Balance local & global digital marketing to stay cost-competitive

Balance local & global digital marketing to stay cost-competitive in times of channel saturation and increasing competition

Gamification to be a global phenomenon by 2016; CMOs to buy more technology than CIOs by 2017

From iPad Mini contests, free coffee vouchers and live dance games to donuts, chocolates, beer and bowling, only-ladies fun events, this year’s  ad:tech in New Delhi surprises marketers with oodles of business networking opportunities
New Delhi, February 22, 2013: The third India edition of the world’s #1 digital marketing event, ad:tech New Delhi 2013, drew unprecedented response from the speakers, global advertisers and marketers,  leading brands, publishers, and exhibitors. The two day conference attracted a footfall of more than 3000 attendees who deliberated on topics such as integrated mobile marketing, video integration, location-based relevancy, social media ROI, search and content.
At ad:tech New Delhi 2013, speakers hailed gamification as the latest trend for this year and predicted that it will become a major global experience by 2016. Globally, there are more than 500 million people playing games at least for 1 hour a day. Avinash Jha, VP-Digital for OMD, explained about their game changing live collaboration platform for global media planning, ‘SOURCE’, which can even create powerpoint decks automatically. He also shared examples of brands like Visa, Mahindra and Movie Munchies that have successfully gamified their campaigns.
Citing the example of Mario Bros., Rahul Awasthy, Director Strategy for Zapak Digital Entertainment, said that the same game mechanics can be applied to non-game real-life experiences to help solve the challenges of bounce rate and converting latent leads (CPL). He noted that successful campaigns require not just good content but also intent, citing the example of Arby’s Burger which leveraged gamification generated over 41,000 organic entrants and 3,00,000 actions.
This year’s ad:tech also saw exhibitors running several contests to engage with thousands of marketers attending the event. In one such sms-based contest, three lucky winners took away iPad Minis by correctly answering technology-related questions. These included Rohit Kaila from Yahoo Bangalore, Ram Kumar from India Tourism and Delhi-based Vikram Singh. Says event chairman Rammohan Sundaram, “This year again, ad:tech in India was a learning crucible where Coca Cola’s Wendy gave us a new perspective on being ‘flawesome’, while Alyssa from SapientNitro stressed on need for balancing local with global marketing to overcome challenges of bespoke adoption which is opportunistic but also can be inefficient from a budgeting perspective due to increasing channel saturation and explosion in competition. But what’s amazing is the fact that the delegates particularly this year witnessed the plethora of networking opportunities to discuss business collaborations over donuts, beer, bowling, contests and other fun activities. I was delighted to see audience clapping to the tune when they were surprised with dance on stage.”
Building on the theme of location-based relevance, Mohd. Imthiaz of Hoppr said that there are only 20 million smart phone users in India which is why marketers need to plan campaigns that can run on every type of phone. Giving the analogy of feet, folks and fingers, he said that location-based services can help make the typical lean hours into peak hours. He mentioned that for a consumer, more than any discount or badges or other rewards, the real benefit a marketer can provide is the joy of watching and sharing content.
Alyssa Altman, Vice President, SapientNitro, in her keynote on the last day of ad:tech New Delhi 2013, , shared findings of their survey in which 88% of respondents said that today’s global marketing world has become challenging than ever before. She cited a Gartner study which predicts that by 2017, CMOs will purchase more technology than CIOs.
The event concluded with power-packed presentations from Sunita Rajan, Senior Vice President, BBC Advertising on ‘Revenue at the speed of User Adoption’ and Bettina Sherick, SVP Digital Strategic marketing, 20^th century Fox International on ‘Marketing the cinema experience in a digital world’.