'Indians are pioneers of exploiting emotional quotient when it comes to brands'

The e4m Red Carpet Experiential Summit 2023 saw the coming together of advertising and marketing industry veterans talking about a wide range of topics and delving into the business of experiential marketing.

Ashish Kaul, CMO, Hero Realty; Minal Srinivasan, Managing Director, Kesari Infrabuild; and Shradha Agarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, Grapes Digital shared their views on the session 'Breaking Barriers: The Art and Impact of Experiential Moments' in a discussion moderated by Shantanu David, Special Correspondent, exchange4media.

Kaul preceded the discussion by taking time out to appreciate the role exchange4media has played within the marketing and advertising industry and how the organization's coverage of it over the last two decades has seen it come out with many firsts, through reportage, IPs and the work done by the company’s co-founders Dr Anuraag Batra and Nawal Ahuja.

The conversation then turned to the meat of the matter and things experiential with the panel discussing what the concept meant to each of them and especially how brands could go about using emotions to craft unique experiences for consumers.

“I think experiential marketing is a great way to introduce not only your product but also the aspiration and lifestyle around it. There are three ways of doing experiential marketing, and how we put it together is the three P's. First is permanent. Permanent structures mean how you create tourist attractions with them (experiences). India is very far in those but we still have a few. The second one concerns properties like Lakme Fashion Week or we create properties like Airtel Delhi Half Marathon. And the third one is Pop-ups, where you do one of those for a particular event and then you move on from it. But all these three can help you in terms of driving a lot of affinity towards the brand because now you're living the brand,” said Agarwal.

“If you look at it today, with so many products, do you know how many ads are we exposed to in a day? The number is 6000 to 10,000 ads in a day. Now imagine if that's the number you're exposed to, how are you imagining loyalty coming in from these consumers? They forget about you. That's why Facebook and Google are making so much money because you want to drive recall also with them. And hence such kind of experiential events help you in driving loyalty in the community,” she added.

While appreciating Agarwal’s inputs, Srinivasan said, “I come from a little bit of an academic background. So my perspectives are going to be rooted a little more in academics than practical experiences. And when I kept on thinking about what is it that brands can do to forge a stronger emotional brand, my first thing was, why are emotions so important to us? And I think they practically dominate every sphere of our life and every interaction with the world. So a little bit of fun facts, I want to share with you out here is when you talk about your emotional brain, which drives pretty much every buying decision. We have inherited our emotional brain from mammals, which is a very primitive aspect of our brain compared to our rational brain which is our thinking brain. And that's precisely the reason why emotions dominate pretty much every decision.”

“But marketers who can leverage this aspect and build on that science of emotions as part of their core marketing strategy are the ones who can forge stronger emotional bonds. There was a beautiful study that was conducted by Harvard, which talks about various kinds of emotional motivators and they have done this longitudinal study over different consumer segments, different industry domains and over some time. They came up with more than 100 emotional motivators with things like I want to succeed or feeling secure. The emotional motivators that millennials talk about are something very unique, for example, creating a social impact or protecting the environment, and the person that I want to be. Now brand marketers that can weave those motivators as part of this strategy and then implement that through a multi-sensory immersive experience for their buyers are the ones who succeed. And this is something which is done fantastically by organizations like Apple,” she added.

Kaul had an interesting take on the subject, observing, “Indians have been the pioneers of exploiting the emotional quotient when it comes to brands. There are only two sorts of brands that exist: the brands that we need in our day-to-day life and the ones that we aspire to own; that require a different approach altogether. I think Indians have done quite well in terms of creating that fitment of using emotions as an identifier when it comes to listing. Where we still I think, what I would want to see a change is the service part of it. While we are very good at articulating the emotional connection between the consumer and the brand we're equally bad with, perhaps the worst in the world, when it comes to service. Indians are the best sellers and the worst at after-sale service. The moment the bill is cut and then that umbilical cord is cut; you are then at the mercy of so many third parties

“Overall, if you were to do a survey and compare the purchase, the difference in brand experience when it comes to purchase and post-purchase will be huge. And in my lifetime I've seen there is a huge delta between the two. I think that's the kind of work we still need to do,” he said.

The panel then went on to discuss the growing use of technologies like AR/VR, the metaverse, and other multi-sensory touch points, and brands need to be ready for them. In a market saturated with options, the three panellists agreed it was the onus of brands and marketers to use the right technology for the right product and so enhance the consumer’s experience, no matter which step of the buyer’s journey they were on.

Kaul and Agarwal further discussed the fact that these technologies created experiences which were not only innovative but also helped brands maintain the bottom line, given the ease of use and accessibility. Pointing to the real estate sector, Kaul noted, “In fact, we sold one of our projects through a Metaverse, and within six hours we sold out the entire project; there was no site visit. So I feel technology will create an experience at your doorstep. I keep on going back to for the sake of relevancy to real estate but when you go when you go and buy your home, what do you see when there's nothing built yet? Sites are very uninspiring and very unsafe. There is dust everywhere. There's nothing to see so do you place your decision? You place your decision by looking at the sample flat that is also not a sample flat that is even not to a scale, but that gives you an impression. Now imagine just to see that impression, you spend an entire day, spent so much money and so much time that you could have spent elsewhere. Imagine if I gave you the same experience, many 100 times better experience at your location, which is what over some time technology will do. Today we are we're talking about things like Metaverse, that's all right, but I'm personally fascinated by a technology called holographic technology.”

Srinivasan added, “Now with so much technological advancement that's happening today, we have garnered enough computing power to be able to give immersive virtual experiences to our consumers which your brain perceives to be real. And that is what essentially AR, VR or for that matter, MR (Mixed reality) is kind of bringing to your table. They are not just merely diffusing the border between your physical and the digital world, but they are merging the two worlds to immerse you in a realm of imagination.”