There is more Below The current Line

While we learn only 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear and 30% of what we see; we learn fully 80% of what we experience.’ - William Glasser

With a deluge of competitive information being bombarded to consumers at every touch point, there is a growing deviation from the historical model of end to end mass communication. Technological advancements have opened every possible information window a marketer could have envisaged, enabling brands to reach fragmented audiences.

As a reaction however to this sensitized marketing the consumer on the other hand has matured to demand higher quality, better service and more importantly, customization. The outcome, consumers have become more price sensitive in search of value leading to intelligent purchase patterns. This heightened aspirational consumerism coupled with intense competition from domestic and international brands has left little breathing space for today’s marketers.

Thus today marketers look for minimal spill over. Three factors driving this trend are Measurability, Focus and Innovation. While above the line advertising helps in the mass reach of the product, and there is no denying its need as well as benefits however it’s the below-the-line which plays the vital role in reaching out to the consumer, at the right time with most critical thing that drives consumer recruitment - experience. The enhanced ROI is evident just do the maths.

Tracing the progression

A recent world-wide study suggests Marketing Transformation will occur in four phases:

Marketers will make greater use of inbound customer contacts as a channel to present offers.

Marketers will replace many batch campaigns with more relevant event / experience-driven campaigns.

Once marketers have mastered inbound and outbound contacts as separate functions, they will begin to coordinate their activities across channels to create seamless customer conversations.

The final phase of marketing transformation will occur when marketing not only makes offers, but also enhances all customer interaction channels with marketing guidance to make each contact more intelligent – and more valuable.

Brand experience and its USP’s can be shared with long lasting consumer impressions through experiential promotional tactics such as sampling, demonstrations, lifestyle infiltration, interactive mobile marketing and activations.

Below the line offers a flexible environment for marketers to get on to this much sought after one-to-one interaction mode with the consumers. From conventional BTL activities like events & road-shows, exhibitions, conferences and sampling, marketers are exploring newer pastures like Word of Mouth, Viral marketing, Podcasting, Field marketing, contests and Consumer Generated Media. Providing measurable results through ROI metrics, BTL umbrella offers limitless potential fulfilling multiple pre defined objectives; be it Trials, Loyalty Programs, Proactive promotions, or Distribution apart from generating a handy customer database for the marketers.

Below the line in its evolved possibilities, today in India is nascent if not amateur at the risk of offending sensibilities of colleagues across the board. Yes it is evolving. Its evolution however depends as much on the Agency as it does on the marketer. Are we really open to accepting a new logical idea in all its connotations?

An increasing number of Marketers are! As traditional outbound channels become less effective and more regulated, leading marketers are shifting their focus to inbound marketing – the process of delivering cross-sell & up-sell when the customer initiates an interaction over and above the traditional channels such In-shop, promotions, road-shows, etc.

To really bring to light in fairly exact terms we would like to share the recent case of an IT company who changed the perception of cross promotions as we knew it. The Windows Vista launch messaging centered around “Wow” – the simplistic yet powerful emotional reaction that it received from any consumer who saw the product. The core was the all new interface in Windows Vista which has a translucent aero glass display characterized by a unique Flip3D means of accessing multiple windows.

To elicit a “Wow” reaction a café chain (CCD) was completely ‘Vista-ized”. The fundamental colors of CCD were changed to the blue-green Windows Vista palette starting from the door to the menu panel. All other points of interaction with the customer were also “Vista-ized” – this included a totally redesigned menu card, posters, tent-card and even a special edition brew called “Wow-fee”. An innovative cover on Café Beat the in-house newspaper provided detailed consumer benefit messaging ensuring that a consumer had varying levels of messaging at multiple touch points ensuring a complete surround.

The activation was used as a Multiplier in addition to the other facets of the campaign. The activation was driven by the fact that The Target Audience band for Windows Vista includes youth and young adults who are early technology adopters and are already living the digital lifestyle in varying degrees. Windows Vista incredibly enhances the consumer’s ability to live the digital lifestyle. Café Coffee Day was a great ‘fit’ since it enjoys a similar consumer profile. The best part was the captive nature of the audience which allows one to convey the brand messaging & product USP’s in a relaxed and undistracted manner. In fact the relevance and reach of the “The Wow starts now” Windows Vista launch campaign was enhanced through a special edition brew called “Wow-fee”. That was a huge success with over 8,000 cups sold daily!

Marketer’s world over are increasingly resorting to some or the other form of Below the line extensions/innovations as multipliers with measurability. In India, this vertical has remained under-capitalized with conventional activations alone with scope for further specialization – in turn leaving various possibilities for a brand unexplored.

This practice persists despite the fragmenting of mass markets into thousands of minimarkets, each requiring its own approach, in spite of the proliferation of new types of media, and despite the growing consumer sophistication. The most obvious benefit of integrating marketing communications is that it produces stronger message consistency and resultantly, impacts brand perception and eventually sales positively.

According to IPA Report in future agencies must recognize that marketer / agency / consumer relationships will be challenged with new models of engagement. By 2016, the hypothesis is that media owners will be integrating brands directly into existing content and savvy consumers will take control of content and the flow of interactions. So while we plan below the line within its existing templates there is need to explore beyond where wider horizons await.---from jagran