Experiential marketing needs to shift from tactical to strategic—Vikram Sakhuja, CEO, Madison
With the growth of digital, traditional marketing approaches have taken a back seat. There is far greater choice and far little discrimination between brands which is now calling for more and more ways in which the brand has to come to life.
Consumer brands have long realised the importance of experiential marketing and the opportunities it brings along to influence customers. In fact, the industry has transformed in a big way over the years and has grown considerably both in size and stature. With the digital boom, traditional marketing approaches have taken a back seat. Even brand activations have been redefined and now experiential marketing is the trends adopted to create a definite connect with the consumers.
According to Vikram Sakhuja, CEO, Madison Media, while the total adex is around 55k-60k crore in TV, Print is right on the top with Rs 22K and Rs 22k crore respectively. The activation industry in his estimate is set to touch 7K crore. “If you break up organised events, if you count the disorganised part, it will be over 15-16k crore, the major part is coming from the B2B activities. The consumer oriented activities come in the bottom”, says Sakhuja.
From tactical to strategic
Sakhuja is a firm believer that the activation industry needs to move from tactical to strategic. Explaining how this shift could become a reality, Sakhuja says, “I think things get strategic once you make a conscious choice. Strategy is all about choices. Today we are working in a very fragmented environment. What is also happening is that there is a huge attention deficit. Consumers are much more on the move and they are consuming media for 8 to 9 hours a day and a lot of it is on the phone. Also, the basket of goods has increased. There is a far greater choice, far little discrimination between brands which is now calling for more and more ways in which the brand has to come to life.”
He also advises activation agencies to connect with clients at a time when the briefs are being given about the strategy behind the campaigns. “This will help to bring activation to a more profound level”, says Sakhuja.
Power of participation
According to Sakhuja, brands increasingly have to embrace the power of participation. In his view consumers want to interact with the brands and the marketers should give them an opportunity to do so. “There is an increasing thrust on trust in experiential marketing. People want to trust brands as are moving from product to purpose and there are a whole lot of causes that the brands are adopting.”
For Sakhuja activations should influence outcome for marketers. Failing to do so is a big waste of the spends. He says, “If you are spending marketing money you need to make some difference. Earlier, marketing used to just an awareness game but now it’s about engagement and contextual targeting. Even programmatic is taking over in a big way. One of the learnings that we have got over the years, especially in the digital age, is that brands must be always on. We are seeing that through search, through content like Facebook posts etc.”
Need for a new metric in experiential marketing
While experiential marketing may be helping brands create compelling experiences for greater consumer connect and impact sales in a positive way, however the lack of a metric that could reflect this is posing a big challenge for the players. “The only metric that I hear from the activation guys is footfall, number of brochures given, the number of sign-ins etc. Most importantly, if we are talking about value, what is the value of your brand experience that you create through experiential and how does it compare with any other”, adds Sakhuja.
