The Evolution; Marketing that was and that is...
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80s and 90s was years when our generation was growing up. The ASIAD Games gave us more than the mascot “Appu”, it was for the first time TV telecast happened in colourand opened the floodgates for advertising. We still remember Lalitaji’s pearls of wisdom on which washing powder made your whites look whiter as it was hard to miss on Sunday morning television along with “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”.
Those were the times when every brand aspired to be on national broadcaster Doordarshan. An appearance on DD was perceived to be a landmark. The brief for agencies was to create TVCs that appealed to DD’s vast audience.
The new millennium is more than a decade old nowand terms such as Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL) for brand communication and there are specialized agencies and teams within them for every aspect of a brand’s life. Lot has changed today and lot will, globalization and technology advancement is shaping the way we perceive and see things now like never before. Strategies, tactics, and processes that just a decade ago reigned supreme, now look a little out of sync, when viewed through today’s consumer perspective.
Today branding is a function of media fragmentation. More channels and newspaper are reaching out to diverse customer base, makes it harder for marketers to reach a truly mass audience.While ‘ATL’ is all about brand persona glorified on mass media, ‘BTL’ makes the brand come alive through experiences.Simply stated, above-the-line marketing that utilizes generic messages to build awareness is no longer the best way to influence customer behavior.
We do live in exciting times, where things change within a blink of an eye. Today speed-to-market with the right message at the right time through the right channel while maintaining brand consistency, coordinating with multiple stake holders, developing actionable insights are clear challenges that a brand faces and the same is addressed more effectively by BTL.
These shift from ATL to BTL spending is in part the result of changing consumer attitudes; more sophisticated consumers with access to information available on their smart devices, demand relevant messaging that engages them in a dialogue, and allows them to interact with the brand through their preferred communication channels. At the same time, technology allows marketers to better target consumers, and to better track results and measure ROI of BTL campaigns.
BTL initiatives are more successful because they stress targeted and customer-centric communications. Below-the-line also creates measurable results and ROI metrics, which are important to marketers under growing pressure to prove the value of their campaigns, this demand for quantitative results continues to intensify as more and more technology advancement are taking place with each passing day.
As the line between traditional ATL and BTL has started blurring, marketers have started looking for a more robust marketing mix, one which will interact with consumers in unbelievable ways at various touch points, allowing brands to come alive for the TG by creating connections between brand and consumer, in their personal world. These connections are formed by experiences that are personally unique butrelevant to the consumer, has high recall value are interactive, and invokes emotions that lead to sales and brand loyalty.
The new era has also made digital and social media inventions that has given rise to another form "Through the Line" where it is all about experiences.As the lines blur between the real and virtual, many brands are making an effort to integrated digital & Social as part of their marketing mix to reach out to the consumers. Especially, when technology allows them a two-way communication with their target audience unlike before when it was just one way communication.
While the current BTL trends are exciting lot is yet to happen in India. With its diaspora of culture,demographics and geographies. As smaller cities and villages are connected by better roads, electricity, and infrastructureand connectivity. a new and almost untapped set of target audiences will create opportunities for Brand and Marketers where marketing will be through smart devices and even more personalized.For brands life within the pixel will change the biggest challenge will be to have less intrusive touch points yet establish a more relevant one on one connection ….A paradox isn’t it?
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