dolby’s forte.

How are you strengthening this offering in an era of the Metaverse and AR/ VR devices?

You can get Dolby Experiences everywhere, like in your home, while you are driving, and in all forms of content as well. Technology is such that it helps; we believe that wherever our consumer is we should reach out to them. You can get Dolby’s experience across lifestyles – in Cinema, TVs and Sound Bars, PCs, Tablets, Mobiles, etc. Recently, we have introduced Dolby’s experience in Automobiles as well.

How has the co-marketing strategy been working out for Dolby? How do plan to grow this further and build brand equity?

Co-marketing is a concept that helps co-create value with likeminded partner brands who collaborate around a common goal. As a marketer, you need to identify that common goal that can stitch like-minded partner brands together and that’s how you co-create value to the brand.

‘Dolby Mein Suna or Dekha Kya’ is also a collaborative or co-marketing effort with 5 OEM Partners. In this partnership, we collaborated with Xiaomi, Samsung, Realme, LG, and Sony.

This will enable the brand to broaden the audience and engagement. This is just a way how partners can amplify a common message and capitalise on the strength of each other.