What’s your Addvertising strategy? When one big bang idea is not enough

Authored by Amrita Sharma, Co Founder & Director by Mixed Route Juice

There is no typo in the headline.

I repeat.

There is no typo in the headline. 

Let me just get to telling you why… 

Gone are the days when marketers used to focus on just advertising. The buzz is all about Advertising++ these days. So now that the double Ds have been added into advertising (This is a sexist joke. Not.), let us address the elephant in the room.

In simpler days, the construct of advertising campaigns used to be shorter. One big bang, followed by 3 months of repeat hammering. In today’s times when marketers want the best value for their buck, the industry has seen a paradigm shift that is poles apart. So here’s how campaign strategies have evolved: One big bang (usually a TVC). Several small knocks (DVCs). Multiple servings of boom (Digital Media promotions). Repeat hammerings of clicks (Influencers push). Followed by continued months of cacophony (UGC and talk back from real customers). Eventually paving way to what most brand managers start their one liner briefs with: How do we make our tag line, a cult status?

The answer lies in three magical words: Community Building Initiatives. It is what turns pitch presentations into award winning annual strategies. It is a tried and tested marketing approach that has led brands like Nike, Lululemon, Harley Davidson, One Plus to become what they are today. Once a brand makes the switch from Brand-to-Consumers-talking to Consumers-to-consumers-promotion, there is no looking back. It has become a critical part in the overall Digital Marketing strategy also because it eventually results in better ROI of media spends, builds credibility and also aids in SEO and overall brand awareness. 

Conveniently put, one can easily call it people to people marketing, that leaves a digital footprint that’s searchable, validated and customer certified. There are various platforms that communities can be set up on: Websites, Social media, QnA platforms like Quora, and specific community building platforms like Discord (which is slithering into making its way into India soon).

Let me take you back to the glorious 2000s for a brief second before we proceed further. Around the time we were hearing terms like digital boom and believing that something’s just around that will change the way communication happens. Isn’t people to people communication the very basis of this boom in Digital Media? Think about what Social networking was back then. People were so kicked about the idea of being a post, tweet or a thread away from their favorite friends or the brands that soon, this sense of belonging to a group or community consumed them fully and became addictive. This addiction is what ensured that we get to live through this boom also known as Web 3, just 20 years from then.

Today, we’re living in a world where we feel community building is important and we’re struggling to find ways and means to do it. In the very near future, not more than a year or so from now, it is going to be something that features on all brands’ must-do lists. So here I am, just-in-time, listing out a few guard rails that really need to be set when taking this road less traveled:

1. Figure out our end goal and stick to it, come what may. Slight improvisations can happen but it can’t be a shift from what you started with. Just saying, if your goal is brand affinity, and in a slight digression if you start linking it to sales, the community loses interest instantaneously and everything you’ve built starts getting questioned. 

2. All communities need heroes. So if you’re thinking of setting up a community without KOLs or a few handful that matter, it’s probably not going to work. You need people standing on pedestals that the commoners can look up to and seek direction from. Sounds elitist, but it is a fact of life.

3. Trust the partners you rope in. Goes for agency, collaborators and consumers alike. They have their own way of creating magic. And of course what they create collaboratively has better media efficacy than just brand pushed messaging. We’ve seen instances where content curated by collaborators has resulted in over 7x ROI from a media POV. 

4. Communities take a lot of effort and patience. And you can't run out of either at any given point of time.

5. When you decide to come into the community cave, be mentally prepared to come in and stay for a long haul. Short term can only get you quick sales or likes. Long term gets you love, that leads in to forever sales.

6. Plan your spurts before hand. Calendarise into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily tasks. Only then does the talk back from the community feel effortless. 

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