Brands and marketers can target audiences on the VI platform, not only within their owned and operated media but also onto the third-party, said Nishant S Gupta, Head of Revenue, TorcAI, at the Pitch CMO Summit in Mumbai on Friday.

He was delivering the spotlight session on ‘Many Industry Firsts with VI Ads’. According to Gupta, brands can also transfer their first-party data in the most secure manner on VI Ads’ platform.

Talking about VI audiences on third-party media, Gupta said, “Till date, within the telco ecosystem, advertisers could target the audiences within their owned and operated media. But with VI Ads, the landscape has completely changed. Now brands and marketers can target audiences on VI platform not within their own and operated media but also onto the third party.”

Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) provides access to more than 243 million subscribers in India and has signed a multi-year partnership with Infomo's subsidiary TorcAI to launch a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) enabled AdTech and data distribution platform known as VI Ads.

Vi Ads has been conceptualised, developed and handled by TorcAI. It was launched in 2022.

“It allows the brand and marketers to not only target the digital part but they can also target via traditional media like SMS and OBD,” Gupta said.

Accompanying him was Madhu Sudan, Executive Director, New Business, TorcAI, who said it is the first time that media and data are being stapled together bringing telco data into digital advertising.

Sudan added, “When we say the platform is inventory agnostic what we really mean is that we have telco data, which tells you who the user is and on top of that when we staple it with media we also know where he is.”

He said that brands usually spend a significantly large amount of time, effort and money experimenting with various media to try and find out which media works best for them and this usually involves very little efficacy and large budgets.

Explaining through a case study, Sudan said, “We ran a campaign recently. It was a large music service that we all know of. They were relaunching in a huge way and they wanted to spend significantly large amounts across media categories. So, we arrived at music affinity audiences and we ran it in excess of 20 different platforms.”

“The service would have had to run individual campaigns across each of these media categories to understand which works for them and which don't; whereas with VI ads, capability and ML (machine learning) capabilities, we were able to identify music affinity audiences and target them across various number of third-party media and yielded fantastic results,” Sudan said.

Explaining the concept of media and data stapled together, Sudan said, this is the first time it's being done and TorcAI has brought in the telco data into digital advertising, which is the most deterministic form of data available in the market.

“Once we know who the user is, we staple media to that ID and we also know where the user is. We are concatenating multiple campaigns into one capability by stapling media and data together,” he said.

Adding to this, Gupta highlighted that the platform not only allows the brands to target predefined cohorts like gender and socio-economic class but it also allows the brand to create its own custom cohorts and segments.

“It offers the marketers the benefit of unique audience segmentation and interest groups and targeting parameters,” he said.

The Pitch CMO Summit held at Mumbai on March 24 saw an enviable gathering of marketing and brand heads, advertising thought leaders and other media luminaries who exchanged thoughts, ideas and notes on all things marketing.

As the advertising and marketing media continues to be driven by reams of data from multiple sources, Gaurav Anand, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, L’Oréal India, appositely spoke on ‘The Future of Marketing with Consumer Data.’

While eschewing the usual practice of illustrating his talk with the use of slides, Anand admitted that as a marketer, it wouldn’t feel right to him to have no visual aid, and proceeded to show a quick video encapsulating L’Oréal’s data and digital-driven process in its marketing endeavors.

"At L’Oréal we are busy crafting out what the future of marketing would be. We work across a lot of different markets and take inspiration from China and Brazil, “he said, adding that in its simplest form, he broke up marketing into three buckets. “The first would be who's the audience I show my content to, the second what content I show, and third, how I measure its impact.”

“When it comes to describing consumers, marketers have never been short of flair. How often have you seen a brief that says ‘looking for affluent consumers in the X-Y age group, who are into high end fashion, styling, etc.’  And if you don’t have these well-defined psychographics, there’s been a lot of research done like TAO segmentation or Sociovision which can help you define those psychographics,” continued Anand.

While appreciating these means in helping create content, Anand said one basic practical question remained to be answered, “Where do you find these consumers?”

“When the media is struggling to go beyond basic demos and age groups, how do we start getting into these nuances? Where do we find these consumers? That’s the challenge marketers are facing, especially in big markets like India,” he said, circling back to the hypothetical brief of finding a particular set of consumers, and elaborating on the conflicting metrics that can muddy particular demographics and definitions, akin to finding needles in the haystack.

Giving an example of when L’Oréal was launching Lancome in India, Anand said the brand initially looked at targeting women over 25, with high disposable incomes, but was then pleasantly surprised to see a large influx of consumers from younger cohorts, and so had to correct their assumptions.

