4AM Worldwide, a Digital First, Integrated Brand Solutions Agency recently announced the appointment of Sriparna Tikekar as its chief creative officer. The new appointment comes at a time when the agency is keen on strengthening its creative offerings to clients powered by innovation and technology to drive relevance and scale. In her new role, Sriparna will be responsible for leading the creative vision for 4AM and will work closely with teams on revamping the agency’s creative offering and structure, bolstering its content marketing and creative strategy, curating content services, and building brands of scale.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Anand Nair, Creative Partner & Co-Founder, 4AM Worldwide, and Meenakshi Aggarwal-Gupta, COO & Co-Founder, 4AM Worldwide
When 4AM Worldwide launched a little over two decades ago what was the whitespace that it saw in the market?
When we were starting up, we were able to bring two key things to our work – agility and creative strategy. Getting deep into understanding the sectors in which our clients were operating helped us understand their business as well as them. And that gave our creative solutions an edge – because clients could see that we were speaking “their language”.
To illustrate, we spent days together with renowned academics and trustees of educational institutes & universities to put a finger on how education was evolving – and what teachers, students, parents, researchers, etc. wanted. We visited real estate development projects from the time they were barren land to almost every stage of construction to understand the developer’s problems, home buyer expectations, broker challenges, etc. This approach is what helped us in bringing a strategic edge to our creativity and we did it in quick time.
While it was not a “whitespace” in the truest sense, it was a time when clients were perhaps beginning to get frustrated by the lack of agility, ownership, & client centricity in some of the larger agencies back then. And they experienced a difference in the way we collaborated and the quality of output we produced. That is possibly what became a big differentiator for us.
At that time digital was at a nascent stage. The mobile phone was not present. What key trends has the agency observed in digital advertising and marketing over the years?
A couple of decades ago, there was no social media – in the sense that all the platforms that comprise what we call social media today did not exist and the platforms that existed then are no longer around. The internet was still dialling up. Mobile phones had just begun to open up a world of unlimited communication opportunities. So, all the critical parts of what today constitute a “digital marketing environment” were still taking shape.
The only trend that’s been constant is that trends rarely last. Digital as a medium is evolving faster than anything mankind has seen or experienced before. Formats come and go. Platforms rise, have their day in the sun and even set – sometimes even before everyone hears about them. Trends are sometimes as ephemeral as the last breath you took.
We’ve witnessed the journey from when setting up websites were being spoken of as the first frontier of digital marketing to a time when brands experimented with having an app only presence. Today, there are agencies focused on just doing meme marketing, pushing that as the easiest way to connect with gen Z. Similarly, in the media space from banner ads on publisher sites to completely personalized and targeted programmatic ads, digital advertising has changed radically in the last 20 years, a level of change which the world of print/ OOH/ TV probably took more than half a century to achieve. This speed of digital media has in fact significantly impacted the way the entire marketing universe now works.
Rory Sutherland famously said that “it is unfortunate that digital gets used for optimisation instead of experimentation.” And that in some way captures a large part of how digital has been used in the last decade or so. But we see that changing now. Brands are now aware that digital needs to be used smartly with a long-term view on brand building for it to be a potent tool in the marketer’s armoury.
Are more brands adopting a digital first approach and looking at traditional media later on?
I don’t think it is one over the other but rather looking at an omni-channel approach that provides a seamless hybrid experience. With the customer journey having shifted to digital, it would be foolhardy not to consider the importance of digital as that would result in a missed opportunity to engage with your target audience with the right content, on the right platform, at the right time.
Could you talk about recent work done by 4AM Worldwide in categories like real estate, BFSI, education that stands out?
We got the opportunity to conceptualize and execute a film and digital campaign for ICICI Prudential Gold ETF. The objective was to make the brand appear younger and more relatable in the face of competition from the newer FinTech brands like Zerodha and Groww. This got a million views within 24 hours and crossed 10 million in a month and was the highest viewed video on their channel. It also got the team the results in terms of getting a target number of active accounts.
In real estate, we’ve helped build brands across Residential, Commercial and Retail portfolios. House of Hiranandani is a brand that we’ve played a pivotal role in building almost since their inception. We’ve helped market and sell their projects and made the brand memorable across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. Apart from HoH, we have worked extensively with real estate brands in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi. In retail, we’ve partnered in building the new Nexus Malls brand ground up. Running their digital marketing in a manner that is not just recognized for the creativity in the industry but also producing business results has been a great achievement. The most recent EOSS campaign in December 2023 got 29 million views. In commercial, we are working closely with the K Raheja Corp and have just repositioned Mindspace Business Parks as a workspace of the future.
In the education sector, we helped a premier Management institute in their admission campaign for their Executive MBA program. This campaign included both building awareness and lead generation.
4AM Worldwide helps build brands ground up. What are the key things that the agency bears in mind in doing this?
