WEEK 52: Who Cares?

Last week was pretty hectic on both the creative and production teams. The production team shot the live action films of the Red Fort show, and I must say the footage looks incredible. I’m very excited to see how the final films turn out. The creative team, on the other hand, had to deal with a series of rejections for an upcoming campaign. But after many frustrating days of ideation, we finally found something that worked for both us and the client, thus ending the week on a tired but happy note.

Working on multiple campaigns got me thinking about the parameters of advertising success from the point of view of Indian brands. In a world where the youth no longer watches TV (I haven’t watched TV in months), spends their time on social media platforms and watches content on OTT apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. a lot of brands today still think a TV commercial (TVC) is a big deal, even when their target audience is people in their 20’s.

There seems to be some kind of ideological hangover when it comes to conventional mediums. Whether you create an ad for TV or the internet, your production budgets will remain the same. But distribution on television is exponentially more expensive than on digital, with no significant way to track results, except for TRPs , which are essentially views – there is no way to judge audience response (positive/negative) or measure true conversions or actions taken on the basis of a television advertisement. And yet, I see a lot of brands stubbornly clinging to the echo of TV’s lost prestige, claiming that it is a significant milestone in a brand’s marketing journey to be able to create a TVC. Subsequently, they tend to view digital platforms as second best, and therefore do not want to spend money on production and distribution for a ‘smaller campaign’.

This perception is something we struggle with on a daily basis. Although brands seem to be reluctant to accept this (I’m not sure why), digital mediums are far more powerful on average than conventional mediums. Conventional mediums may give you more views (although nowadays this may only be true for very rural areas, because even my grandparents own smartphones and regularly share content on our family WhatsApp group), but digital mediums can give you results. Here are a couple of examples of what the internet can do:

The Trash Isles

Many of you may be unaware of this, but there is a country-sized island of garbage in the Pacific Ocean. LAD Bible decided to do something about it, and made the ‘Trash Isles’ an officially recognised country, so that countries around it would be obligated to assist in cleaning it up. And they did it all with the power of the internet.

Bing – Decoded

Droga5 was tasked with the challenge of making Bing Maps (a Microsoft product) relevant among the youth in a world where Google Maps was the incumbent. Using the power of the internet, they managed to make Bing Maps one of the top ten websites with the most first-time visits in the world.

The internet allows us to mobilise large communities of people in a way that has never been done before. It’s high time brands stop viewing digital mediums as ‘cheaper alternatives’ which they can overload with mediocre, half-hearted content, and understand their potential.

On that note, I’ll be heading home soon, so you won’t hear from me for a couple of weeks. Until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

See you in 2020!

 

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