Noting that while there were a lot of buzz words and flashy terms being used when speaking of targeting audiences (his personal least favourite being ‘affinity’), Anand said that a lot of it was just jargon and distracted marketers from figuring out the correct content for the correct consumers in the correct context.

"The first thing we need to do is to stop moving away from claim based signals to deterministic signals. For instance, what a consumer watched can tell you a little bit about what this consumer is going to buy,” he said, continuing, “The second thing I've started seeing, and Google is doing a fantastic job at it, is using their household panel data on their entire YouTube audiences, which gives a sense of affluence targeting to brands at scale.”

Anand continued to break down how smaller datasets could lead brands into creating and visualizing the larger picture and therefore help determine future targeting and content programming. He elucidated on various methods that different categories of brands could employ, both consumer-facing as well as backend models, to gather data on the likes, dislikes, purchase decisions, aspirations and expectations of consumers and how to sell to them.

“Hence, in my view, the best way to find your future consumers is the data of your present consumers,” said Anand.

End of Broadcasting will be the beginning of conversations, said Tamanna Dhamija, Founder & CEO of Convosight, while speaking at PITCH CMO Summit.

Dhamija shared that she realized the power of online communities when she saw that 40% of conversations there are linked to brands. “I couldn't believe how simple and scalable this phenomenon was if brands had the opportunity to tap into communities such as these online and talk to consumers about the efficacy of brands. It took me three years to get to this realization.” 

Dhamika shared that the objective behind Conovosight was to help brands discover such communities, tap into them online, get insights and market to consumers that are talking to each other. 

In her presentation at the event, she talked about one such community- Jhatpat Recipe which has around five lakh members. She said there are 1000s of such communities just talking about food and other topics and there are 63 million members in these rooms spread across the internet.

According to Dhamija, communities have always existed but now they have arrived online, where people are talking to each other. "For instance,  Facebook groups are the largest with 1.8 billion people in these rooms. They've all joined organically and again, people are talking to each other. It's not just broadcasting. Other platforms are Reddit, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord. These are all the channels on existing social media where communities are present," she noted. 

“We've already witnessed this evolution of broadcasting to conversations. It's a tectonic shift in the way we as consumers have started behaving online. We have seen that balconies are where we step online, where a brand or an influencer or a consumer creates the balcony and constantly consumes a lot of content from other balconies," she said. (Balconies are here refer to Facebook pages, Twitter, Moj whereas Halls are Facebook Group, Reddit and Whatsapp ) 

Dhamija shared that since consumers moved to balconies, brands have also followed: “So all of the listening, inciting and paid marketing happen on these balconies. And as we all have evolved, as we all have started trusting each other digitally, we've seen an explosion of halls. And what are halls again? Channels in which people are talking to each other and not just broadcasting.” 

When we look at balconies and halls, there are just a few differences. First, all balconies are created through paid marketing. “So there's the concept of having a lot of followers and we do paid marketing to garner followers, in balconies or in halls, which are built organically. It's all organic because it's based on interest or passion. When we look at engagement between balconies and halls, there is a stark difference. Where you see the engagement in balconies is on an average 10% but when we look at halls one person on average engages six times in a hall which is 600% engagement. Content is created through individuals like you and me and that's how influence is created in a hall.” 

She further shared that not just organic communities, but even brand own communities or Facebook groups have really high metrics. She cited an example of Sunsilk Facebook group, which has just 20,000 members, but the organic reach of the group is 2.2 million.

“We knew communities need to be an integral part of the marketing and insights mix because it's an integral part of the consumer buying journey.”

She also stated that brands have not adopted communities at all and the main reason behind this is that there are no listing or discovery tools that exist that help brands identify the relevant rooms online that they can tap into. 

And there Convosight came into the picture. “That's how Convosight came into existence. It is just an enabler. It's really the change in behaviour that has happened online that has given the rise of communities.” 

She further added, “We were there at the right time and saw this opportunity and now we aggregate communities on existing social channels, really creating opportunities for brands and consumers in communities to co-exist. It's a win-win.” 

She also said, “It drives massive value to the consumer because they are there talking about the brands and categories. It creates consideration through word of mouth. We now have access to 100,000 communities with 900 million members across the globe. And we work with about 150 consumer brands, very large enterprise customers, again, enabling discovery, enabling inciting and marketing into those communities.”

