The Digital Brand – Locking horns with opportunities: Ankoor Dasguupta

Let me start with this quote that left an impression on me: “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you” - Neil deGrasse Tyson (an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator.) 

Evolving each day is one thing consistent – The Brand in its Digital essence. With the burgeoning avenues, the parameters of measuring a campaign success being challenged, transparency being still a concern along with unleashing a perfect omni channel and cross channel strategy converting into execution, have we completely locked horns with the opportunity? Or allowing the opportunity to be more fluid for us to understand? The more active we see ourselves on social and things like ‘chat’ we seem to be losing our mojo around having a real conversation and building a real story? 

Let’s take a top view at the top 6 Opportunities to understand Brands from a double lens – Consumers and our own introspection as stakeholders of Digital. 

Opportunity is your Consumer 

Always been and always will be, your end consumer. The Digital evangelists need to be thinking about the end scope for sure, apart from the scope for the immediate requirement. Many a times we miss what door the consumer wants to be built rather than what we see as an immediate SLA. On average, digital advertising provides a more cost-effective way to build brands than traditional media – it just needs to be applied in a more thoughtful way. Marketers need to refine their understanding of their audience, tailoring their targeting more precisely to people’s preferences. 

ROR as important as ROI 

While poorly executed digital strategies may have contributed to some negative opinions, brands would not want to suddenly reverse their digital investment plans. For once, we should think beyond the regular items of our understanding of numbers and recognise that while numbers may or may not be an immediate satisfaction, the Return on Relationship is as important as Return on Investment. And let’s be honest, we run away from ROR because consistent relationships are very difficult to build any may not guarantee an immediate Release Order. And we all know; our vision has become short sighted to that one Release Order that correlates to our pay cheques. Nothing wrong with that, however everything will not be right with only this vision, unless we learn to say meet without an agenda as well and take business one notch up. 

Context | Content | The Story 

Campaigns are good to run. Running a campaign imbibes the feeling of a winner, more so when the numbers we commit are on track. However, it’s now been a while that content is one of the ley focus areas and not before we have a tussle on context. Many a times in our day to day conversations, we do a hell lot of communication, without setting the context, which leads to a ‘messaging downtime’. My grandfather was a great story teller. When I was little, I used to enjoy all the stories that that he made up with me playing the ‘hero’ without even flinching. And I am not afraid to say that I still love stories, just that I have gradually learnt to understand facts vs fiction. So, a story overtold is like saying – ‘hey, I don’t believe in my audience and they need some fiction to make them feel real about a product’. It’s time, it’s high time we all get real and recognise that whatever story we tell, needs to be real, with a context containing bit of our soul. Else it is just yet another piece of content. And the best part, we all know this, probably don’t recognise it. 

Also Read: Guest Column : How to make content viral organically - Leena Duwadi

Level of Social Engagement 

Social is well, not just a word and directly related to the Fear of Missing Out – what we all know as FOMO. Yes, it does help magnanimously in the Digital space, considering the ongoing duopoly and its effects, however the marketing stakeholders would want digital spends to be spent more effectively in this case and not because someone else is doing something. Replicating models where necessary and anticipated high impact and rethink new models which may not be conventional but drive high value fo both the brand and its consumers as well because a Brand’s success is measured by the success of it’s recall value, consistent perception of its consumers. 

Integrate all possible Channels 

Integrated campaigns are about 31 per cent more effective at building brands, yet according to a research one in four campaigns are not well integrated. Aligning your content seamlessly across each platform and format to ensure each piece tells part of the same coherent story is of utmost significance. Many campaign cues are similarly effective across audience groups. Everyone expects multichannel campaigns to deliver basic connective elements or hygiene factors like the same logo, slogan, message and story. However, the most active online users are more demanding, also expecting campaigns to include consistent, and appealing characters or personalities. The most notable differences are that they also like consistent use of website addresses and social media hashtags. So, these digital integration techniques can help improve impact, but we may not want to rely on these exclusively if our target audience is more diverse. 

Ability to create bespoke packages 

It may be time to take a pause to think that our vision should include and accentuate more on ‘create’ than to ‘curate’. The truth is consumers may not always know what they want. But if we as marketers can concur what the consumer would want at least a year down the lane, it becomes easier for us to channelise our energies and efforts. Being selective and being natural in our approach to customise bespoke packages, I am not saying that may always yield immediate results, however in this case we are working forward in leaps. Classic example of such innovations – Tesla and Amazon. 

Till then, wishing everyone wonderful business while we keep conscious about locking horns with opportunities. 

(Ankoor Dasguupta is an ardent learner and coach with 18 years of learning in print, digital and mobile marketing, advertising and operations. At present, Dasguupta is part of the SHEROES family in the capacity of Vice President for Marketing, Brand Solutions and Special Projects.)

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