Brand building will be the focus of the rapidly growing digital media: IAMAI conference

This point and many other relevant topics were discussed at the fourth conference on Digital Marketing Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) conference, held in Mumbai on September 30.

Speakers at the conference were:

• Aditya Khanna, co-founder and business head, Tyroo Media
• Amar Goel, founder and chief executive officer, Komli 
  
• Anupam Mittal, chairman and managing director, People Group
  
• Anurag Gupta, managing director, DGM India
  
• Atanu Mandal, president, ACL Wireless
  
• Farokh T. Balsara, head media and entertainment; Ernst & Young India
  
• Harish Bahl, managing director and CEO Smile Interactive Technologies Group
  
• Kashyap Vadapalli, director,  marketing and operations, eBay India
  
• Kiran Gopinath, CEO, Ozone Media; Krishna Prasad, executive producer, MSN India
  
• Naren Nachiappan, managing director, Jivox
  
• Naveen Tewari, chief executive officer, mKhoj
  
• Neville Taraporewalla, CEO and online media director, Publicitas Digital
  
• R Rajnish, director, advertiser and publisher solutions, Microsoft India
  
• Ratish Nair, chief executive officer, Interactive Avenues
  
• Suman Srivastava, chief executive officer, Euro RSCG Officer
  
• Sunil Nair, chief executive officer and co-founder, Nautanki TV
  
• Taron Mohan, founder and chief executive officer, Phoneytunes
  
• Upen Roop Rai, director, Times Internet
  
• Vikram Sakhuja, chief operating officer, South Asia, Group M
  
• Vishal Maheshwari, director, Mobile, Yahoo! India
  
• Viren Popli, head mobile entertainment, Star India
  
• Pratap Bose, chief operating officer, Mudra Group
  
• Saurabh Bhatia, managing director,Vdopia. 

The sessions:

Session 1: Standard and norms
Are some of the norms and standards necessary to ensure the next round of growth
Currently,  India does not have anacceptable audience measurement, ratings, accreditation process, a credit recovery system, acceptable standards of even banner sizes and types and there is no audit.

How important is the establishment of some norms for driving the next round of growth?

Session 2: Brand building or performance
Is it time to shift tobrand building from performance-basedadvertisement
A strong opinion suggests that the industry should now move away from performance based advertisement and focus on brand building. Is the shift desirable? Will it mean that the industry will lose its biggest: a strong and clearly identifiable RoI? Is such a shift possible and desirable? What should be the right mix?

Session 3: Video advertisements
How seriously should we take video advertisements?
Not long ago it was thought that video advertisement has the potential to efficiently replace TV advertisements. Given the mindset and infrastructure issues, how far can video ads take the industry? What is its future in India? Do advertisers have a clear understanding of video ads?

Session 4: Ad networks
What value can they posswibly bring?
Adnetworks seem to be the flavour of the year! Can they really add value to the industry? Are there too many of them already? Is it becoming a me-too business no sooner than it started?

Session 5: Mobile marketing
When are going to walk the talk?
Mobile marketing in India still remains in the realm or talk while the number of users increase by 8 million every month. Is there a serious business here or it is another of those sectors where we will keep talking about the potential for the next ten years? What are the real opportunities and what are the perceived problems?

Synopsis
Taraporewalla observed, ''Online creative have not received much attention. Why don't we see many online branding in India?'' He cited Lacoste's example which had created a microsite that captured the imagination of the users. Online Louis Vuitton has done its strategy in such a way that consumers could build a relationship with it.

The internet can bridge the gap with a consumer who may not be familiar with the brand offline. Cartier has done innovations like roadblocks, half page ads. It used many branding units all with a long term goal in mind.

EBay India director, Vadapalli said, ''Brand building is a dilemma not for only the online media, but every other media as well. Decisions are taken on the basis of the product life cycle, industry maturity and consumer purchase involvement and point of consumption. eBay, however, looks at product life cycle differently.''

He added, ''You have to move beyond brands to features of your product. The focus should be on building awareness on basis of the industry maturity. What is required is a combination of brand building and performance.'' 

MSN India's Prasad stated, ''First of all, what you need to know is how and what your brand stands for. I believe it is a case of both brand building and performance that is required. You have to accommodate your brand along with your performance. So, how much do brand managers spend on producing and production of online advertisements? What we require is a qualified staff that understands online in brand building organisation. Unfortunately, we do not have the support for it. We need to create the likes of Prasoon Joshi and Piyush Pandey even in the digital spectrum.''

Prasad question was, ''In the online world there are no creative people like there are in offline like Balki, Prasoon Joshi. Also how does one define performance? Does it stop when people click or when they spend using their credit cards? I have often seen performance-based advertising where the communication is boring. The company would be better served if it used interactive tools available online to do brand building as well.''

In strong favour of brand building, Upen Roop Rai said, ''I am only for branding, why should we be accountable for what we are? We need to differentiate ourselves not by performance but by brand building.''

Vikram Sakhuja noted, ''First and foremost you should start with the strength of the medium, secondly, stop lamenting about the Internet reach in India and instead focus on the number of people who are already using the Internet. What most people fail to understand is the power of the medium, and once you understand the power of your medium, the sky will be the limit. Start getting competitive and learn that whichever be the medium, digital can do a much better job. Unfortunately, what the brand marketers don't understand is how this medium works.''

Group M COO South Asia Vikram Sakhuja took a different track. He argued that for the internet ad pie to grow it must start competing directly with the other traditional mediums. '' I am tired of people complaining about the fact that there are only 40 million net users in the country. For categories like telecom, consumer durables they are a key audience. It is a critical reach for these categories.''

He said that internet companies should take relevant reach and explain to brand marketers in the simplest possible manner how they can target the audience better. ''The Internet offers the opportunity for one to one marketing on a mass level. One can also fine tune the same.''
In terms of innovations that GroupM has done he gave the example of the Nokia Navigator banner. For a Star Plus show a unique banner was created wherein if one clicked on a character one could learn more about him/her.

''On television whenever there is an ad break viewership goes down quite a bit during that period. It would make sense for a client to shift maybe five per cent of television ad spend onto the Internet where you pay only when someone clicks on the message. I find that appealing," Sakhuja added.