It has been about 50 days since the country went into lockdown mode due to the pandemic. We are hoping against hope that the lockdown is lifted on the 17th of May. The recent outbreak of the COVID –19 is also seeing a tectonic shift in most people’s lives. There are so much stress and anxiety about job losses, loneliness, and other factors. But this lockdown has also changed the way organizations are thinking, the way they work, etc.
The outbreak of COVID-19 is bound to make some significant and everlasting change in the way brands communicate with their consumers and their stakeholders.
Hyper Connect is a leading strategy-led agency for the digital age, started by Ankur Pujari and Kiran Khadke in the year 2018. The agency offers services in the fields of business consulting, D2C brand stewardship, brand strategy, digital and social marketing, data analytics, UI-UX design, and video production. The 40-member passionate team at Hyper Connect is weaved with the common thread of “Clarity of Power” and as a collective, they create work that works for the clients.
Medianews4u spoke to Ankur Pujari – Director, Hyper Connect on what is their plan to strategize on the communication for their brand.
An unprecedented lockdown, how are you coping and boosting the morale of the team? What are the challenges you are facing at this time of crisis?
These are surely unprecedented times and we are facing new challenges everyday right from collaborating on a pitch from different locations to managing everyday client jobs with 3 team members sitting in 3 different locations with different realities at home like kids, bad network, household chores but one thing which has paid us in long run is the culture that we have been able to build and nurture as we kept growing. This sense of belonging that each of our team members has helped us sail smoothly and this sense of being in this together keeps the team motivated.
We have still kept our ritual of Friday drinking sessions virtually, Wisdom Wednesdays for sharing something new and random leg-pulling over the WhatsApp group to keep the spirits high.
What are the suggestions and strategies you are offering your clients?
It’s been very busy days with our clients by helping them create immediate strategies to keep their teams, customers engaged and motivated, reviewing our overall strategies from a short term and long term perspective, building a lot of digital assets which were earlier on back-burners. With Club Mahindra, we are engaging members over the community portal via interesting ideas, with Tata Sky Broadband we are keeping the front line service engineers motivated and helping them streamline their operations, with one of the brands of Marico we are building a rapid D2C platform, With Kotak Mutual Funds, we are working on IFA engagement programs and so on.
What will be your strategy to stay ahead of the curve?
Moving forward clients will need more accountability from the agencies, we are training our teams to be more adept with proactive thinking, judiciously media planning, data-driven approach to marketing, and working with clients as an extension of their teams. If we put all these together, we will surely stay ahead of the curve and help clients also get ahead in the post COVID world
COVID 19 has also seen anxiety issues, job losses, brands rethinking their ad spends, what will be your one positive Mantra to think positive in these trying times?
None of us have seen anything like this… the last generation that saw something like this was a pre-independence generation. Our advice to our team is to speak up, keep sharing your problems, insecurities with anyone you trust… just don’t keep it to yourself. We at management level as well keep talking to teams in groups, individually and share information about the industry, economy as well as of our plans to weather this storm. One more advice to millennials that relook at what you used to spend time, energy, and emotions on… If COVID can force you to live without it… then you can surely save your time, money, energy, and emotions on these things that were not worth it.
Post-Covid what would be your advice to your clients on ways to do effective communication?
There will more conscious based reactions by the consumer. Be more humane and environmentally and emotionally conscious in your approach to communication.
How are you helping or advising clients on strategizing their communications and ad-spends, are clients now more inclined toward the Digital Platforms?
Yes, clients are keener on digital platforms… We are advising them to be prudent in their spending. Instead of splitting the budget into many platforms. Strategize and spend on one that will give us maximum bang for the buck
