The Unexpected Ways Covid19 Second Wave Is Affecting The Current Marketing Landscape in India

American credit rating agency S&P, in a report suggested that lockdowns in hotspots cities and districts of the country will help to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission but will impact India's economic recovery, post the 1st wave.

Will Malls and Showrooms shut, Offline trade has completely come to a halt again. Groceries and Pharmacy have become necessities where all other sources entertainment and joy have taken a back seat. Rightly so, amid the number of cases increasing and pain the people are going through, this is bound to happen.

But What happens to brands and how does the marketing brains re-align their strategy?

Pervasive influence of pandemic has thrown the economic machinery out of gear to a large extent, leading to only necessity-based consumer spending, while the splurge is being postponed.

Gaurav Gemini, Business Director at Carat Media Services India Pvt. Ltd adds, "The second wave is an opportunity for a lot of brands, imbibing the changing behavioural dynamics, they should focus more towards introducing essentials products and do not make products essential for consumer".

"There is a lot beyond consumerism has been changed people now prefer making their home better by making impactful cosmetic changes, redefined family values have taught us to clearly mark a difference between vital and artificially important. Brands need to bring products which stay relevant to consumers at all the time so that the association have a longer life", adds Gaurav.

With a lot of brands taking their campaign off air or trying to invest their efforts and money in helping people. Shipra Srivastava, Head of Media, CRM & Partnerships, Spotify India highlights that the 2nd wave of the pandemic is a time where almost every marketer would have felt human beings and not consumers. This is primarily because many brands pulled back their campaigns as that wasn't supporting the sentiment of the country. Few brands chose to contribute and help the consumers and the ecosystem largely.

Marketing has never been more different than what it is today, says, Vanshika Mehta, an Independent Brand and Communications Strategist and Consultant based out of New Delhi. "Today marketing is what the consumer wants and consumer needs in this day and age. Marketing has always been pull, we mistook it for push because we got access to performance marketing" quotes Vanshika.

Moreover, brands need to showcase more human characteristics; the messaging must move from analytical to more emotional. Rejuvenate the meaning of happiness and focus more on positive side of the situation.

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Kushal Walia, Associate Manager, Creative Marketing at Innovaccer, highlights certain examples of campaign with major events during 2nd Wave of Covid-19 in India:

• IPL

• Eid

• Mother's Day

Some brands continued to release their Hero content on Eid (e.g. The Facebook ad), incorporating the COVID tale.

IPL released many new ads; independent of the COVID times. Some of them were shot in Feb 2020 but released later (e.g. life insurance ad ft. Bumrah). While Cred continued to focus on clutter-breaking ads' being InCREDible, it received competitive ads such as the credible ones from Magic Pin and a not so great ad by Cashkaro.

Kushal sees a major difference in the two Covid-19 waves which has hit the entire country.

He adds, When the first wave started, the Marketeers saw the increasing need to be:

• More considerate about the needs and wellbeing of their customers & employees (both, especially the latter adding a feather in their PR cap)

• Better forecasters of demand post recovery

• Better long term planners to be ready to meet the forecasted demand

• Agile; with a focus on speed and adaptability

• Vigilant of the category trend and general consumer insights; which is where you'd see a lot of brand communication around "what else is like this" & "what do the customers feel"

In the initial days (wave 1) a lot of trends emerged due to a drastic shift in the consumer behaviour and these reflected in their marketing strategies:

• Mask on logos

• D i s t a n c e

• Name changes as a part of social stunt (e.g. dineout later)

• Cross brand engagement (to show that relations and connections happen between different unrelated brands too)

Gaurav adds a very valid point here, "Since advertising is a medium which sub consciously impact people’s mind, hence brands hold a more responsible position to give their consumer a ray of hope. The more human a brand will behave during these times, the stronger bond they will form with their consumers".

The overall thinking needs to be changed and we have to work hard to see beyond CSR (it is important but what else, we can bring that can change in the lens towards current times) as well, a smile brought to a face is priceless. Brand must learn to operate in a manner with more life values, he asserts.

Kushal believes that what we are witnessing now in marketing is a either a repetition of what we saw last year or simply a shift away from Covid to go back to older ways.

Speaking on Consumer Behaviour and how the patterns have changed with Covid19 Wave2 in the country, we have a big addition from Soumalya Roy.

Soumalya manages Media for CarDekho, a brand which was very much active in March and April, brought some outstanding campaigns like "E for Elderly".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTUC45w6fg8

Assessing & Adapting To Change in Consumer Behaviour

Soumalya asserts that Marketing is all about driving Cold Audience and converting them into Hot Audience and to your Promoters.

To do it efficiently, marketers are constantly trying to create a full-proof Conversion Funnel where they will be minimum consumer leakage at every stages. The starting point of creating the Conversion Funnel is understanding your Buyer’s Persona.

