‘Use of AR & VR in India is more gimmicky than getting actual biz results’

Digital marketing has been witnessing a healthy growth curve in the Indian market in the last few years, with spends growing YOY. Though the scope is huge, there are quite a few areas where Indian marketers are lagging behind their global counterparts. 

VML India, a full service global digital marketing agency from the WPP Group, is in its fifth year of operations and has seen a steady year-on-year growth of 15 per cent since its launch in 2012. The agency has an impressive client lists that includes the likes of ICICI Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, Revlon India, HCL, Moods, Kotak Life Insurance, and Wendy’s. 

In conversation with Adgully, Udit Bhambri, Head of VML India, speaks about the trends that are influencing the growth of digital marketing today, how Indian brands can enhance customers’ digital experience, closing the investor-gender gap and more. Excerpts: 

What are the trends that are influencing the growth of digital marketing today?
Introduction to mobile has been one of the key trends in India, with urban population and younger generation directly moving towards mobile. Rural markets also being digitalised with mobility has resulted in clients and partners looking at mobile as a key trend in their entire channel. Analytics and Big Data is another key trend leading to the growth of digital marketing today with the availability of varied channels and platforms to connect with the audience. Earlier, there was just television and print medium, but now with social media, mobile and other digital platforms, there has been a tremendous growth in digital marketing. Everything is generating data and clients want to know how to integrate this data and make sense of this data, and that’s where analytics and Big Data come into the picture. The third trend is consumer experience management, which is becoming important to retailers as well as e-commerce websites who are working to design consumer journeys and find the best way to communicate with them. 

What are the areas where Indian marketers and brands are lagging behind in their digital marketing strategies compared to their global counterparts?
Indian companies are lagging behind in consumer experience and consumer journey mapping, however they are now slowly but surely waking up to the fact that consumer experience is a lot more important than they presumed it to be as no one mapped the consumer journey earlier. Brands need to identify the consumer journey from point A to Z and then identify the intervention points at each part in the consumer journey. 

Lack of use of technology is another area where Indian marketers are lagging behind. The use of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality is more gimmicky and to get PR mileage rather than getting actual results in business. A new piece of technology or innovation has to benefit the business and consumer; agencies and clients need to realise that you are communicating with the consumer to make a difference and not just to win awards and get PR. 

What more do Indian brands need to do to enhance the customers’ digital experience?
A bank consumer visits a branch, accesses the mobile application and uses internet banking, but the system does not know any of these touchpoints of the consumers; the mobile app does not have the information about the consumer visiting the branch or vice versa. The entire exposure that a consumer of a bank gets needs to be looked into; it is all about lead generation and performance now. Nobody is actually looking at how the consumer experience can be improved, and it’s a long way before India actually nails it. 

What are your views on the growth of content marketing in India? Are the brands doing enough to effectively exploit this avenue?
There is huge scope in the content marketing space as some brands are doing really better than the others and some are doing it in the best way. 

What steps does the industry need to take to bring in an effective measurement metrics for content marketing campaigns?
Unfortunately, people look at social media metrics and content marketing metric in isolation. Brands are measuring shares and retweets, but not the effect on the consumer’s desire to buy the product. Brands need to start their metrics with business goals first and then move to their digital goal, and not by looking at vanity metrics like shares, retweets or likes, because that alone does not make sense. Being able to link your business metric to your digital metric is a large gap that needs to be filled. 

Live video, social videos and vertical videos – what is their role in taking forward the brand story and building consumer connect
Live videos are really powerful because brands can now connect with the consumers in real time as opposed to few years ago when if a brand did a TVC, it would take six months for the production. This is where live streaming is becoming popular as there is very minimal production time required. Although production value is a challenge in live streams, but consumers today are willing to compromise on production value if it allows them to connect with the brand directly. Video content is becoming extremely popular with the availability of 4G connectivity and better speed, and that will result in increased video consumption. 

What is you view on closing the investor-gender gap?
VML and DSP Blackrock got together for the Winvestor campaign, wherein they set up camps to educate women to make their own financial decisions. With only 9 per cent of Indians investing in mutual funds, out of which only 23 per cent of women take financial decisions, there is a huge gender investment disparity in India. It is a matter of investor education and increasing awareness about women making their own financial decisions. 

Where do you see digital marketing headed in India? What kind of spends do you envisage on digital in the coming times?
The spends in digital will vary across categories. Products whose fulfilment is happening online, for instance e-commerce or insurance, will see a drastic increase in digital spends because it is directly linked to its growth, whereas other industries will spend more on content and performance marketing to increase brand recall. Brands are realising that if they want to reach the audience, they have to increase their presence on digital as digital marketing has a bright future in India.

Marketing
@adgully

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