Consumers expect higher level of service, fast deliveries, great discounts and cash backs. It tells upon marketing budgets. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) is picking up. Company values too are considered by the consumers while buying. Influencer marketing is being used increasingly. Advertising should feel less like advertising. It is to be acknowledged that advertising cannot fix a bad product. Advertising cannot make it a great product. Constant feedback informs the consumers all about the pros and cons of the product. Some brands tend to cling to advertising as a messiah. Consumers are fed up of excessive advertising. Brands will have to be more creative. Brands will have to merge with the stories.
Promotion
Advertising in Space
There could be a billboard with a company logo floating into space. There is no clutter. SpaceX and a Canadian startup are collaborating to do this.
GEC is to put a satellite into space. Advertising will be beamed from the earth, and will be displayed on pixelated screen on the side of the space-craft. Though the billboard will not be visible from the earth, a live feed could be shown on YouTube or Twitch.
Can this excite the brands? Yes, for the bold brands irrespective of the reach, audience and ROI. To some creative brands too, this is an opportunity to provide a mind blowing experience. However, a practical marketer will be cautions.
Digital Privacy : Battle Royale
How is the Internet going to pay for itself? This question has raised its head for decades.
Internet’s lifeblood is advertising. Some 20 years ago, there was an upheaval in advertising industry. The traditional media such as newspapers and magazines were emasculated by Internet. TV advertising too was threatned to be dislodged from its primary position as the advertising of choice for reaching large audiences.
Brands made their presence felt by digital advertising across the websites. The added advantage was precise targeting of these ads by considering the specific interests of people.
Social media expanded rapidly giving the widest possible reach. People could use the social media without paying any cost. In return, people were tracked by using technologies such as cookies. Their personal data was used to do target marketing and advertising. It resulted into a $350 billion digital advertising industry.
However, digital privacy has been assaulted. The world was becoming privacy-conscious. Apple introduced a pop-up window for iPhones in April 2021 asking people for their permission to be tracked by different apps. Google came out with a plan to disable tracking technology in its Chrome web browser. Facebook has engaged their engineers to develop a new method of showing ads without relying on their personal data.
Personal information is thus sacrosanct. What is the alternative? How to survive in a privacy-conscious internet world? Maybe, people should pay for the internet content by way of subscription fees. Actually we have to decide the nature of the web.
It will reduces to the issue of how much ad tracking should be dialled back. Apple phones are premium products, and its customers must have the right to block tracking. Google calls this a privilege to Apple customers. Internet may look different to Apple customers.
Digital Advertising Shift
In digital advertising, there are two main contenders — search advertising on Google and social media advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Since many years, Facebook has remained number 2 in the US digital ad sales. In June 2021, Apple introduced privacy changes on iPhones. This made Facebook advertising less effective. Brands started seeking alternatives. Amazon, a marketplace, emerged as an effective choice, and advertising started shifting to it from Facebook. It is too early to call this a trend. Users do search directly on Amazon, but many brands are reluctant to come on Amazon, as they fear losing a direct connection with customers. Even Amazon fears that ad clutter will alienate its clients. However, Amazon also realises that advertising has the potential to subsidise its low -margin e-commerce business.
ML and AI in Influencer Marketing
ASCI launched guidelines for influencer marketing in June 2021 asking advertisers to demarcate clearly the promotional material so as to avoid the misleading of consumers. ASCI has started receiving complaints about the violation of the guidelines, mostly in the beauty and personal care products. On contact by ASCI, the influencer adds the disclosure label immediately.
ASCI intends to use AI-based technology platform to identify the violations. A French firm Reech uses this platform. ASCI has tied up with Reech to identify collaborative content which are not disclosed fully. They have search engines to identify lack of transparency.
Indian space still remains challenging. The number of influencers in India are far more. Thus there is more content from India on social media. In other words, the platform will have to take care of large data set and the algorithm will have to be primed correctly. Besides, there is the challenge of multiple languages in India.
Several influencers are India based but address the Indian diaspora abroad. And there are influencers who stay abroad but address the Indian audience. Thus data can help ASCI to determine this.
