INMA 2010: Exposure is passe; experience is novel

At the INMA workshop held in Mumbai, Ravi Kiran offered a fresh perspective on advertising and print as a medium

At the INMA workshop held in Mumbai on March 10, Ravi Kiran, CEO, South Asia and emerging market leader, Starcom Mediavest Group, revisited the old beliefs and jargon of marketing and urged the audience to question assumptions and create value.

At a time when terms such as positioning, USP and TRPs are becoming part of everyday parlance, there is a need to revise what they really mean and look at them from a fresh perspective. Moreover, marketers the world over, he said, now believe that more than half of their money spent on advertising is wasted.

Kiran addressed the fundamental question, 'Why advertise?' to understand the basic premise of the business. The reasons could be as varied as building awareness or image, inducing intent and purchase behaviour. But the old marketing model of Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, he said, is defunct. Instead, the new measure of marketing effectiveness is based on intent; and that is what leads to behaviour.

Years ago, an average TV plan would include 15-20 channels, whereas now, it includes 30-40 channels. Marketers have realised that there is fragmentation within each medium. Besides, in the age of multitasking, attention levels are dropping. In such a scenario, marketers need to look beyond just the exposure model, which achieves the objective of finding the target consumer and delivering the brand message.

Instead, he suggested that marketers need to look at engagement and experience building, to deliver brand communication at times and places relevant to the consumer; and creating brand encounters, which change the way consumers evaluate competitive options and feel good about it.

Unfortunately, Kiran observed, most discussions get stuck at exposure with respect to inventory selling. Instead, one should look at other elements of experience, such as creating a relevant context, connecting with the consumer and creating conversations. Word of mouth, he said, is increasingly becoming popular today. Brands such as Sony World, Asian Paints and Canon, for instance, have stores that let consumers touch, feel and experience their products, but do not sell.

He said that newspapers and magazines, in order to meet with the objectives of the marketer, must leverage all the assets and resources that the brand has. There is a need to look at return on objectives, rather than return on investment. Giving the consumer a multimedia experience, Kiran said, has become inevitable.