In the globalised and post-liberalised world we live in, one cannot overemphasize the importance of digital and online marketing. For the last few years, I have been fascinated by this subject and how it transcended from being a secondary function to being the most important or the core function of the organisation. With the plethora of options available leading to an explosion of choices for our customers, no firm can exist without an effective and customer-oriented marketing strategy in today’s market.
Being an avid follower, I could not be more ecstatic when I heard that M.O.M i.e. Mad Over Marketing was coming to conduct a workshop at our campus. Soon, I found that it was not only me who was so excited but many marketing aficionados as the auditorium was packed, both with first as well as the second year students. The Marketing Association of XIMB, MAXIM had invited an amicable and extremely talented marketer, Siddhant More, who is the founder of the most interactive and creative pages on Facebook to present his speech.
Much to our surprise, it was anything but a speech. The session was charged with jokes, ice-breaking sessions, quizzes, videos and a whole lot of fun. At the onset, we were asked if there was anything we wanted to talk about with topics that could range from marketing to even campus life at XIMB. There was a round of ‘Never Had I Ever’ in which the whole crowd could relate to the instances.
We then went on to discuss the 3 pillars of marketers comprising- attention, perception & communication. Each section was thoroughly discussed with relevant examples for the environment. Attention is producing the stimulus which makes the audience stop and looks at the advertisement with interest. Perception is about creating a personality of your brand in the customer’s mind just like Thumps up or Nescafe brands have successfully done. Communication is effective when sending the right message in as fewer words as possible through minimal advertising.
Minimal Advertising has gained prominence mainly because of the cluster of stimuli present in the environment and also the limited attention span of the customers. Gyms, Anti-smoking campaigns, shipping companies as well as the brands like Amazon, Flipkart, Durex, and Kit Kat have successfully used it to grab the customer’s attention.
We further went on to talk about the socially sensitive items to brand and advertise in India, which includes cigarettes and sanitary napkins amongst multiple others. We understood in each context the difficulties and reservations associated with each product. We also understood that there is no brand that advertises them describing their utility and necessity in the market.
Ambush Marketing was the next topic having interesting insights about the Cola- Pepsi Wars, BMW vs. Audi etc. It focused on the industry wars and how far it is considered ethical. Brand wars in e-commerce are also quite popular in the contemporary context, With Flipkart's #AchhaKiya campaign being trumped by Snapdeal. It brought out another poster #AchhaKiyaBataDiya, asking people to buy from here. Other brands like Paisabazaar, Coupon Duniya and Amazon also tried to increase publicity by joining the bandwagon.
Under timeliness in Social Media, we talked about the importance of reacting to the users, online trolls and making an image of the brand. We moved on to discussing the evolution of marketing from Jingles like the most remembered ‘Washing Powder Nirma’ (The speaker even sang the jingle with us in the background) to Content Collaborations in today’s market like ‘The viral Fever and Ola’ etc.
“Companies are as much a brand for the employees as is for an outsider”- This is something Siddhant firmly believes as we need to advertise and create a brand in order to retain quality talent from the market.
www.shaadi.com came up with a very innovative way for getting good people; by inscribing a statement in its website source code. Anyone who is actually interested and goes another mile to search a code of this particular site will definitely be the right person for the job.
The end was even more enrapturing, with various trivia and quiz rounds. Highly Informative, enriching yet quirky, fun and spirited questions left the students asking for more. Rounds like ‘Jingle all the way’, ‘Two and a half Clues’ and ‘Minute to win it’ managed to keep the audience’s attention at the peak till the last minute (just like an excellent marketer). We ended by creating a record of 25 seconds for the fastest B-school to guess all the brands and also collectively made a new jingle for the Mad Over Marketing brand.
-Isha Parasramka
Batch of 2018-20, XIMB