In a world where everything about everyone can be known digitally, Profitwheel is a platform that helps companies know their customers. At the Pitch CMO Summit organized by exchange4media, Vivek Bhargava, co-founder of Profitwheel, spoke to the audience about how the company uses customer intelligence to help brands find their profitable customers.

In the session titled, ‘Decoding Your Profitable Customers With Consumer Intelligence,’ Bhargava talked about Profitwheel’s methods of using data and finding out more about a particular brand’s customer base in a way that the brand knows the interests of that particular customer and can use it to target them through different methods of advertising and marketing.

Bhargava said, “When you look at a brand, they don't know what their best and most profitable customers look like so they don't have a common currency. All the different departments that they have, they all work in silos. But imagine if you knew what the psychographic of your best customers look like, then all the brands can actually get all the departments aligned to this one north star of acquiring and retaining most profitable customers.

Imagine you could also give the same platform to entire ecosystem of partners that you have. So, give it to your creative agency, give it to your content creation agency, give it to your media buying agency, give to your influence agency, video market research agency, give it to consulting companies who work with you, audit that work with you. Basically, what you do is you create this one platform that every single person in your company, as well as your ecosystem partners can use when they want to take any decision.”

He also spoke about the usage of artificial intelligence and the famous generative AI application ChatGPT in the workings of Proftwheel. He says ChatGPT can take the data and help make a creative brief, a campaign idea and video scripts for the brand using the consumer intelligence data from Profitwheel.

Bhargava then talked about the importance of knowing what to do with the enormous customer data that brands have and how Profitwheel’s goal is to help marketers know and understand their consumers better. “The biggest challenge I think most of us face today is that we have so much customer data, but we don't know anything about our customers. We just know that okay, this person bought this three times in a month, this person has bought this much value in terms of pricing. But if I were to ask you, how are you going to build them as a community? How are you going to create content for them? How are you going to choose influencers with them? How are we going to decide which countries you should expand in? All these questions are completely unanswered, and it takes a lot of research, a lot of insights, a lot of experience before you can answer any of these questions. So, our goal is that every single person in the company should have access to a bouncing board that gives you real time insights about your customers. As soon as you enter it, you should get some insights, and then use those insights for actions. And not only you, every single ecosystem partner of yours should get the same platform and it should not be linked to the amount of money you spend on advertising.”

One of the most fascinating aspects of agile marketing is the way it empowers businesses to embrace change and uncertainty as opportunities for growth and innovation. This approach not only makes marketing more effective but also fosters a culture of creativity and collaboration that can help businesses thrive in today's fast-paced and ever-changing market. Exploring more on this at the Pitch CMO Summit Mumbai 2023, Amit Doshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Britannia Industries, delivered a spotlight session on ‘Insightful storytelling with agile marketing’.

Doshi shared real stories and case studies from his experiences at Britannia. The first story that he shared was about Britannia Good Day which has stood for the spirit of happiness and optimism.

“For a brand as highly penetrated in the country as Good Day, we needed to create more frequent opportunities to trigger consumption. So we made a simple shift- encouraged people to celebrate the small moments,” said Doshi.

“In terms of agility in absorbing what’s happening around us, we saw that if the world is busy consuming reels, why is it that the consumption format only needs to exist within a social media platform? So we took the same platform and planted it on traditional media. It was about learning and adopting not only what was happening in popular culture in terms of content but also format.”

The second case study of agile marketing that Doshi shared was that of the much-loved Milk Bikis.

The brand existed in a certain avatar. But a decade ago, it was changed to a different format. However, but there was a generation who grew up on the old Milk Bikis and wrote to the brand to bring it back, he said.

Explaining how Britannia adopted agility to deal with the situation, Doshi shared, “We launched a limited edition pack called Milk Bikis Classic. But the response was so great that we made it a permanent product. So, we have a Milk Bikis and a Milk Bikis Classic, both catering to two different audiences.”

The communication around Milk Bikis is centred around nostalgia and is soaked in regional flavours in terms of content, language and even dialects, therefore exhibiting both agility and hyper-regionalisation of content, he explained.

Sharing the third case study, Doshi talked about Britannia Marie and ‘My Startup Contest’ that encourages women to do more and be more.

“Another great campaign that Britannia did was #Letskeepitgoing, which emphasised how only celebrating women on International Women’s Day is not enough,” said Doshi, adding, “It’s really a question of identifying the right moments to continue the narrative forward.”

Summing up his session on how Britannia sees agility, Doshi said, “We believe that ideas can come from anywhere, as most of the work you saw wasn’t even from our mainline creative agency. Let data guide you, listen to what is happening around and then see that it reflects in your work. A lot of our success has come from staying consistent with the insight around which the brand is centred and a lot of co-creation with consumers - either by getting them to participate or by making them the heroes.”

