LIFE OF A DIGITAL PLANNER

Wake up Sid:
The morning of a regular person sets out either with the cry of an alarm clock, or with the cry of his folks or that of a crow (the least possible chance). But for a digital planner it starts with a hazardous phone call (the client called up to check, if the campaign which was to go live, has gone live already on all the desired portals or not!) and the “Day long Road Blocks” that was scheduled gave him a long buzz. Fortunately, the media plan was approved (over the phone) the previous night itself, while he was driving back home (though there is no formal approval yet) and the deadline for our Digital Planner and his team was to go live by 10:00 AM that day. “I should be able to show a smiling face to my Boss, when I enter office today,” thought the client (the Digital campaign will be going live; it’s another bonus as the Appraisal Season is approaching). But what about our Raghu, the DIGITAL Planner, who slogged the whole night (hardly slept, eyes… still burning), made the Strategy/the Plan and negotiated the cost with all the publishers/vendors and finally could pull it to go live, could not even relax for a while after burning the ‘Mid Night Oil’. This is life and it goes on whenever there is a new campaign on the plate.

Satisfied customer is the best business strategy:
The whole day goes into nattering, thinking (or pretending to), ideating, discussing with the client (in short playing meeting-meeting). But there is the million-dollar question from everyone in the AGENCY as well from the CLIENT "Where is the Strategy"? (ab kise pata ye kaun si khet ki muli hain). Then the presentation session starts but you can hardly predict when it will end. Raghu’s stomach starts aching (elephant jumping) out of hunger, but the big IDEA & the STRATEGY is averting him to even take in enough oxygen. But as the clock started setting alarm that it’s getting super late, the Big Idea appeared out of the bolt with all data supports, after long hours of number crunching, and the 360 media integration started thumping on those mini-systems because all of them have to be in sync. The back-bone is not supporting anymore (giving a feel to be as old as 90) and just that moment a voice of a devil came aloud “Need to Change the Overall Strategy”, as the Brief has changed. Hence, they planned to meet the following morning for a brain storming session (in short the whole day got wasted after all those herculean efforts put together).

Pack Up troubles:
It’s now so late that you wish to just stay back in office itself (no more energy left to even drive back). Raghu just wishes to pick up some food on the way and then have it with some chilled beer at home and sleep tight. But the almighty has planned something more interesting for our Digital Planner. The other client, who has been active with Social Media campaigns wants to have a review meeting after a day as their Global Marketing Head is coming to town, at their regional headquarter and the regional team (so many of them & each one have separate demands) wants to showcase multiple Fancy Presentations. So chilled Beer does not chill Raghu well, instead he needs to grill himself with the mid-night oil for another long…really long night.
My Tip to our Digital Planner: Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

No Social Media, Back to Basics

Today, everyone is talking about Social Media strategy, hence decided not to talk about the same as of now. The approach of this article is giving less of Gyan and share more of Experience led Digital media insights. As a Digital Enthusiast, have tried to make a comprehensive capsule about the basic rules any Brand Marketer should follow, when a Brand is ready to think of trying this New, Interactive & Dynamic medium (Now it's no more considered to be new). Hence this article may help the Brand marketers to utilize this piece of information in a judicious way and hope they will find it relevant for their Brands.


Healthy Media Investment: Any marketer should have a healthy budget to try out, ranging from INR 3,500,000 to 6,000,000 for a month long digital marketing campaign to be excuted in the Indian subcontinent. This will give the brand a decent exposure as well as reach in the digital space and the budget will also allow to try various permutations and combinations of reaching out to their audience through various relevant touch points. Another point any marketer should always keep in mind is that the media budget allocated will not be wasted at any point of time. This medium being dynamic in nature and accurately measurable, media money not delivering the estimated results, can be optimised with the help of creative changes to achieved the desired results.

Scientific Strategy Planning: The brand team and the agency, which has strong capabilities of working out a brand favourable digital marketing strategy, should be designing a comprehensive strategy to best fit the objectives decided for the brand both in short as well as in the long term. The designed strategy needs to be implemented flawlessly and within the decided time frame. The basics like a Website or a WAP site of the brand should be in place before going live with a digital media campaign.

Digital Friendly Creative: One should not think that this medium is going to work like any other medium, it surely does not due to the dynamic nature of this medium and secondly this medium can be measured accurately to the last point of a dollar or rupee spent. But generally most marketers does the mistake of using the same offline creative assets like the Print or the TV assets for digital media, hence they fail to achieve the desired results. Digital creatives should be more in tune with, what the audience in the digital space is looking out for, like communicating the compelling reason to interact with the brand's marketing stimulus.

Tools for Measurement: Before planning and executing any digital media campaign, one should make sure that the planned campaign can be measured in terms of keeping a track of media deliverables as well as how the response of the campaign is helping the brand in achieving the desired objectives. Say for example one should be able to say by checking the dashboard, how many people became aware of the brand message during the course of the campaign or how many people landed on the brand's website during a month long web campaign. There should be mechanics to track the basics like IP addresses of users, so that one can analyse the authenticity of the clicks generated during the campaign.

Pre and Post Campaign Evaluation: This aspect helps to evaluate the executed campaign in terms of what was planned or estimated as deliverables and results vs what is actually achieved. Experienced digital experts can often over deliver in terms of the planned deliverables and results, this always comes from a scientific digital marketing strategy and media planning approach for any brand, supported by data and consumer insights. Hence it is imperative to know waht the brand stands for and what the target audience is looking from the brand in the digital space.
Happy Reading!!!