How not to let cConsumer eEngagement turn into eentertainment Formatted: Font: 16 pt, Bold, No underline

Formatted: Font: 16 pt, Bold, No underline

By Sriharsh Grandhe Formatted: Font: Bold

Formatted: Font: Italic

“Everyone in the Bbank thinks of ours as the eentertainment department”. That’s

how a recent conversation with a potential client began. While it was a good
icebreaker and helped start with a few good laughs but the seriousness of this
wasn’t lost on both sides of the table. How did a sophisticated and mature science
like cConsumer eEngagement, which itself is quite a vast subject, take a not- so-
good turn?. For the purpose of this PoV, let’s cover aActivation and eExperiential
mMarketing as the 2 focus cConsumer eEngagement models.

The basics
Let’s begin with some basic tenets. Engagement is really possible when either or
both of these two counts are met. First, when a your consumers significantly
valuable problem of the consumer is solved by the brand. Second, by offering a
never- before experience.

Lets solve a problem

Identifying a significantly valuable problem necessitates a deep grip on consumer
behaviour understanding and an ability to view those findings with a media agnostic
lens. Today with technology playing a significant role in CX, there is so much of data
collected or generated. It is very interesting to imagine the kind of possibilities in
engaging with consumers interestingly and relevantly. Consider this situation. It’s ,
aagain a recent conversation I had with a Building Materials client that centered on -
how about a well- designed education program targeted at people who have just
taken home loans. There is this segment of IHB’s who begin the arduous journey of
home building with so much trepidation. Can a brand play the role of a trusted
advisor?

Yes, today it is possible to identify new home loan seekersees and with technology,
an engagement program is cost efficient, measurable and therefore effective. Let’s
consider a retail service business. While the brand studies are usually national, a
quick web crawl will be able to identify perceptions and realties for each centre and
it’s quite obvious that this is not going to be consistent across the country. But how
many of us come across customised activation programs designed to address the
differences in each region or a segment?. This again is intelligent use of data and
effectively solving a significantly valuable problem. In the lack of such approaches,
typically most activation programs end up overtly relying on clever ideas to engage
with the consumers, which end up looking like entertainment.
Experience matters too
Designing a never before experience requires lots of insights from both the, brand
and also the consumer. It’s also very important to measure the objective so the
ideas can be sized accordingly. A careful approach to experience design can lead to a
compelling experiential marketing program. When the desired output is customer
delight, it makes it worth the while to invest in a studied experience design to get
the timing right for an intervention. This could be a major contributor to making an
experiential marketing program great from good. Getting the timing right requiresd
an in-depth study of usage behaviour more than the user behaviour or consumption
behaviour rather than the consumer behaviour. When the right ‘timing’ opportunity
is identified, the opportunity will define the right media vehicle. Sometimes, the
media could be an innovation. For e.g. what is popularly called the roti idea. To Formatted: Font: Italic

remind people to wash hands before a meal, rotis being served in Kumbh Mmela Formatted: Font: Italic

langars were branded with messages by a personal hygiene brand. Now whoever
would have thought of rotis being used as an advertising medium!. Formatted: Font: Italic

Getting it right
Hyper local activation programs designed with the help of data driven insights can
help create meaningful interactions leading to effective consumer engagements.
With careful selection of appropriate channels, it may well become the medium of
choice to create brand love, solve real consumer problems, engage with consumers
more meaningfully and save consumer engagement from turning into some loose
entertainment act.

- The author is Executive Vice President at LinEngage, the experiential Formatted: Font: Italic

marketing & activation agency of MullenLowe Lintas Group Formatted: Bulleted + Level: 1 + Aligned at: 0.25" +
Indent at: 0.5"