WATBlog Panel Delhi – Insights and Analysis
The panel was initiated with the question on what has been the panelists experience of dealing with brands and how brands look at the digital medium then the discussion moved on to what were the reason for the gap i.e. the digital divide and what steps can be taken to over come the same. Multiple insights and discussions happened during the panel and Ive tried my best to summarize all of them in this post (Given that I was moderating the panel at the same time as well).
The WATBlog Panelists were:
- Sidharth Rao – Webchutney CEO
- Sanjay Trehan – CEO – NDTV Convergence
- Alok Mittal – MD – Canaan Partners
- Neeraj Sanan – VP – Star News
These were the insights
The Industry Lacks Creative Skills – The real startling insight was that the Digital industry lacked creative skills to come up with campaigns and creatives that would excite brands. One of the many reasons cited for this was the focus on ROI instead of brand building on the Web.
ROI is killing Branding - There was a clear consencus at the Panel that ROI was killing the brand opportunity that digital possesses. All panelists felt that the extreme focus on driving ROI had type casted the medium into one which could be used for nothing else but driving leads. There was also though that the mediums biggest strength i.e. transparency had become its biggest fallacy.
We cant have sales people selling branding concepts. Product and sales need to be different in digital - This was another interesting insight where in Alok mittal pointed out that Sales guys should be like horses that should be told what to do and not allowed to think. He felt that there should be a marketing and product team that should do packaging and conceptualization for the brands and digital agencies should wake up to hiring such marketing folks.
The offline conceptualizers need to move to digital – Sidharth Rao of Webchutney stated that the Offline brand consultants need to move to digital. He felt there were very few brand consultants for digital and that’s where the gap lies.
Coming back to how digital media will transform traditional media Sanjay Trehan of NDTV Convergence made an interesting point. he said that Newspapers will become Viewspapers – He stated that most newspapers in the country today cannot do without a digital arm and hence he predicts that most newspapers would become viewspapers in the future with equal participation by readers in the discussion. He cited example like the chicago tribune and its eventual downfall in the print business and rise in the online business.
The Internet would eat into the branding pie of English newspaper market – One of the questions asked by the audience was that from which medium would online snatch the market share for branding? The answer was given by Sidharth Rao and he felt that english dailies readership audience overlapped with the userbase on the web and hence the transfer of brand spends would be from english dailies to the web.
Standardization is a necessity – Another point that all panelists agreed was that of Standardization in metrics and performance measurement. Sanjay Trehan added that IAMAI was taking some important steps in these directions and soon some standard should be in place.
Reach VS Relationship – How do we position digital? – The big debate at the panel happened around reach vs relationship initiated by Neeraj Sanan of Star News i.e. how do the we as an industry position the medium. If we talk about reach the numbers are questionable and no where close to traditional mediums. But what could be done is that digital could be sold as an engagement medium rather than a lead generating medium and thats where the real potential for digital lies. Both technologists and sales should be focussed in this direction.
These were the main insights of the panel. We should have a video package up for you soon on WATBlog so stay tuned!
We thank our Presenting Sponsor NetworkPlay.in for supporting this event.
We also thank our Travel Sponsor Cleartrip for making our travel simple.
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Rajiv, thanks for organizing a great discussion. Loved the panelists and the insights gained. Looking forward to more in the future.
this post is very useful for me..i have a presentation on digital marketing..as a part of course in mba..can u please upload the video fast so that i can a fair chance of gaining more insight about the discussion..and
rajiv,can you please sight some sights where i can get more on digital branding…
thank u
harish,
http://twitter.com/BusyGod
@harish: Sure.. Will try my best to put it up by this week!