club catalyst. ‘Everyone-to-everyone’ marketing

The list of permitted private satellite TV channels in India as of January 2016 consists of 857 channels, as reported by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.

These are spread across the category of News and Non-News channels in several languages, reflecting the diversity of India.

Similarly, in the print newspaper category, the Registrar of Newspapers for India reports the total number of newspapers in India to be a mind-boggling 1,05,443 (as of March 2015). Hindi alone has 42,493 newspapers while English language newspapers are the second largest chunk with 13,661 publications.

The total circulation of newspapers is over half a billion, with half of this accounted for by Hindi language newspapers alone and English newspapers coming second with a circulation of 62.5 million.

The above snapshot of two of the major mass communication platforms, which have been conventionally utilised by brand managers for building mass franchise for their brands, clearly indicates the fragmentation of user segments and the associated clutter in media choices.

Twenty years ago, a national TVC on a couple of TV channels customarily would have reached a majority of urban Indians, but today the messaging would need to be incorporated in a multitude of channels to have the same impact. Mass marketing is thus evolving into micro-marketing.

It’s all about UGC The digital transformation currently under way is increasingly characterised by its one-to-one — or as some authors term it — an ‘everyone-to-everyone’ market. This is one of the biggest disruptive elements in the digital landscape.

For instance, the locus and control of marketing communication is no longer vested with the brand manager alone.

Peer-to-peer communication facilitated and magnified by various social networking platforms has greatly weakened the messaging monopoly long held by marketers and brand managers.

The painstakingly constructed brand image may as well disappear on account of user generated content (UGC) that adversely or contrarily comments upon the brands’ performance, hence impinging upon the brand image.

This UGC is considered more credible than the carefully crafted and hugely expensive brand stories built by marketers. For instance, an adverse comment on Tripadvisor or Yelp may, in a digital world, carry more weight and credibility than a celebrity brand ambassador’s endorsement of a brand.

In the bargain, there is a unique flood of small, private labels which are successfully engaging with select niches of customers through this personalised media. This works for customers who are looking for tailor-made value propositions or have become jaded with the mass brands otherwise available.

Mass brands, amongst others, were built upon the premise that people are looking for societal parity manifested through their branded purchases.

Standing out, not merging in

But today, it is individuality and personal ethos and aspirations that seemingly drive the individual to want to stand out instead of merge in. This is something that conventional branding thought and mass media-based brand building methods may not be able to deliver.

Eminent researchers have also indicated how the source of competitive advantage of firms as evinced by Michael Porter — wherein traditionally the upstream contained the source of competitive advantage for firms — has now transformed.

This is a crucial aspect of organisational relevance as it is increasingly the downstream (read marketing) that contains the source of competitive advantage.

Thus, large and integrated behemoths of the consumer markets may lose the battle in this new digital landscape to small but data-driven companies that have the felicity to engage in a one-to-one and direct mode of operation.

What marketers must do now To summarise, the impact of all this on branding would mean the following tasks for marketers:

Target markets would have to be more accurately defined with due consideration to sub-cultural as well as global realities.

This may sound contradictory but in certain categories of products the brand may have to be subservient to a global culture (e.g. blue jeans, coffee) whereas in some others, the brand may have to very narrowly connect to a particular sub-cultural reality.

Digital has the power to deliver a highly focused message tailored individually to more effectively engage with specific (niche) target segments. The mass brands of yesteryear may have to transform into umbrella brands within which behaviourally-defined target segments may have to be matched with specific-benefits seeking sub-groups.

Organised retail players have an advantage over manufacturer brand owners as they are more closely connected to the end-customer. It is, therefore, not difficult to understand why the private label has started becoming prominent in many categories of merchandise across global markets.

This is so because they are connected more closely with the customer and hence privy to data and customer insights, enabling them to create value propositions that specifically caters to a particular benefit segment of customers.

The emotional quotient of the brand story and its positioning will become more and more important for marketers and brand managers for which they will have to be increasingly data-driven such that finer socio-psychographic nuances are captured in their brand building effort.

Finally, in an increasingly socially networked market, content marketing is crucial to deliver the brand story in a targeted and engaging manner.

Brand managers will have to be extremely careful about the topicality, correctness and timeliness of their (brand) content tailored suitably across platforms and customer touchpoints.

Those who do not customise their content to platforms (e.g. mobile versus laptops) would have lost an opportunity to engage with and convince their targeted customers.

The digital landscape, therefore, will force brand managers to look at the very premise on which conventionally brands have been successfully built and marketed. Customisation will become more and more important as the technology is now available to sustain such intense one-to-one engagement.

VENKATESH UMASHANKAR, PROFESSOR OF MARKETING, GREAT LAKES INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, GURGAON

COMMENT NOW