With the evolution of digital marketing, mobile marketing emerged as a primary choice for brands and advertisers in this post-pandemic world. Given this shift, at the Screenage Conference held on Wednesday, a panel discussion was held on topic ‘Mastering Mobile Advertising and Crafting Digital Age – ads’.
The panel was chaired by Nikhil Kumar, VP – India, Southeast Asia and Middle East, mediasmart and consisted of Shweta Jain, Chief Business Officer, Luxury Reserve & Craft, India and South Asia, Diageo; Tejas Choudhury Performance Marketing Lead- ecommerce, Unilever; Priyanka Gandhi, Associate Director - Integrated Marketing Communication & e-commerce marketing; Colgate Palmolive, Siddesh Kerkar, Head of Marketing, Aditya Birla Finance Udyog Plus, Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance; Suyash Dongare, Head - Digital Marketing, VIP Industries and Shrikanth Rayaprolu, CEO and cofounder, ADscholars.
The discussion revolved around mobile first approach as the consumer behaviour shift has led to brands adapting in the digital marketing space.
Speaking on the mobile marketing transformation, Shweta Jain said, “I think mobile transformation is core to how we see the world, how we are experiencing it and how brands are making it not just one-way communication, but more about that. To me and to the businesses and the brands that I look after, it has become imperative that mobile communication is all about multiplicities and managing conversations rather than just doing one-way down talking as I would call it from the past. So I think that’s been hugely transformational for all of us.”
Tejas Choudhury spoke about how big brands need to pivot in their thought process towards mobile advertising. “I think the conversations that we have today are also different. In terms of organization structure, Unilever is quite big so having some systemic changes in the last few years helped. Everyone wants to move towards digital or is moving already. I think more from the organization lens, the changes have happened. I think media investments were very easy to pivot. It’s just moving one Excel item to another. More from the thinking point of view, I think there is still a long way to go. The pace is there but it’s a catch up job for all big brands.”
Siddesh Kerkar spoke about the BFSI category and through a simple anecdote, explained how big mobile advertising is for them. “Being in a category which is BFSI, you always need more time of the user and you need them to go through a different set of things. Today when somebody comes to me, like this happened recently, when we came up with our website, and the website was designed only for mobile phone, keeping in mind mobile user. Then suddenly one of the management person came in and said that this is a website which is not loading properly on my desktop. And I was like, Sir, have you seen the statistics that we have on our website? Around 85% to 86% of our traffic is coming from mobile phone. So I think with the timelines that you gave me, I think my first priority was those 86% people and the rest 14% I think we can take it as second priority. So that’s how things are growing. And that’s how you also need to grow with them.”
Suyash Dongare spoke about how some D2C brands, especially post pandemic have changed the way luggage industry looks at mobile marketing. "As with the growth of mobile penetration in India, the consumption of ads on mobile has also grown. The smaller companies are investing good money into it and that gives confidence to bigger brands to do the same as well," he says.
Shrikanth Rayaprolu explained how brands need to approach mobile advertising. “So as we have been growing in the ad agency stages, and when I’ve been doing the media planning for the last few years and when we think of the brands, the main thing that we take is, how much of mobile do we put on it? Like 90% to 95% of media planning actually goes around the mobile so , what interactivity can be done, and all of that. Especially we try to educate the brands that understand the importance of mobile, and what all things they need to tap on the mobile. On the creative aspects, trying to build gamification ads and keeping the users engagement is very important as on the mobile, their attention span is very less. So whatever ads even the brands are showing, they need to ensure that it’s interactive, it’s engaging.”
During the discussion, Priyanka Gandhi said, “You can’t think of any digital channels platform solution, be it social or e-commerce, without having mobile as the fundamental point of consumption. We are at a stage now that mobile ownership is much more than TV. So clearly, that’s really the transformation.”
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