Marketing pivot: Digital-first brands are experimenting with tactical OOH & local print

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Yash Chandiramani, Founder & Chief Strategist, Admatazz, shares valuable insights into evolving consumer and market trends shaping this festive season. The overall sentiment has remained positive, bolstered by both pent-up demand from previous years and evolving market dynamics. Chandiramani notes that after two chaotic years of high demand, brands are now balancing their campaigns with lead-time planning, contributing to a more organized and effective execution of festive strategies.

Chandiramani observes that media consumption patterns have fragmented, pushing brands to adopt a more integrated approach in their advertising efforts. In response, Admatazz has tailored its campaign strategies to leverage performance-driven and brand-awareness channels alike. Digital-first brands are extending their reach beyond screens, experimenting with outdoor and local print marketing. Moreover, influencer and meme marketing have become central to brand narratives, with brands increasingly investing in these areas to capture audience attention across diverse platforms.

While the bulk of the festive season for this year is over, there are still pockets of celebrations that marketers are looking to leverage – such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, purely Western marketing occasions that are fast making inroads into the Indian market as well, along with Christmas and New Year. Besides, the Indian wedding season is also offering brands an extended festive occasion.

Yash Chandiramani observed that overall, the festive season this year has been positive, with spends and campaign planning happening with a decent lead time in advance. “We have seen a very big uptick post-Covid years with the pent-up demand and with that being so fresh in our memory, it is going to be tough to match it.”

“Post-Covid, 2022 and 2023 were extremely chaotic with high demands and sudden rush to execute multiple campaigns. This year that demand has been able to put to execution, with brands having budgets and market sentiments evolving,” he noted.

Elaborating on the marketing efforts, Chandiramani said, “We are seeing a very integrated approach. Even brands that are digital-first are experimenting with tactical outdoor and local print marketing. In digital, performance programmatic gets a big share, but we are seeing a good amount of investment in pre-planned reserve campaigns on Meta as well.”

He further said that influencer marketing spends continue to rise year-on-year. “This year we have seen an even bigger amount invested in influencer and meme marketing, with the appetite for it only growing further,” he added. 

Speaking on the campaign strategy, Chandiramani said, “For our clients, our focus media-wise is performance over brand for brands that have their season to sell. For the rest, we keep high-reach campaigns on at low cost, because CPMs are extremely high. Performance communication is razor sharp and driven by data with very specific copy, keeping the brand elements consistent.”

“Brand awareness communication is festive. We usually plan for strong campaigns with storytelling as the focus to build memory, especially with a festive connect,” he added. 

Taking a look at the spends trends, he observed that as usual, e-commerce giants are spending as it is prime season for them. Cities that are seeing real estate development and redevelopment projects are seeing big media contributions from real estate players. Apart from these, big spending is seen by the electronic appliances and small automobile (two-wheelers mainly) categories.

“The ad spending also depends on the target audience and the amount of reach they are vying for. Upcoming brands are happy with the majority of spends on digital and balance on POS, however, the larger ones give more weightage to traditional TV, print, OOH and video-first digital platforms in conjunction,” said Chandiramani.

Given the increasing fragmentation of media consumption, brands and clients are going beyond digital now. There is an integrated approach which is being required to connect to TG across age groups and geographies.

Chandiramani concluded by saying, “We at Admatazz, are using integrated approaches now more than ever. For performance spends, Meta, Google Search and of course, programmatic get a larger share of the spends. For awareness, influencers are getting the lion’s share. Apart from digital, we are seeing a major uptick in OOH as well.” 

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