"We have to move away from TV planning to video planning": Dentsu's Ashish Bhasin

A look at what the speakers had to say at the recently held Discover Growth event by Facebook.

At the recently held Discover Growth event by Facebook, addressing the needs of the industry also brought together marketers and advertisers to discuss key strategies on the digital medium.

Sandeep Bhushan, director, Facebook India and South Asia, says, "With over 217 million monthly active users in India - most of whom are active on mobile - Facebook is at the heart of a mobile-first shopping journey. We want to help all marketers and businesses drive revenue growth by tapping into the shift in consumer behaviour towards mobile and help them adopt practices to drive both penetration and loyalty."

From left to right - Sandeep Bhushan, Ambuj Chandna, Ashish Bhasin and Alok Agarwal
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Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network, says, "If you look at the whole digital sphere, today, digital is turning into mobile because most of the new users are coming from mobile. It is fundamentally influencing every single business. 100 percent businesses are impacted by mobile. Movies have nothing to do with mobile, but the tickets are being bought on it and so is the popcorn. Digital and mobile are pretty close when it comes to influencing parts of every business, in every angle and every aspect."

He adds, "If you look at our client base, out of every 100 rupees of billing that passes through my industry, almost 40 percent is on digital, but that's my agency. I will be very unhappy with my team if digital is not more than 50 percent of my revenue. Next year itself, digital revenue should cross 45 percent and by 2020, it should be more than 50 percent."

Adding a little about the need to focus on the media planning shift from TV to digital, Bhasin says, "We have 100 people sitting in the agency with 5000 types of software to ensure that the TG has to see my ad between three to eight times. But what they don't account for, in the traditional way, is that he might have seen it eight times, but he might have seen it six more times on Facebook; so, if I cut down my TV spend a little bit and put it on digital, I might get a better result at a lower cost for my client. So we have to move away from TV planning to video planning."

Ambuj Chandna, head - retail liabilities, investment and payment products, Kotak Mahindra Bank, says, "14-15 years ago, the only medium for customers to transact in with banking was going to the bank and today almost 60 percent of our customers are digitally active and transacting on digital mediums. Out of this 60 percent, almost 80 percent of them are active on mobile and almost 60 percent of this 80 percent are active only on mobile, which is a dramatic shift."

Alok Agarwal, general manager, marketing excellence, GSK Consumer Healthcare, says, "We looked at Facebook as we have to be present where our consumers are, but the big challenge was how does one fit into the big scheme of things. Consumers are on Facebook for some activity and unless you are engaging in those conversations, you are not relevant. We found the ability on Facebook to segment customers and how we target them."

He adds, "As consumers grow on digital; brands also use digital. As consumers spend more time watching videos on the internet, WhatsApp etc. the brand spends are going to increase."