Visuals play an important role in conversational marketing: Experts

At the 18th edition of the IAMAI’s marketing conclave, Hoshedar Gundevia, head of digital, Rise Worldwide, Mamta Taliwala, digital head, Raymond Consumer Care and Niraj Ruparel, head of mobile and emerging tech, GroupM had tips on leveraging conversational media for brand building. 

The panel was moderated by Tabrez Alam, chief data and strategy officer, Bobble AI. 

The essence of building a brand strategy

The panel kicked off with Gundevia talking about how he is building strategies at Rise Worldwide. He said, “We manage sports IPs. If it is a cricket brand, then it is well entrenched in India, and the strategy essentially is more oriented to mature objectives such as engagement, monetisation and capturing third-party data in a meaningful manner. All our marketing activities are directed towards these three areas, and that’s where conversational media comes in for us as well.” 

Talking about the elements that are essential for brand building, Taliwala shared that conversational marketing is integral today for a brand to break through the clutter. “To become the talk of the town, brands need to not just talk to the consumer, but be a part of the conversation. While there are other elements in the brand-building strategy, conversational media should be given enough prominence," she added. 

Adding his perspective and shedding light on how he plans to evangelise conversational media, Ruparel said, “Conversational AI is firring up right now on all three formats which are text, audio and video. We are seeing tons of work happening on Google Business Messaging out there. Another area we are chasing is bots. Humans and bots are co-existing in today’s world and it's key to start conversations and drive transactions with consumers there. Emoji marketing has also picked up to enhance conversations, and we have developed solutions for brands in this area.” 

Taliwala pointed out that stickers can create a long-term effect on a brand. She said, “Visuals play an important role in conversational marketing. A user will use the brand's stickers to enhance their personalised conversations on text.”

Testing the waters through tech

Taliwala shared how they used conversational media for Kamasutra condoms. 

“The category of Kamasutra condoms is such that we know there is a conversation happening between two people daily. It was about figuring out how to become a part of that conversation. Hence, we picked up commonly used words such as ‘I love you’ or ‘date night’ for instance and created stickers through the Bobble AI platform. With this, we were able to reach out to millions of users and developed a lot of engagement through this. The top three performing stickers from this campaign were then developed into NFTs and sold within three days. Through this, we developed brand recall and retention."

Dundevia then shared the experimentation tactics that he used for his consumers. “Experimentation within the sports industry isn’t always welcoming. We are generally change averse. However, we have tried to push the envelope a little bit by creating WhatsApp chatbots which have resulted in another avenue for our fans to engage in the conversational realm. It is catering to a niche portion of fans who do want to engage with our WhatsApp bot and get the essential information they need," he said. 

Ruparel added, “By giving power to machines and invoking the audience, the virality factor gets amplified for the brand. For our 'Not Just A Cadbury' ad campaign, we gave power to the machines and then took it  further to retailers for them to create their version of it. Marketers should be bullish in providing such solutions.”

On a parting note, Ruparel, said, "Consumers are living in an era where there is a lot of technology to experiment with, and 5G will enhance these solutions further. Be it AI or Lens AI pictures which are trending at the moment. More conversational and social conversational platforms will have an integration of these technologies stack on to it which will allow consumers to create more experiences, and brands, in turn, will be able to scale, as well through AI mascots and the likes.”