There is an interesting piece on Afaqs for digi marketers on brands going digital. The point in focus has been the advent of FMCGs on the web to woo its target audience. Till now the overall online budget has been on the lower single digit figure and now the market is expecting it to grow in the coming months.
The most persuasive quote came from Pushkar Sane, chief digital officer – North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group, who said that, “online advertising budget outlays in India will increase from 1-3 per cent of the overall budgets to close to 10 per cent —at par with the Western countries —in the next 18 months. “As marketers experiment with the medium and get success, online advertising will grow exponentially.”
Where does his optimism stem from?
Just the fact that companies and big ones at that are now paying attention to the medium. Companies like Hindustan Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Cadbury’s and Tata Tea have increased their digital ad budgets for individual brands the article suggests. And in general the fact that India’s consumption driving group of youth are increasingly spending more time online and it is now no longer limited to the Metros with Tier 2 cities coming into light.
But why the hoopla about FMCGs?
Simply because they have been the drivers of the advertising industry among all sectors. The general consumer brand requires more inputs in advertising and promotion and user engagement compared to other sectors given the products nature. It has to constantly be in touch with the customer regardless of product variation or launch and needs to sustain its brand image and loyalty lest the competition devours it. While distribution and logistics plays a very important role, being the first name on the tongue of the customer is equally important.
So while the web cannot compete on the distribution front (at least for the time being) it needs to show its impact in terms of brand recognition, awareness and engagement. The fact is compared to one way media like print and TV as mentioned in Afaqs, the web is interactive and therefore fundamentally more suitable to bolster brand engagement. With the advent of social networking and social media in general I feel this is bound increase all the more. Take for instance fan pages of beauty products or grooming blogs as persuasive communites for target groups. They work just the way celebrities do.
However, most marketers are still stuck up on the fact that digital media doesn’t have mass appeal or reach. While in quantitative form this is a fact, however in country with limited electrical reach and largely illiterate mass how exactly does TV and Print make the same mass impact is a question that does rounds in my mind. Maybe traditional marketers can put hindsight and experience as definitive reasons, however that happened because they embraced those media with their inherent flaws and perhaps that is exactly what is needed for the digital medium as well. And then perhaps we can cross the double digit barrier of marketing share easily.
FMCGs are the biggest spending global advertisers, but we’ve yet to find a way to attract them to digital advertising in a big way. The brands that have made a foray in digital marketing restrict themselves to banner buying. Then there have been the Cadburys and Mentos that have attempted subliminal product placement websites which have met with mediocre success. The issue with digital advertising though, is that everyone fancies themselves an Internet Marketing Professional. And everyone oversells the medium to the point of exhaustion. Sure it’s measurable, but that doesn’t mean you promise the sale of chocolate bars through an SEM campaign. Also, focusing on visibility again returns to the point of simple banner buying which doesn’t challenge any digital marketer. So, it still remains to be seen how the 10% ad spends will materialize into meaty lead based campaigns for FMCGs.
I agree very much to that… Digi guys are slowly realizing how being measurable is coming back to bite them after they sold it so much…