In a large economy like ours, personalization is crucial: Alok Sanwal

Experiential marketing creates memories and so it has to be unique and credible, said Alok Sanwal, CEO, Dainik Jagran-inext Jagran Prakashan Ltd.

At the recently held e4m RedCarpet Experiential Marketing Summit, Alok Sanwal spoke about how inext has built an experiential sound around the newspaper. Sanwal's keynote address focused on the media sector as a whole and how the experiential domain can aid brands, clients and customers. 

"Experiences are meant to be personal. The entire creation has to have some personal connection with each one of those who are becoming part of it, no matter if you are doing it for 5 lakh or 20 lakh people," shared Alok Sanwal. 

"The way Kumbh Mela gets managed as an experiential marketing event is an example. Also, the way the January 22 Ram Mandir project is being taken care of is personalisation." People are being involved for the Rm Mandir event by asking them to visit a nearby temple and light diyas on the day, he mentioned.

According to Sanwal personalisation is very important even for a mass global project. "Therefore, in a large economy like ours, personalization is crucial," he said.

Sanwal also spoke about Inext - Jagran Prakashan's broadsheet daily newspaper which completed 17 years recently. Sanwal said that newspapers, in the Indian scenario, were created because of the freedom struggle and then they kept evolving themselves. 

He shared the objective to launch inext 17 years ago was to offer tailor-made content for a certain TG with focus on factors such as hyperlocal, bilingual urban and Genz. In those days, the brand was focusing on millennials.

He also shared that inext decided not to become a metro product and till date the brand lives by that. "We have an edition in Delhi, which is the largest read NCR edition of the NCR region in the language dailies. Even despite having four to five presses here, we said that we are not going to launch in Delhi, because it is a tier II product."

He shared the thought was to build communities around it. "If your domain is clear, everything else needs to be created accordingly."

He added the need for experiential marketing comes in because of a brand connect and to establish bonding with your end consumer. 

According to Sanwal, engagement is very important. A newspaper will turn out to be very boring if it doesn't have something in all spaces around it which means the brand needs to have a digital and as well as ground connect with consumers. "You connect with them and at the same time carry a meaningful dialogue with every connection which is happening and then become part of their lifestyle." From a brand's point of view, create multiple touch points as many as possible including non- linear ones.

To target different tags, organisation should have different IPs. For instance, Sanwal shared that to target the young adults, inext has IP for student awards and intelligence test which they started 12 years ago. 

"In my opinion, all the great experiential marketing events are very simple."