Jack in The Box Worldwide, along with MARS Petcare has launched a digital campaign for Pedigree India called the #Pedigree6WeekChallenge. It promises a visible difference in dogs' digestive system, skin and coat, muscles, bones, and natural defence within 6 weeks of consuming Pedigree as compared to feeding home-cooked food. Devising an Influencer activation starring Shikhar Dhawan, Yuzvendra Chahal and Dhanashree grooving to a catchy, specially produced rap song, the challenge encourages users to first sample, then buy a 6-week supply of Pedigree Dry Food, all while reengaging with customers through a seamless WhatsApp-focused campaign. The customers also stand a chance to win a 2-day ‘staycation’ at Taj with their pets upon entering their details to sample the pet food. 

Salil Murthy, Managing Director, Petcare at MARS International India Ltd said, “At MARS Petcare, we are always aiming to set the highest food standards and spread advocacy for nutritionally balanced diets for pets. We are committed to using high-quality ingredients that make your pets healthier and fitter for a happier living. With the #Pedigree6WeekChallenge, we are confident that pet parents will see the difference a balanced diet makes to their dogs and start preferring this alternative which is also time-convenient and cost-friendly.” 

Axon Alex, Managing Partner, Jack in The Box Worldwide said, “The 6-week challenge was a great collaborative exercise with the team at Mars Petcare. This collaboration allowed us to flex our muscles both from a creative and UX standpoint. The rap song we conceptualized was to allow influencers to have genuine fun with their dogs instead of reading from a script. This combined with building the WhatsApp journey allowed us to interact with the audience through their entire journey from awareness to post-purchase which was unique and exciting.” 

The #Pedigree6WeekChallenge brings together the elite names with 100 nano influencers grooving to the rap song that is informative as it is entertaining. Through the messaging, customers are made aware of their chance to win a 2-day vacation at Taj with their pets. They are then redirected to sample the product by entering contact details on the website, helping push communications through WhatsApp. 

The brand engages with these potential customers through weekly updates and information that helps track pet health. They are also encouraged to share images of the progress through 6 weeks, thus solidifying the promise and creating an authentic bank of user-generated content.

EatFit has announced the launch of its latest campaign #IPizzaLove today, on account of the Indian Premier League 2023, where EatFit celebrates India’s love for Cricket and Food together with a range of healthy and nutritious pizzas during the IPL season. 

To kick off the #IPizzaLove campaign, EatFit has partnered with Mayank Agarwal, one of India’s leading cricket players, and Joy Bhattacharya, Sports Enthusiast for two ad campaigns which will be published on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. In the first ad, Joy is caught off guard discussing EatFit’s pizza range with Mayank during a post-match presentation whereas, in the second ad, they are seen talking about how pizzas are the best way to celebrate a match victory. The second ad will be led by famous cricketers who plan to celebrate their match victories with EatFit pizzas. 

To add a twist of fun, each of the IPL team players will celebrate the campaign in their own style and make a video reel on Instagram while competing with each other and see who creates the most fun content. The players who will be participating in this video trend are Shefali Varma and Jemimah Rodriguez from Delhi Capitals, Rajat Patidar and Shahbaz Ahmed from Royal Challengers, Devdutt Padikkal and Yashasvi Jaiswal from Rajasthan Royals, Mayank Agarwal, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar from Sunrisers Hyderabad who have their own interpretation of how they plan to celebrate with EatFit pizzas. 

Commenting on the campaign, Gokul Kandhi, Chief Business Officer, Curefoods, said "As a health-focused brand, EatFit is committed to providing customers with healthy and nutritious food options that don't compromise on the Indian taste. With the #IPizzaLove campaign, we are providing a healthy and delicious food option to all cricket fans and motivating them for IPL 2023 to celebrate and cheer for their favorite team. We are encouraging people to rejoice this cricket season with their preferred food while taking care of their health and nutritional needs." 

The #IPizzaLove campaign’s food range consists of pizzas made with fresh ingredients and real cheese, ensuring that customers enjoy a guilt-free indulgence. The pizzas are available in a variety of options to cater to different taste preferences. From gourmet pizzas to affordable but nutritious millet-based treats, Curefoods has curated a whole gamut of brands to fulfill everyone’s pizza desires. This new range of pizza is available on delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy, apart from EatFit.in platform, with unlimited options that will last for the entire season.