“To make a difference, treat the work as if it were a Cause, and give it your life.
In the process, you will have the time of your life.” Legendary Ad Man, RK Swamy….
Chennai: The RK Swamy Memorial Lecture in Chennai last evening was dedicated to the laurels of the legendary advertising veteran. While some speakers spoke about the great man and his great deeds, Ex ASCI Chairman and Executive director, Aditya Birla Group, D Shivakumar gave Chennai a Masterclass on Consumer Engagement; a topic that has been relevant from time immemorial.
Starting his address Shivakumar said, “These three gentlemen (Subhash Ghosal, Mani Ayer, RK Swamy) made advertising over 20 – 30 years ago; an Indian skill, where Indians could be proficient at it. So imagine the kind of challenges they faced. And I believe they are in the true sense the founding giants of Indian advertising. They moved it from a foreign skill, something we never understood to something we began to master thanks to their efforts. My tribute, to all three of them.”
His speech was about how consumer engagement has changed and more importantly evolved over the years. He said, “If you go back years consumer engagement started with a fundamental thing called packaging. That’s where all engagement with consumers started which then went into advertising, which is basically communicating what the brand stood for.”
Listing some other tools of consumer engagement, Shivakumar discussed the importance public relations, events, complaints handling, purpose and social activity for a brand’s engagement. The purpose of all brands in the beginning was to convert the commodity into a brand. So packaging was the first touch point for a consumer.
On the objective of consumer engagement, Shivakumar said, “First of all, the objective of all consumer engagement for us has been in that era, over the last eighty years was about, I need to acquire a consumer, and I need to retain that customer. That was our engagement! There was no point in acquiring consumers, if we couldn’t retain them.”
Citing a few examples he discussed how the packaging has evolved over time with Ponds, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Colgate etc. Shivakumar said, “Nowadays engagement is about the benefit of using a product. We went from just announcing the product to now clearly signalling the winner.”
He emphasized by saying, “We communicated through television etc and then customers went to shop. Now we have started providing them an experience. So engagement leading to experience, that’s what we did.”
Reflecting on how data fuels engagement, “There was no data available at all, everything was outdated, but now if you look at Netflix. They have 9 different screens designed for different viewers and show what viewers like or prefer watching.”
Convenience is big in every single thing the consumer wants to do. Shivakumar said, “This is one big change that engagement has brought over the years. And to make sure that the customer journey is smooth, brands need to bring multiple partners to provide the convenience.”
“It’s about building an engagement eco-system” said Shivakumar. He continued and said, “The Idea of an RK Swamy Memorial was by the Ad Club Chennai which later reached out to MMA Chennai and offered to collaborate and hence brought like-minded people from the industry and created an engagement eco-system.”
