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A new idea or new campaign can flourish faster with the help of good marketing. Finer market reach always helps in building the brand bigger. The success of major campaigns is a result of great marketing that is constantly backing them up. With 2014 coming to an end we decided to dwell more into the strategies and expect changes in the marketing companies.
Adgully caught up with Prateek N Kumar, CEO & MD, NeoNiche Integrated Solutions Pvt. Ltd. who is known as the “Milestone Man” responsible for converting the company into the largest profit centre within the organization in 5 years.
Integrated Marketing Solutions is something that is growing in India and a lot of brands are demanding these services. Sharing insights about his key clients Kumar said, “NeoNiche is working with more than 98 brands as of today across different Industries including , IT Pharma, Healthcare, Media, Consumer Durables and core business and for us all these clients are equally important”.
On being asked about the clients response over the increase in digital spends he mentioned that Digital marketing has entered more challenging territory. Elaborating further he said, “Building on the vast increase in consumer power brought on by the digital age Industries dealing in B2C products and services have allocated a large part of their marketing budget into online marketing trends, Now online has become an integral part of their “Marketing Mix”. However, more traditionally rooted industries like Healthcare and Auto are still to exploit the full potential but that trend is slowly changing too.”
Discussing about the percentage of client shifting from traditional to digital and to mobile, he added, “From “Above The Line” to “Below The Line” or if we include “Digital Marketing Elements” as well “Through the Line” has been less of a shift and more of a spread for our clients depending on the objective of each campaign that they are rolling out the demographics and geography that they are reaching out to.”
Talking about the future of NeoNiche, he said, “Without doubt focusing on SMB and start up ecosystem that need a level playing field where marketing is concerned, at least 30 percent of revenue should come from these community. Also we want to drive more values to our customer through our DNA of Ideas, Innovation and Insight in everything that we do.”
Brand managers are constantly increasing their marketing spends on BTL. According to Kumar the shift from ATL to BTL spending is in part the result of the changing consumer attitudes. He adds, “At the same time, technology allows marketers to better target consumers. BTL initiatives are more successful because they stress targeted and customer-centric communications and create measurable results and return on investment metrics, which are important to marketers under growing pressure to prove the value of their campaigns.”
Adding his thoughts about how BTL has changed in last 5 years he said, “Technology, Internet, social/digital media and smart devises have connected people like never before on the other hand it has provided the marketer with actionable insights. Any BTL (advertising) campaign has been all about speed-to-market with the right message at the right time through the right channel while maintaining brand consistency and being non-intrusive.” He also mentions that BTL directly reaches out to consumers and help them “experience” the brand. They engage, educate and entertain consumers in a way most ATL campaigns cannot.
Further talking about the strengths of NeoNiche, he said, “We do not provide services, we provide solutions that are solely aimed to reinforce relationship between company & customers, brand & buyers and product & prospects, by creating experiences, delivered real time across multiple platforms and deliver measureable results. Whatever we do has an element of ideas, innovation and Insights. They are pushing forward in certain areas like Rural Marketing, the SMB offering which will see lot of innovation and the CSR policy which needs to be even more robust.”
Speaking about the evolution of media buying and spending he said, “The ASIAD Games gave us more than the mascot “Appu”, it was for the first time TV telecast happened in colour and opened the floodgates for advertising.” Quoting an example he said, “We still remember Lalitaji’s pearls of wisdom on which washing powder made your whites look whiter as it was hard to miss on Sunday morning television along with “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”. Those were the times when every brand aspired to be on national broadcaster Doordarshan. An appearance on DD was perceived to be a landmark.”
He elaborates, “The brief for agencies was to create TVCs that appealed to DD’s vast audience. The media buying landscape has experienced dramatic change over the past decade, as consumers spend more time online, have more control over traditional advertising vehicles, and chose to create and share their own content. As a result, some advertisers are evolving to a confluence culture where traditional methods of work must adapt to embrace the new reality of interactive content, emerging media, and production/consumption methods. Now Brands have to deal with reinventing the mass message model helping consumers tell stories and playing in a new landscape.”
On a concluding note Kumar talks about the trends in the coming year. He says, “Marketing trends will see a lot of exploration in social media with elements like selfie Challenge, Hashtag Contest, crowd sourced installations. Mobile will gain even more importance with the better infrastructure and possible 4G spectrum.” By Archit Ambekar | Twitter: @aambarchit