After Obama it is the turn of LK Advani to use the power of Internet to market himself to the young netizens across the globe. Internet is turning out to be an important medium through which aspiring PMs and Presidents are interacting with not only the media but the young electorate.
Can Corporates and Retailers, then continue to ignore this medium for reaching out to their customers and consumers any longer? IN fact Internet is the most efficient medium to reach out to the consumers and interact with them. Given the slowdown, this makes great business sense as well. Maximum bang for the bucks.
With internet being the only medium which is increasing its spread around the world, this is the sector of the future as far as advertising is concerned. It is readily available to any consumer with a computer, and in this day and age, includes the majority of consumers throughout the world. As against the more costly print and broadcasting marketing, internet advertising allows advertisers to present their ideas to their customers in formats like banners or video ads or other interactive options like games and questionnaires.
The new media's promises the best of all worlds, cheaper reach, efficient targeting and a complete 360 degree experience with options to get instant feedback as well.
The capability and skill-set of new media is immense and growing withe leap and bounds. Its a convergence medium of print and broadcast, yet far more interactive. There is a clutter in the market with an availability of many thousands of communication vehicles, significantly overlapping each other. This makes the marketer opt for the most efficient media vehicle and digital marketing to a large extent helping them. It reaches a larger customer base at a lower cost, is convenient for the shoppers and can have direct interaction with the customers. Consider for example how sucessfuly Channel 4 engaged youth online to popularise educational flash game Bow Street Runner in early 2008. It formed part of the organisation's educational remit, and aimed to attract and engage a teenage audience aged 14-19. Digital agency iCrossing were charged with measuring whether the game successfully engaged its target audience online. The Bow Street Runner website gave the game the form of high-definition video mixed with animation, and was divided into five different stages. The release of each new stage of the game was also backed by an email sent to registered users providing a link to the Bow Street Runner website. Over 75% of traffic to Bow Street Runner was driven by the seeding network, either from sites officially seeded, or sites in the UK and abroad where the seeding was user-generated: Overall, the campaign demonstrated the effectiveness of online networks, and that the digital strategy offered an "agile planning capability" which could be modified as appropriate. This is argued to be one of the key advantages to using online to drive engagement, as has also been argued in the paper The essentials of planning, testing and distributing virals.
The Indian scenario
There is no doubt that new-media is in a nascent stage in India. With high penetration of Internet in Sec A and B in the 15-30 age groups it is the ideal medium to reach out to this segment as against other media. In fact, the medium is now growing very rapidly in the smaller metros and towns. It is also a very cost effective media to reach out to the NRI audiences spread across the globe.
With government committing crores of rupees under its e-governance initiatives, more and more people are likely to start using it. The experience of railway e-tickets is a case point. Some of the other services that are now going the e-way are filing of income tax returns, application for birth/death certificates, digitization of land records, getting voter Id-cards etc. Internet is going to revolutionize the way masses interact with the government. The boundary between small towns and metros in terms of access to information, knowledge and services is getting blurred. The net's reach and access is only widening. In a down-turn market where each penny spent upon marketing matters for its effectiveness and brand managers will be held accountable for the efficacy of their investment plans on media, new media is the only hope to bring accountability in the board room.
Web engazed
'Engagement' is the new buzzword in the advertising industry. and is defined by the Advertising Research Foundation as "turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context." The number of "hits" a particular website has received, or the amount of time consumers' spend on a specific website, is a traditional way of measuring online engagement. In a marketer's perspective new media strategy always revolves around converting it to a viral marketing campaign. Buzz is very important. If you are creating a website and still you are unable to drive audience to it then probably the purpose is not solved. The evolution of new media has opened up new innovative platforms for communicating the brand message while engaging their target audience. They get an idea who are the real customers and how to spend most effectively.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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