‘One engagement in digital equals to 20 television views’

by Satrajit Sen

According to Seth Solomons, chief marketing officer, Digitas Global, one engagement in digital medium is valued equally to 20 television views. “In the digital medium the level of engagement is greater than any other medium and thus it becomes important for brand owners and marketers to participate in that engagement and converse with consumers,” Solomons said while speaking at a digital marketing event titled ‘The Age of Now’ organised by Solutions Digitas in Gurgaon (Delhi/NCR) on November 23, 2009.

Speaking at the same event, Mark Beeching, chief creative officer, Digitas Global, said that in today’s age, the real power of marketing lies in trying to communicate and converse to a network of people. “This is only possible on the digital medium as people get connected when they are interacting live on the medium,” Beeching further said, adding, “This is the right time for CMOs (chief marketing officers) to invest in digital as when the medium really takes off, the marketers would be in a position to leverage digital to the fullest.”

According to Neville Taraporewalla, director, advertiser and publisher solutions group, Microsoft India, someone needs to understand that traditional advertising efforts are no longer effective and hence campaigns need to engage with the users and thus excite them in knowing more about the brand. Taraporewalla, however, cautioned that since the digital medium is tagged as a measurable medium, CMOs tend to over measure and over analyse the campaign data, which should be the case.

Sanjay Trehan, head, MSN India, said that the traditional advertising industry is not taking a leadership role in evangelising the digital medium as they don't see large enough ad revenue there. While describing a perfect digital campaign, he said that for him a perfect digital campaign would be a mix of virals, webisodes and other interactive features. “A specifically targeted behavioural campaign in a cost-effective manner is probably a perfect digital campaign,” explained Trehan.

According to Mark Beeching of Digitas, brands need to listen and communicate with the consumers through the digital medium and the present economic scenario is probably the right time for marketers to jump on to the digital marketing bandwagon. “Brands now should not worry about how to start a conversation, rather how soon to start it,” he added.

Speaking about the future and the way forward, Sanjay Trehan of MSN said that a combination of three screens (TV, PC and Mobile) along with cloud computing would be a reality in digital marketing by 2012 to 2014. “When it comes to digital marketing in India, one needs to innovate new ideas and can’t keep on thinking in terms of US and Europe,” opined Sharad Talwar, president, Educomp.