OTT Unplugged: Crafting Compelling Campaigns

Authored by Suchana Sarkar, Chief Brand Officer, Makani Creatives

Remember “ASL please” from the good old Messenger days? This would sometimes be the extent of target audience descriptions that accompanied a brief; A perfunctory demographic outline of Gender, Age, Location, Economic Classification. Fast forward to today's fevered discussions about Cohorts and you may wonder: did the people of India get more nuanced?

The rise of user-based social and OTT platforms is the gateway that allows us to witness and reach the diverse and dynamic population of our country without fitting everyone in broad boxes. I find this development very much in keeping with the narrative that India is not but many. A 21 year old, Male, from Bangalore, belonging to SEC-A not only speaks a different language and eats a different diet compared to his peers from Delhi, Mumbai and other Metroes, they likely also have a difference in lifestyle, ideologies, interests, ambitions and aspirations. For advertisers, looking at this audience as a homogeneous set is a lost opportunity to connect in a nuanced and meaningful way by not taking their dynamic attributes into consideration. And this is where OTT advertising stands out with a myriad of possibilities to tailor campaigns to land sharply on a precise audience.

The advent of new media platforms has given brands razor sharp access to their target audience. While Satellite television enabled a wide spread, pan India reach we have witnessed MNC brands struggle with failing scorecards of their ad-tests. In the past decade, national brands have tried and failed to blur the divide between South and Rest of India. After years of trying to get by on the basis of language dubs and translation, only recently did MNCs like Unilever and Amazon start employing regional casts and brand ambassadors to make a dent in these markets. 

While customisation has always been possible to an extent, it came at an exorbitant cost of production as well as media. But the singularity of OTT targeting makes me wonder if there is another way to define the campaigns success metrics. With the primary ad type being video in such platforms, to be able to create compelling campaigns, we must understand the sharpness of targeting that is possible on most Indian platforms today.

OTT platforms have gone way deeper into isolating the potential target audience not only by gender, age, location, language but also specific programs, genre of program, even devices they are accessing the platform from. What this filtration allows brands is to create a nuanced narrative for the viewer instead of a templatised film dubbed over for regionalisation.

Let's take Coke’s Durga Pujo DVC for example. The visually stunning and longing inducing film lands beautifully for those in West Bengal celebrating the festivities. The narrative is a commentary of the festival is about to be celebrated, specifically nuancing the native State. However, minor tweaks to the ad could also appeal to the emotions of Bengalis living outside of the State and perhaps longing for a taste of the festive spirit in a distant land. Targeting this 'probashi' TG via OTT allows one to look at a seemingly homogeneous set of audience, uniquely and find nuanced emotional hooks to connect on. 

Another attribute of OTT targeting that advertisers can capitalise on is Genre. Let's consider a premium laundry detergent that targets newly married women of age 25-35 across the country. By isolating the audience by language, device and genre, the same brand message could be tailored to emotionally engage with women in different life situations, like married to an unknown family, married and living as a nuclear unit, married and working. Creatively crafted tweaks to a narrative can amplify the power of the ad manifolds. Yes, cost of impressions is a consideration to be kept in mind but given the benefit, even the shakeup that's undying in the industry, what's the harm in shaking up the way we plan campaigns distribution?