Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast, Say Digital Experts at Ad:Tech New Delhi 2013

The third Delhi edition of the world’s #1 digital marketing event, ad:tech New Delhi 2013, kick-started in the capital today with thousands of delegates pouring in from India and all over the world to learn about the latest trends from global experts, share their own experiences and for business networking.

The opening keynote in the morning by Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities, The Coca Cola Company, deliberated on the concept of Liquid & Linked Marketing. Wendy stressed on the need to create more stories that are share-worthy instead of typical advertisements.

In this age of real-time marketing, it is imperative to think big, start small and then scale rapidly, she recommended while addressing a packed audience. We are built for scale – if we do not reposition our failure, we will scale the wrong thing perfectly.

Below are the key highlights from day one at ad:tech New Delhi 2013:

Wendy Clark during her session delved into Coca Cola’s strategy of listening and engagement hubs around the world, which also provide them new measurement tools. Focusing on the three areas of stories, spread and value, she cited the example of the ‘Hug Machine’ set up by Coca Cola in National University of Singapore, which would offer a free can of Coke if you hugged the machine. Even though the campaign ran only in Singapore, it became viral globally and generated over 10 million views in the US itself.

Wendy also shared eight key learning’s for today’s digital marketers: be share-worthy by creating content that is interesting and compelling; embrace the new salesforce which are consumers willing to carry brand messages ahead; listen and then engage; test, fail, learn, and then scale; speed trumps perfection so be ‘flawsome’; disrupt yourself or be disrupted by the market; do not accept the status quo; and, play well on a behavioural level to manage increasingly complicated campaigns.

The second keynote presentation by Katharyn White, Vice President Marketing, IBM Global Business Services emphasized on the three imperatives for marketing professionals including understanding the customer as an individual, creating a system of engagement that maximizes value creation at every touch and designing your culture and brand so that they are authentically one.

The first interactive session on ‘Brand Storytelling Gets Tech-ified’ witnessed industry bigwigs namely Deepali Nair, Country Head - Brand, Customer Service & Corporate Communications, L&T General Insurance Company Limited; Sanjay Tripathy, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Product and Direct Sales Channels, HDFC Life; Nikhil Rungta, Country Marketing Head, Google India, and Rajdeep Endow, MD, Sapient India and Global Delivery Lead, SapientNitro deliberating on how technology can amplify brand experience and create a powerful source of differentiation and competitive advantage with relevant technology expertise.

An engaging session on ‘Integrated Marketing’ focused on how brands can plan, create, execute, and measure cross-channel tactics for advanced digital marketing initiatives. This session was conducted by Shivanandan Pare, Head - e-commerce, Madura fashion and Lifestyle, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd; Chandrakanth B.N., Co-Founder and Managing Director, Theorem India Pvt Ltd.; Nitin Mathur, Senior Director & Head of Marketing, India & South-east Asia, Yahoo!; Gaurav Seth, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Sony MAX and Ajay Kaul, Executive Director, Global Brand Communications Worldwide Marketing, Lenovo.

Day 1 of the conference also included power-packed discussions and break-out sessions on Integrated Marketing strategies, art of tech-storytelling by brands, Big Data, convergence of online and offline marketing initiatives, Native advertising, Augmented Reality, Gamification, and Location Based Relevancy among others.

Brands attending ad:tech New Delhi 2013 include Accenture, Aditya Birla Financial Services, Axis Bank, BBC Advertising, Bharti Airtel, Birla Sunlife Insurance, Cafe Coffee Day,Citi India, Cleartrip, CNBC-TV18, Dish TV India Ltd, Ford India, Future Group, General Motors, Google Inc, HDFC Life, IBM, Ibibo Group, India Today, Info Edge India, Intertek, L&T General Insurance, Lodha Group, Myntra, MapmyIndia, Monster.com,Nielsen India, Reliance Consumer Finance, Suzuki Motorcycle India, Symantec TCS India, The Coca-Cola Company, Times Internet Limited, Viacom 18, Yahoo! and Yatra.com among others.

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 Jhangiani, Vice President – Digital, Omnicom Media Group, 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 Avasthy, 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.The audience was 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, 20th century Fox International on ‘Marketing the cinema experience in a digital world’.

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.