2020 has been an outlier year for brands and businesses. On one hand, many campaigns, strategies and businesses came to a standstill, on the other, we saw a few years worth of digital transformation in a matter of a few weeks. Consumption and transaction on digital saw exponential growth. When it came to a brand’s media mix, digital and social media’s position and preference strengthened. But in a world where engagement is of utmost importance for brands on digital and social media, what should be the winning strategy or approach?
“Today’s winning brands and companies are those that are culturally relevant and leading with a purpose," says Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director, Twitter India.
“Twitter is the best place to do two things really well - to launch something new and to connect with what’s happening,” he adds.
Being culturally relevant means aligning well with cultural events, promoting trends that define today’s culture and supporting relevant social issues that benefit everyone. In fact, many experts believe that cultural relevance has emerged as a key driver in a consumer’s purchase decision.
The best way to drive culture is through conversations. The more active a brand is on Twitter, the more people see it as culturally relevant. Spotify India used this insight well.
“We found that during the times of COVID-19, our customers were engaging a lot digitally. They were also engaging a lot with the artists,” says Amarjit Batra, Managing Director, India, Spotify.
Keeping this in mind Spotify did some very interesting work and campaigns on Twitter. “On World Music Day, we did a very interesting campaign that happened to be pretty popular with the people. We mapped out all the emojis available on both Android and IOS. Give us any emoji and we will have a playlist next to that. And we had a pretty interesting time engaging with that.”
This shows the value of just being active on Twitter, but even more so the value when you connect with what’s happening on Twitter. Adding to this, Sapna Chadha, Senior Marketing Director, Google India and South East Asia mentioned how the most important insight that they tapped into was how people wanted help. “Therefore the need for us to be helpful through our product and through our creative and to come to the aid of our users was something really needed during this challenging time.”
There were a lot of conversations around education, entertainment, daily supplies of goods, medicines, hospitals etc. around the past few months on Twitter. “What to watch, where will I find an education platform that will help my children, where can I find true stories of what’s happening and many more.”
At this point, the brands that were already engaged with the audience definitely could enhance that engagement as people stayed at home and in fact were successful in driving it to the next level.
“We have always been active on digital channels and these very digital channels allowed us to reach out to our customers in a more personalized and direct way and that has really helped us create a very strong community," says Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India.
This year has also seen a lot of companies force themselves to move out of their comfort zones and pivot to practices and mediums that they have not used prior.
“Recently, we launched our biggest store in the world in Hyderabad and the launch happened on Twitter. In a regular scenario, we would have done a physical launch and invited people to visit the store, but that wasn’t possible. We were able to replicate a similar experience digitally,” says Agarwal.
This is a partnered post.
