Digital Media Driving 40% Growth in Sales – The Curious Cases of Voltas and Gillette
Here are two case studies which would make any digital media enthusiast proud. After years of unfair performance expectations and measurements restricted to clicks and leads on those clicks, finally major companies are getting the broader picture. This is the story of Voltas and Gillette and how they combined media both traditional and new to push their sales big time.
Voltas Jagmag Desh Mera Campaign
Many amongst us might have already seen the campaign on TV and the banners doing rounds on popular website. The 25 crore ad blitz is different this time because of the weight it has given to the web. Out of the over all marketing spend about 10 per cent of its advertising budget on the Internet. This is nearly five times the 2-3 per cent spent by the company till the last financial year.
And what did this result in?
According to Afaqs, about 24 crore impressions, including banner and video ads, are already being served on websites such as Yahoo!, Rediff, MSN, Sify and NDTV.com in the month of May. It has resulted in a CTR of 1.2 and 5 per cent (Video ads performing better than banners..interesting point to moot). However, more importantly the company saw a growth of 30% in sales compared to the same period last year.
The Gillette Story
This one isn’t new like the case of Voltas, however, the results are now being let out and the Gillette India case study of using social media is now doing rounds on the international circuit, with it getting a big reception in the CM Summit.
According to a presentation given by Lucas Watson, global team leader for Procter & Gamble’s digital business strategy, at the The CM Summit in New York, the Cincinnati-based firm used a “mix of paid media, earned media and social elements all working together” to grow sales.
However, Watson also argued that “it was adding the social mix that unlocked the value add” after a decade of negligible expansion in the country.
The campaign in question is the India Votes: To Shave or Not that was doing rounds of both traditional and new media a while back. While the microsite is now no longer available , the video ads promoting the initiative are still live, for instance the one at IBN Live.
The Social angle was when the company created a Facebook page that allowed consumers to discuss these findings, based on the idea that to “debate, discuss and argue is in the blood of Indians. According to Watson it received a stupendous response.
Again the results were mighty impressive, after 10 years of stagnation, the campaign set all time sales records with a sales increase of 38%. Awareness doubled. Trials increased by 400% and Gillette market share increased by 35%.
To Conclude
Of course it would be biased and perhaps even stupid to conclude that the entire success of these campaigns rested on digital media. It is not and in a country like India it will be a very very long time before it gains a larger chunk of any marketing budget. However, the impressive part about these campaigns were to the extent to which the digital medium was used. A double digit figure of marketing budget share for digital media was something we had reported earlier and it is now becoming true which bodes well for the market in general.
It is important that all media gets their due share and work together for the success of a brand, an integrated approach is something I have always been a fan of and these cases further validates this line of thought, and it is great to see these results being shared by companies themselves.
Hopefully this will help digital media garner more attention and marketers look at it objectively and as a core part of their media mix rather than just another avenue of promotion.
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Digital has long been ignored, and in many instances of online advertising once cant figure out what is the communication out there is simply because either they dont care or the person who is creating it has no clue on how to communicate with consumers online…
While it is good to note a 40% increase in sales; being a true-blue online professional it certainly raises my eyebrows on how true this story is… and how much of it can be attributed to digital. I dont think it is anymore PRINT vs TV vs RADIO vs Online vs Mobile etc… it is all complimentary on one another – it is about how do you carry the communication seamlessly across all the above media and connect with the consumer to help drive consumption/experience.
It is time advertisers looking at online think more brand ideas and how to integrate with other media spends and not get too happy with isolated independent virals (which in my view only goes on between a bunch of marketing folks and the ones who created it
and push their new media agencies to think hard.
I really don’t think 30% increase in sales of Voltas can be attributed to Digital Marketing. It could be due to a host of factors including extraordinarily hot summer this year.. But certianly it’s appreciable that marketers are looking for online medium as well while allocating budgets and we may see a good amount of growth here..
Of course, the heat does matter.. but then there are so many competitors that you can’t say that’s the prime moving factor for sales..
Then again I am not hinting a purely digital campaign could have done this, but it is a forceful 360 marketing including a high volume of digi mktg that can be the biggest reason for this push