We were at the IAMAI Digital Marketing Summit and after the first session on Standards and norms we attended the second panel which was on Performance VS Branding. It was clear from the profiles of the panelists that they would push for branding as the required step vs performance as there was no Search engine marketing guru or Adnetwork in the panel.

But there were still some interesting points highlighted in this second session:

Neville Taraporewalla - CEO & Online Media Director, Publicitas Digital shared the example of the US election campaigning and stated that according to a comscore report Mccain and Obama were both campaigning online but the difference between their campaigns was Obama was brand building while Mccain strategy was issue based like a performance based campaign. Obama has apparently built his personal brand within households through this strategy. He felt just like Mccain Indian marketeers are still stuck in clicks.
He felt that the web offers excellent opportunity to build awareness and engagements and he showcased some campaigns to illustrate the same.

Kashyap Vadapalli - Director – Marketing & Operations, eBay India stated the following points.

• Yes one can build brands online
• When one has numbers to meet would you invest in branding or transactions .i.e performance is a queston all marketeers ask across mediums.
• Based on the business goals one takes a short term decision

Kashyap gave a framework which could be used to decide on performance vs branding. The framework is as follows:
o    Where is the product in its life cycle
o    By industry maturity
o    Consumer purchase involvement and the point of consumption

With regards to each point there are many options like
-    Product life cycle – new-in season-end of life- vintage/used
-    Industry maturity – nascent  - growth stage – established
-    Point of consumption - online - offline - home - while travelling

Once a marketer considers the options above then only that he/she decide on branding vs performance.

Krishna Prasad Executive Producer, MSN India stated the following:
-    It’s a case of both branding and performance
-    How much does a manager spend on an online campaign and then how much time does he allocate to analyze the best branding options.
-    Where are Prasoon Joshi’s (Creative Guru’s) of online world
-    Even performance goes back and asks whats being communicated in that ad.

Upen Roop Rai Director, Times Internet stated the following:
-    Unless we move out of performance the branding money will never come into it
-    What exactly constitutesbranding
o    Any exposure
o    ROI is pure branding success metric
-    Do clicks matter in the world of branding
o    It does for certain objective like awareness  and association but not while focusing on intent  to purchase
o    It is detrimental to judge by clicks because it overlooks branding while drawing conclusion from a sub set of audience who wouldn’t be your target
o    Heavy clickers vary a lot from typical internet user and hence clicks might be a wrong way to measure whom you are reaching.

Offline and online partnerships benefit everyone:
-    For media content is everything, offliners give cool content that online hasn’t produced.
-    In promotional space audience is everything.
-    Our audience is hyper connected, they are online and offline so you need a 360 degree approach.
-    Most brands integrate offline and online and improve customer experience
-    Online marketing can make performance of branding measured come true.

Vikram Sakhuja Chief Operating Officer - South Asia, Group M asked some interesting questions:
-    Is computer a businesss machine or a multimedia gizmo?
-    Is performance only ecommerce/transaction?
-    CPA and CPL are performance metrics while engagement and awareness are brand metrics
-    Why do consumers consume media?

He felt the following needed to be done to change the scenario from performance to branding:
-    Stop lamenting about reach as there are 40 million people who can generate business
-    Start getting competitive with other media
-    Say put x percent of your tv and media campaign on digital and then prove which works better.
-    Lift iamai status and work with industry campaign instead of lving in our own exhaust.
-    Pin point – Where are the advertisers who don’t understand digital and lets bring them to such conferences and sky is the limit then.

Though the session was interesting overall it was still one sided i.e. only branding support but no performance based marketing evangelists. Which actually made most of the discussion only pro branding.

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