The most important thing to bear in mind is the sense of ownership. The only way you can build a brand ground up is if you are as invested in building the business as the promoters and leadership teams on the client’s side are. It ensures that the understanding of the business and the customers is so deep rooted in our team that communication is always in sync with business needs.
At an execution level, this is done by investing in thorough research, brand and business immersion workshops for client and agency teams and then bringing out-of-the-box thinking to the stories we want to tell. Once strategically sound and creatively clear, then it’s all about detail, detail, detail. Nothing helps build a strong brand like having a keen eye on the smallest nut and bolt in the marketing machine.
One thing that the agency has recently done was to create online content created for Flipkart for their big billion sales. How challenging was it to be unique when you have strong competition from the likes of Amazon?
We were creating content for multiple private label brands within the Flipkart stable, right from the photography to the Rich Product Descriptions to the unboxing videos. While it was a crazy project with tight deadlines and the pressure to have all the content up before the Big Billion Day sale began, it was fun to handle a diverse portfolio of brands from childcare to cosmetics and from white goods to wellness products.
The cherry on the cake was when the marketing team reported that all the private labels for whom we had created content had seen a jump in sales as compared to the other brands on the platform.
What role is A.I. playing in allowing you to offer better solutions?
When leveraged responsibly, AI can be the perfect source of inspiration, design assistance and exploration, or creative collaboration. While one can’t and shouldn’t rely on AI completely, we use it to our advantage to be able to focus on more strategic and creative endeavors that require emotional intelligence and creativity. From analysing real-time data and providing useful insights, we view AI as an ‘enabler’ to make informed decisions and develop more effective strategies with enhanced targeting and messaging.
In terms of measurement of the effectiveness of work done, is new tech coming up to allow for more accurate measurement?
I would say that new technologies provide advanced insights and predictions for assessing performance. Organizations can gain a deeper understanding and evaluate the impact of their work enabling them to make data-driven decisions to improve performance and outcomes.
How important is innovation and experimentation and do you have to sometimes forget rules that worked five years ago?
With a rapidly changing business landscape, if you snooze, you lose. Innovation is the name of the game, and one must be quick to adapt and agile in their thinking to stay relevant. Experimentation helps drive innovation forward. With digital largely disrupting the way we think and live, one must embrace a culture of learning and continuous improvement. While certain principles and practices may provide a foundation for success, it is vital that organisations learn to challenge the status quo, adapt to new ways of thinking and doing to stay ahead of the curve.
What trends are we seeing in experiential marketing and how is 4AM Worldwide leveraging this?
Just as we have seen the evolution of digital marketing, experiential marketing too is moving towards more immersive, personalised experiences by integrating digital technology. Another key shift that is starting to take root in the experiential space is the conversation around sustainability.
We have been focusing on crafting experiences that transport consumers into the brand’s “universe”. We’re doing this via pop-up events, installations, activations and innovative tech. Technology such as AR/VR and interactive displays are being deployed to enhance engagement and customise experiences. In all of this, there is a consistent endeavour to execute these initiatives sustainably that not only resonates with environmentally conscious consumers, but also give brands talking points towards their ESG efforts.
What are the agency’s expansion plans?
2023-24 was a great year in terms of onboarding senior talent, setting up a presence in Delhi and signing a couple of exciting new clients. For 2024-25, we’re pursuing a dual approach: strengthening our domestic presence in India while venturing into International markets. This is being planned with a sharp focus on 3 areas:
Video Content Production: We already have a team that helps clients go from script to screen and we’re now enhancing those capabilities to cater to diverse audiences across geographies. In India, we aim to create culturally relevant content that is able to capture regional preferences and linguistic nuances.
Use of Technology and AI: Leveraging AI, we’re looking to enhance two aspects of our delivery process. The first is to gain insights into consumer behavior in both domestic and international markets where a data-driven approach will deliver hyper-targeted campaigns in India and help us adapt to market dynamics internationally. The second is to integrate tools into our workflow that help accelerate delivery even for complex projects while allowing us the opportunity to experiment and innovate.
Deeper Strategic Engagement: Our focus on building strategic relationships remains central to all that we do. In India, we’ll collaborate closely with clients to provide tailored solutions, while in the global markets, we’ll navigate cultural intricacies to establish long-term partnerships. A strong planning and strategy team is already in place to be able to achieve this goal
We aim to establish ourselves as a global leader in digital marketing innovation, delivering value to clients across diverse markets.
Finally were Web3, NFT and the metaverse all just a bubble? Nothing more than fancy jargon?
This is a matter of ongoing debate and discussion. These platforms have gained significant attention and hype, with several companies exploring their possibilities. While they hold potential for innovation and transformation in various domains, the long-term impact and viability of these ideas will depend on the evolution of technology, market dynamics, and user adoption.
