Marketing Is Ever-Evolving

Despite the growth in digital marketing, brands are still not leveraging some of its forms such as influencer marketing. Why do you think this is the case?

Unlike many other functions such as finance or human relations or manufacturing, marketing must continually keep evolving because consumer behaviour changes constantly. We saw several changes in the marketing mix in the last two years and it’s safe to predict that we will see many more in the times to come. Influencer marketing, as a marketing tool, isn’t new and has been leveraged to its true potential by many brands irrespective of the industry for a decade or so if not longer. It’s been fascinating, though, how influencer outreach has become the top priority for almost every brand since the pandemic. Restriction in channels to communicate along with limitations in executing ads/campaigns at scale physically, pushed brands to explore other media and it worked! With it, though, comes the apprehension regarding whether the brand is getting its ROI, and as long as brands aren’t clear about what is that they would like to achieve out of the campaign from influencers or any other “new or old” forms of marketing for that matter, there will be limitations in adoption of digital marketing to its full potential.

Do you see marketing budgets also changing to reflect this?

Whether the marketing budgets are changing or not is the secondary question. The first, in my opinion, is whether the brand is clear about the message to be conveyed and the target audience they would like to reach out to. If these two points are clear, no matter whether it must be influencer marketing or meme or social or performance or a combination of all these, this will result in clarity in communication. Budgets can be decided as per the objective, the scale of the campaigns and what is the expectation. This can help bring about the best campaigns forward that connect with the end-consumers and result in desired results.

In your role, what are some of the challenges you think marketers are facing?

The biggest challenge for any marketer, especially given the times we are in, is to not get swayed away by new technologies such as AR-VR, metaverse, NFTs and more, just because the other brand is doing it and they look like the “cool thing” to do . One may argue that ideally, we should be doing all this to stay “relevant”. However, what I genuinely believe in is that till the time we don’t have a long-term vision for any of these to engage our consumers, we shouldn’t just jump into them for the sake of it. It must be of value to the consumers and be true to what we, as a brand, stand for. It is not the best idea to do something just because your brand will be the first ones in the business to do it - that really comes out as a bit frivolous. So, taking a step back and evaluating the bigger picture, as much as it sounds a simple thing to do, is must-do for every marketer.

What can we expect from Bira 91 in the year ahead?

Flavorful beers. Breathtaking packaging. Engaging marketing campaigns. As always, expect some great products to be introduced in the market. Our approach is to remain true to what our consumers believe Bira 91 is about. We have a BIRAstic team working towards adding flavors to the lives of beer drinkers.