AI & latest tech allow marketers to sharpen processes and drive engagement: Aditya Tandon

News18 has introduced several initiatives in terms of technology to give their viewers an extraordinary experience. For instance, the channel on occasion of Mother’s Day this year introduced an extraordinary Metaverse experience that received an overwhelming response, attracting a reach of over 1 crore + in just one day. The purpose of this initiative was to create an interactive environment that encouraged participants to explore and commit to being respectful towards mothers in general.

Additionally, News18 Punjab/Haryana, explored diverse aspects of leveraging artificial intelligence to transform the education system through ‘AI Kaur’ at its ‘Education Summit: Season 04’ event. AI Kaur facilitated conversation with the panellists and welcomed the audiences in their local dialect.

These technological integrations are just a part of News18’s larger motive to bring engaging and diverse experiences to their viewers who can expect many more to come.

in conversation with Adgully, Aditya Tandon, Vice President (Head) - Brand Marketing, News18 shares what News18 has in the pipeline and how AI and other technology will be a medium to garner great engagement for their audiences.

Technology is permeating into newsrooms at a faster pace. How do you see technology becoming a medium for garnering great engagement for audiences?

The impact of technology, IMO, is not limited to any one area of the organization today but can be felt across all functions. From a product and a marketing standpoint, the toolkits available with us today allow us to curate unique, differentiated experiences for our audiences that allow them to feel deeply connected with the product and brand. Audiences, anyway, are constantly seeking avenues to express themselves, share their views, to play a part – with the advent of new platforms, the recent launch of Threads, for instance, and other technologies - this process has been accelerating and is only likely to accelerate going forward. Brands are looking at going beyond just being interactive and providing deeply immersive experiences. This is likely to take engagement to a whole new level.

News18 Punjab/ Haryana recently introduced an AI news anchor ‘AI Kaur’. Could you take us through the entire experience of foraying into the world of AI and how was the response received?

It was a hugely exciting project to undertake for everyone who was involved. This was a first-of-its-kind, unique experiment in the Chandigarh / Punjab market and generated a huge amount of excitement at our event when our AI news anchor was unveiled – a first for a regional channel. It created a huge amount of chatter amongst our audiences and our clients who lauded us for the innovation. We, in fact, followed this experiment with a similar one at another of our events in Jaipur where again, the audience was quite excited to experience the power of AI first-hand. I think we are all on a journey of discovery to understand and truly leverage the enormous power that the latest technologies put at our disposal, and I am sure that we will continue to see several innovations and disruptions in the near future as we understand these better.

How is News18 strategizing to introduce diverse experiences to their viewers? What can we expect in the next 2-3 years?

At News18 we have been quite excited about bringing truly unique, diverse experiences for our viewers. Recently we launched a unique Mother’s Day campaign on Metaverse. This campaign allowed viewers to celebrate the special day that was both - interactive and immersive. The campaign was well-received and generated a massive reach in just 24 hours. We continue experimenting with the latest stack of tech-enabled tools available to marketers to bring highly creative, engaging and differentiated campaigns and offerings. The AI anchors at the events in Chandigarh and Jaipur that I spoke about are another instance of this. We are also working on an intriguing project even now where we will use technology to bring highly differentiated content to our audiences. As the leaders in the category, you will continue to see us push the boundary as far as our marketing and product thinking is concerned. We will apply the latest tools available to us to sharpen our creative processes, our media strategy and most importantly our product thinking based on deep insights that we can extract with the help of technology.

Election coverage on news channels has undergone a sea-change, thanks to the use of technology. With the Lok Sabha elections slated for 2024, how is News18 gearing up for the coverage?

This is a great question. News18 has always, always been known for its election coverage. From our strength on the ground to our expertise in the studios, from our production innovations to the speed & accuracy of our updates, News18 is the Network that audiences rely on for elections. You mention the General Elections – that, of course, will be big but there are also 5 State elections slated for later in 2023. The next 10-12 months hence will be huge for us as India’s No. 1 News Network. And we have big plans for coverage – with thousands of hours of programming across 15 languages across 20 channels spread over close to 12 months – this will be the biggest, most historic coverage of elections ever. Technology has historically played a key part in our election coverage – the Magic Wall that was developed by our teams allows our anchors and experts to drill down into data as required and share insights with viewers. The immersive 'Air ElexA' experience that we created took the industry by storm at the time. We are known for being the only news network that runs a Live Election Hub on results day. We will continue to build on this legacy and wow the audiences as we go into our coverage of the upcoming elections.

In this era of generative AI and greater technological integrations, how can brand loyalty and brand identity be maintained? What can be the key differentiators?

The honest answer to that is how loyalty and identity have always been maintained – marketers have always had an assortment of tools at their disposal. The differentiation has come from how these tools have been used. The latest technologies including AI will allow marketers and business leaders to, as I mentioned above, sharpen processes, drive insights, focus even more sharply on delivering ROI, and drive engagement but ultimately it will come down to experiences; product experiences, communication experiences that marketers can curate – differentiated and unique experiences that evoke passion and emotion in consumers and make them love your brand.

What will define a news channel’s success in the digital era – how important will greater engagement and immersive experiences be as against will reach and viewership?

In the context of reach - viewership is the cornerstone of any media platform. However, with the latest technologies that we have today at our disposal, our ability to provide audiences with greater engagement and unique experiences has increased manifold. The ability of a media platform to provide these opportunities to its audience will drive a platform’s popularity and thereby drive the platform’s reach – creating a sort of virtuous cycle.