E-STRATEGY: BACK TO THE FUTURE

After a near-death experience, the internet is fast becoming an important marketing medium. And while e-strategy may not yet have the chairman's attention because of its small numbers, it will grow exponentially as net and mobile connectivity increases.

Harsh Mehta and Bina Mathias, both 20 are your regular kids in the college canteen. But they have experiences that are the envy of their friends. They both met Aamir Khan as a prize while gaming on a contest site. They were two of the three lakh youth that participated in a Coke "advergaming" show where you could virtually play the role of Aamir Khan in different mofussil avatars.

Increasingly, brand owners are recognizing the power of the internet to draw the 15-30 year age group. The internet as an advertising and marketing medium is going through a renaissance of sorts after the severe existential crisis until `03. Ad spends crawled from Rs 70 crore in 03-04 to Rs 90 crore the next year. This year big companies like L'Oreal, Philips, Samsung, AXN, Star TV, UTI Bank, will together spend Rs 125 crore. Meenakshi Madhvani, managing partner, Spatial Access, says it will grow by 50 per cent year on year.

This is a miniscule one per cent of the total industry ad spends of Rs 10,000 crore. What's significant is the numbers a small campaign costing Rs 10-12 lakh can draw. (LOOK AT BOX1). Advertisers realize that experimenting with the medium comes cheap, be it net campaigns or advergaming (gaming centred around your brand) or constructing “microsites” with limited life (as for new product or movie launches). Compare this to a TV campaign where a film costs about Rs 25 lakh while TV time would be Rs 1.5 crore.

The internet has a lot going for it. 1) This age group that has growing spending power and influence over daddy's wallet is difficult to track through traditional media. Madhvani says that reading habits are erratic in this age group and she is sure even TV hours have reduced in favour of net surfing.

2) Net usage is more definable. Evolving technology makes it increasingly easier to minutely track the preferences of the surfer. As soon as you log in, the server tracks you and knows exactly how much time you send mailing, searching chatting or browsing," says Alok Kejriwal, CEO, contest2win. Advertisers then can narrowcast their messages and avoid the wastage.

3) The medium allows for interim correction. You release three or four banners of your campaign and watch the response. Then you replace the unpopular with the most popular. In fact, the server does that automatically after it collates data while you sleep. But God help you if you get your TV campaign wrong!

4) It gives the consumer the controls and the opportunity to actively interact with the brand. So his response is immediately recorded. Besides, the feeling of privacy encourages him to share personal information. Finance companies like HSBC, Citibank could vouch for this.

5) It delivers quality numbers and time spent with a brand. Kejriwal says that an average advergame would draw about 70,000 people each of who would spend three to five minutes there exclusively.
"The smart advertisers are no longer looking at page views", explains Madhvani. They are fine-tuning their campaigns to reach out to the right customer profile. Sanjay Purohit , director, sales & marketing, Cadbury India says “The digi-media is clearly evolving as a critical touch point to reach, inform and influence consumers.”
Companies are interested in building brands on the web as on traditional media. Look at corporations like Samsung who have created sites to build a user community. The Samsung Fun Club member can download games and ring tones, get information on the latest products. Purohit says “considering the exciting current estimates of internet and mobile phone usership, our long-term e-strategy would be to optimize these media in terms of their direct impact on the actual purchase behaviour.”
The problem for the web remaining so small was simply the numbers. Till two years back you had fewer than 15 million people connected against say 250 million that could watch TV at home. Today nearly 40 million are connected. But in less than five years 100 million people, mostly in this age group, will be connected, even by a conservative estimate. As telecom companies push broadband connectivity and all-the-time live internet in all the telephone homes, the numbers will certainly swell.

The heavy users are already there for over an hour. And they are far from net fatigue. Ask the first successful retail e-shop like FabMall that had revenues of Rs 15 crore in three years' time. Or budget airlines like Air Deccan whose business model is centred on e-sales that saves you a chunk of the costs. Or even the Indian Railways that sells one crore tickets everyday. V. Sudhakar, CEO, FabMall, “While we remained niche in the early days, the net surfer has matured and this will lead to bigger e-business.”

The fact is that Indians love technology. And so, e-strategy is becoming a popular term amongst marketing managers. The HSBC spokesperson says, "E-channels have helped us achieve significant cost reductions and increasing revenues. It gives us an edge over competition by reaching the customer first and pinpoint target our communication." V.

Apart from the web e-strategy will also include mobile telephony for sales, advertising and promotions. Companies like Hutch, HSBC, Lifestyle are using it to announce their services, due payments and sales. Star India created the first “mobisodes” or mobile episodes of Star One’s highest rated comedy show, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. Hutch offered 25 “mobisodes” of popular Tamilian comedian, Crazy Mohan’s plays as a value added service. It plans to grow its list. Mobile promotions will grow to encompass varied usage. You will soon have mobile coupons to shop for discounts. Location Based Marketing (LBM) will allow marketers to offer you services- say like a Happy Hour discount at a bar close to where you are - as mobile technology tracks where you are.

The bigwigs in corner offices have yet to sit up and notice the potential of the medium. "But chief executives had better hear about it", says Madhvani, "as returns on investment in such targeted media is ten times higher than traditional media". The only way to go now is headlong into virtual success.


300 WORD SIDEBAR
SOME MEMORABLE CAMPAIGNS

# Nescafe: Nescafe stimulates your senses. The advergame involved jumbled words that had to be "stirred" back to form the right words. The three strengths of coffee were reflected in the words. It got one million responses in a month's time.
# Cadbury’s Pappu Pass Ho Gaya, Each successful candidate of the 6.5 million students who checked their Std XII results via Reliance SMS would receive his marks and a tag line saying Let’s celebrate with Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Another contest on the microsite drew over 50,000 students.
# Garnier Fructis shampoo: The brand proposition was "five times stronger hair". The game created a virtual braid and you could come and add a knot and tie yourself to it. You could invite others to visit your knot. It got 125000 people over a month's time.
#AXN TV: For its crime show, Crime Scene Investigation, the advergame had a crime scene where you searched for clues to solve it. You could also get them SMSed if you couldn’t do it yourself. It got 50,000 people logging in.
# Aitraaz, a blockbuster Hindi film that premiered on Zee Cinema: The film is based on the Hollywood film, Disclosure that deals with seduction. A microsite secret-seduction.com invited people to send seductive messages declaring their feelings. The recipient had to go to the site to identify his or her secret admirer. This viral mail – a popular e-technique -got nearly 4000 people to the movie ad over just two days. Samsung used this to make people invite their friends to their new note PC. They reached out to five million potential consumers.

# DSP Merill Lynch's : Typically finance banners give you limited information. But DSPML’s Super Systematic Investment Planning product banner immediately calculated EMIs, returns on investment etc. Over 5.7 mn impressions were delivered & 1783 people opted to go ahead with the product. The microsite homepage generated over 30,000 page views

(This article appeared in the Sunday edition of Hindustan Times in May `06)