More better you understand your Buyer’s Persona, more efficiently you can create your Conversion Funnel. Buyer Persona is not only about the demographics of the consumer but the psychographic, cultural and occupational behaviour of your consumer.

How second wave of Covid is changing the Buyer Persona?

Soumalya shared a deep insight with us here, While there is no change in demographic aspect of your Buyer Persona, you can definitely see a huge shift in the physiographic and cultural behaviour of the consumer.

This shift in behaviour has resulted a change in the Conversion Funnel and so to the Media touch-points.Since, people can’t step out of their home, we have seen hardly any demand of OOH and Radio Advertising.

In the absence of cash-flows in the company, spends in Television has seen a steady decline. While, you need to completely agree on the fact that Television Advertising is the most trust-worthy form of Advertising but still many Advertisers chose to keep themselves away from the medium at this point of time due to high entry cost.

However, the trend of TV advertising is not going to be similar to that of the first wave. You may not see a complete zero spending in advertising like last year, he addresses.

Television is the most preferred medium when it comes to the base creation of the Conversion Funnel because it can attract high set of cold audience. And, more wider the base is, more will the Conversion.

However, you can definitely see a sea-change in the Television Approach.

"Instead of touching all the genres, Television Advertisers may start prioritizing the genres based on their needs. Then, they may choose the most efficient and effective genre and use that genre to build the baseline. Once the baseline is created, then they may layer it with some other genres", comes directly from a media manager's point of view.

For instance, think of Cred. For them, Sports is that genre which they are using for creating the baseline.

Shall brands look at the 2nd wave as another opportunity?

This time wasn't an opportunity for brands for sure but a slow down ofcourse, adds Shipra. She gives a voice that it was an opportunity for brands to use their powerful tool of reach and spread messages of empathy, kindness and togetherness. Overall pandemic had triggered a differential thinking for creatives and media both. There has been a complete change in the dynamics of Media consumption. The OTT's, digital platforms, reality shows definitely continued to gain traction. Entertainment has been the source of distraction from anxiety and it shall continue to do so.

How about Media Selection?

Soumalya also brings out Another interesting trend is that we need to use the Omnichannel Marketing rather than looking at all the mediums separately. For instance, think of the situation when we are watching TV. Don’t we have a Digital Gadget in your hand. So, as a marketer your idea is going to take the full use of the Digital Gadget too at that point of time.

Think, if you come across an interesting Ad in Television, will you not go into Google to find out more information about the brand?

Most likely, yes !

So, as a marketer, you need to exploit this behaviour.

Calibrated lockdowns, determined by the states, may have restricted the economic damage in this second wave. But, consumer demand for all but essentials is likely to take a hard hit - India Today's Report, 14th May 2021

Where are we heading?

Grashima Sahni, Media Director - Carat Media Services, shares her thoughts with us. She acknowledges that the media landscape in India in last few years, more so in the last year, has taught us one critical thing i.e. to evolve with speed. The media choices now getting further and further segmented and it's more critical to dive into the trends and understand user consumption much better.

Gaurav Gemini makes another valid point here, "Since advertising is a medium which sub consciously impact people’s mind, hence brands hold a more responsible position to give their consumer a ray of hope. The more human a brand will behave during these times, the stronger bond they will form with their consumers".

The overall thinking needs to be changed and we have to work hard to see beyond CSR (it is important but what else, we can bring that can change in the lens towards current times) as well, a smile brought to a face is priceless. Brand must learn to operate in a manner with more life values, he asserts.

Coming from the horses mouth, Shipra Srivastava expresses that Brands definitely need to find a mid way of disassociating from their core business and product led marketing to more sensitive route but shouldn't be blind towards advertising.

Vanshika feels that it's The Pull Strategy which would work in 2021, and this is how brands would build their market in this year. Communities would matter and People talking about your business would really matter going forward.

Soumalya believes that the future belongs to Performance Marketing rather than brand Marketing. However, Performance Marketing alone can’t do any wonder. It will only be able to do the magic when it gets combined with Brand Marketing. So, the general thumb-rule of 60:40 ratio for Brand Marketing: Performance Marketing will see a change. Question is whether it will become 50:50 or more weightage towards Performance Marketing that we need to wait and watch.

Grashima is quite confident that the micro trends ( adoption of niche apps, hyper localised regional players in each category etc) hold much importance in today's ecosystem. What is critical as a marketer is that we are able to harness the power of these trends early to break clutter, and not shy away from constant experimentation to connect with the changing audiences.

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The media landscape has been ever evolving, but this pandemic times has definitely taught us all to be more humane, more resourceful and more focussed. Same goes with the brands and their marketing engines who would outshine with more compassion, more realistic interaction and empathy. This would certainly mean a change in their content and marketing strategies.

Brands who would be able to do so will emerge as warriors with more stronger imagery and more loyal customers in the coming time.

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