MediaCom launches BLINK_live in India

An impressive line-up of speakers at the launch event of MediaCom's flagship thought leadership & innovation lab, Blink_live share insights on ‘Decoding Growth in a Slowdown’

by e4m Desk
Published - Sep 18, 2019 8:46 AM | 5 min read

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Making its debut in India is BLINK_live, MediaCom’s thought leadership and innovation lab, that is designed to help its clients better understand and leverage the latest media and marketing trends. Juxtaposing the launch with an evening of views, the event saw eminent thought leaders take to the stage to share their insights on ‘Decoding Growth in A Slowdown’ as a topic of discussion.

Bianca Best, Global Managing Director of Blink & Strategic Partnerships, MediaCom

Speaking about the launch Bianca Best, Global Managing Director of Blink & Strategic Partnerships, MediaCom, said “In the volatile, exciting and ever-evolving landscape brands are operating in today, Blink satisfies not just the potential that comes from trial and innovation (which we see as part of every client brief) but is an absolute necessity to ensure clients achieve sustainable, long term business success. Only once brands partner with technology specialists are the ambitions of true digital transformation realised. I’m incredibly invigorated to be enabling this for our clients and see Blink becoming an essential complementary pillar to MediaCom’s already world-class offering.”

Navin Khemka, CEO, MediaCom South Asia

Also commenting on the India launch of BLINK_live, Navin Khemka, CEO, MediaCom South Asia, said, “The media landscape has changed drastically, and exchange of trends and ideas globally has become more relevant than ever. BLINK_live is one such platform that helps bring global marketing trends to India and shares India’s insights with the world. I am happy to bring BLINK_live to India for the first time. I am sure it will add great value to our existing clientele and to enhance the brands& marketing efforts. We are also hopeful to glean more insightful observations from the Indian team through this platform.”

Byron Sharp, Marketing Science Professor & Director of Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Australia

The keynote speaker of the session, Byron Sharp, Marketing Science Professor & Director of Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Australia, spoke at length on the “Laws of Growth”. Based on his bestseller ‘How Brands Grow’, Sharp’s talk centred around the scientific laws in marketing that modern marketers should familiarise themselves with. He went on to elaborate on the common myths that surround marketing and how marketers need to move out of these in order to create success stories for their brands. He stressed on the need for brands to pull themselves out of clichéd marketing strategies which could prove to be catastrophic to brands, instead Sharp through various case studies showed how marketers could move beyond typical textbook techniques. He said, “Stay laser focussed on the big things, is this giving me more mental and physical viability in the wake of many, many competitors.”

Also part of the speaker line up was Nihar Das, Overall Lead, Borderless WPP Team, who shared insights on how to ‘Tackle the slowdown through customized growth models’. He said, “In the WPP fraternity, we have now identified some hitherto under-researched factors that empirically have a significant impact on growth. These include the diversity of portfolio, penetration and consumer involvement levels amongst others. We have further discovered that one-size-fits-all communications models don’t perform uniformly well across different category typologies and each typology actually requires an approach that is suitably nuanced. We believe these are fundamentals we should heed even more in a recessionary environment.”

Putting forward a presentation on ‘Identifying Real Growth’, Preeti Reddy, CEO, South Asia at Kantar-Insights, spoke about how traditional growth formulas were no longer working and how growth was getting harder to find and maintain. She took the audience through an engrossing talk of how companies need to find smarter ways to sustain long term growth and the lessons that can be learnt from distinguishing between performers and underperformers. Her presentation was based on the findings of a study conducted by Kantar and the Institute for Real Growth among business professional and CEOs of various companies across 73 countries including India.

The next speaker, Baldeep Singh, VP, Client Engagement & Data Partnership at [m] PLATFORM who spoke on the topic of ‘Cutting slump with laser-focused Consumer Behaviour’, he said, “ As the economy changes and we are facing an impending recession, it becomes critical to safeguarding client spends by ensuring media purchases drive significant performance and last-mile value. Combined with smarter consumers who proactively block ads and 3rd party cookies on all devices, we can assume that the dynamics of supply and demand will change. It’s very much possible that real human supply will dry up and pricing on redefined viewability will increase. That said while we may see the launch of People Data Networks-where consumer will willingly provide data in return for rewards, we will also see higher use of sharper cut audience segments. Data will be shared and used to augment buys ensuring monies spent will yield greater result due to precision audience buys.

Josh Gallagher, Chief Product Officer, APAC at MediaCom

Josh Gallagher, Chief Product Officer, APAC at MediaCom spoke in-depth on ‘Will the promise of E-commerce survive a slowdown?’ Centring his talk on the growth of e-commerce platforms, he said, “People who stay ahead of the curve are the ones who are going to stay there, the ones that take the chances are going to get there and this isn’t a big chance to take. There are things that we need to do if we want to embrace what we call the promise of e-commerce and live up to the promise that e-commerce is going to bring. The reason why it’s working is because it does offer simplicity, it offers a frictionless environment for people to buy. That makes it easier for people.” Josh believes that brands that look towards e-commerce will be best equipped to handle the economic downturn.