ASCI Guidelines for Influencer Marketing
Since ASCI has already issued guidelines that influencers must use tags like an advertisement, ad, sponsored, collaboration, partnership, employee, free gift etc., it is difficult to have a wider reach with these tags. Thus when branded content is put, it affects the reach. Influencer marketing took off because of the editorial touch and feel it had. These tags make it look like advertorials. After the implementation of the ASCI guidelines, influencer marketing becomes outright advertising. Consumers welcome organic stuff. Henceforth, branded content must be made more and more creative. The ratio between the paid posts and organic content was 40:60, which could be changed to 30:70. Branded posts must be made more entertaining. The reliance will be on the creativity of the content.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing. It involves endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field.
In this social media marketing, there are endorsements and product mentions from influencers. This word ‘influencer’ came to be used in 2020. Several people make a living as influencers. Are they really admirers of the products? Or are they paid to do so?
Internet in general and social media in particular has blurred the distinction between editorial and advertising to begin with, almost a decade back and mommy bloggers exerted influence on communication. That led FTC to enact a law in 2012 asking them to declare the compensation received at the beginning of the blog. They talked about diapers and P&G supplied lots of them the following day. The law is applicable to bloggers and not other influencers.
Mainstream media news outlets make money from sponsors.
The onus is placed on influencer to make the disclosure via a hashtag.
However, we should also consider whether the public cares. The disclosures are not heeded. They are in fine print or in fast talk. These are overlooked. The attention is drawn to the material with glamour and excitement penned by a celebrity and life style icon.
In the long run, disclosure is in the interest of the brand as well as the influencer.
Agencies Restructuring
Of late, agencies have fragmented — there are agencies for social media, digital advertising, influencer marketing, mainline advertising etc. It is necessary to integrate these functions, and that integration is done by marketers. They make multiple agencies to interact with each other. Some agencies offer (e.g. Leo Burnett) offer a full-funnel solution with specialisation at every step of the funnel. Clients prefer this hybrid model.
It is to be appreciated that though a mainline agency may masquerade as a digital agency, it lacks the specialisation and the skill set to deliver. Therefore, they will have to train the manpower on various aspects of the digital medium. All leaders must be conversant with behaviour economics.
Classically, agencies have been built by creating silos. A structure must be created which should have horizontal specialisations. They should power the team.
Mainline advertising work relates to brand building and execute TV and print campaigns. Some project based work is done on brands, say 20-30 per cent.
Evolution of Ad Business
After liberalisation, the Indian agencies were taken over by the foreign investors or large networks in order to scale up. This way the legacy brand acquired receded into the background. Previously, the business thrived on the cult personality of the founder. They could not withstood the pressures of globalisation. As leadership changed, the agency brand also consequently changed. These days agencies tell brand stories by using a combination of AI, technology and analytics. Agencies thus change faster. Those which adapt to change, survive. Others simply fade away. International advertisers avail of the services of consultancies and big tech firms. Some outsource work to specialised digital firms. Some hire talent in-house. This trend could be seen in India too.
As it is, traditional agencies are being bypassed. It has led to an existential crisis. The growth of digital advertising in the last decade gives an idea of the evolution ad industry is going through.
In future, the focus would be on digital, social media and mobile marketing. There is going to be use of ad tech to convey the advertising message.
In 2021, the domestic ad market could grow by 23.2 per cent, and could touch Rs.80,126 crore, lower than Rs.82,905 crore in 2019 but ahead of 2020’s Rs.65,053 crore.
Digital spend would reach 35 percent in 2021, behind 45 per cent of TV, but ahead of print’s 16 per cent.
Metric Rationale
These days the content is valued on the basis of likes, views, retweets or shares. Videos become viral, and are considered successful. However, Tom Godwin, co-founder, All We Have is now is of the opinion that such content could be irrelevant to the brand. The metric itself becomes the target.
Here, one has to consider three things — the sector that you are in, the content that is valuable for people and whether there is enough credibility you have in that space.