Social Media Continues Unabated: Amer Jaleel, MLLG

When you’re thinking about any brand today, it’s difficult to ignore the effect of two events related to the pandemic. One is definitely the tragic nature of what covid has done to the world, to human beings. The grief, the fear psychosis associated with it. The other parallel event is the series of lockdowns. Now it’s one and the same for us because they are so linked to each other. But actually, the lockdown has a very different effect separate and possibly opposite from the effect of the disease. 

“Lockdowns are a common experience for the populace, I would say on the one side they have an effect on your feeling of individualism. The other of course is the ‘rebound from the bound’. People indulge and spend like crazy once they’re let loose,” expresses Amer Jaleel, Group CCO & Chairman, MullenLowe Lintas Group.

That’s where the marketers & communicators are always caught on where to pitch the work. On which mindset. They are making this choice much more consciously post the second wave. 

Jaleel further gives us a sense of the post-Covid market sentiment, changed face of digital strategies, how he looks at content personalisation and much more. 

Excerpts:

Q1. How do you see the market sentiment panning out? What new consumer consumption patterns are leading to this changed sentiment? 

Homes and everything related to it is going through a big shift in thinking. Homes have become smaller suddenly. Homes need to be nicer suddenly. Homes need to be much more comfortable suddenly. Homes are the best places for entertaining.

Just this one shift is colossal in terms of what it will cause in the marketplace. Of course, ease with e-shopping, data consumption, high OTT subscriptions and many, many more are side effects of the larger home trend. 

Q2. How effective has digital/ social media been in augmenting this changed narrative?

Change hasn’t come fully. Change will come now. All through in recent times people have picked up ideas and behaviour patterns from what has happened around them. This is under development around the world now that there is some relief from the urgency of battling the pandemic.

But social media continues unabated. Largely led by the extra time that youngsters are devoting to it. All the time spent in travelling, in school, in sports, is getting channelled into social media interactions. People have told me they’re getting so addicted to Clubhouse that they’re reducing the time spent on watching web series!

Q3. The focus has shifted from product-centric and usual conversations to getting communication that gave them comforting messages. How is purpose driving this shift?

Purpose is a much-abused and now much-maligned term. Purpose is not a replacement for anything. It’s a skin on the real offering of your brand.

So yes, comforting messages are good. But if they had only context and no real relevance they’ve vapourised and left no residue. 

Q4. Do you believe data and personalization have become all the more relevant?

It’s nonsense what everyone is talking about personalisation. Knowing someone’s browsing history and targeting stuff to them is so outdated. Pornography has been doing that for ages!

Creating 20 sets of the same static with changes in the headline is not personalisation. It’s a slightly smaller version of massification.

If you’re converting what you see in data as different about different segments but able to come up with that one strategic approach that can bind the offering of your brand and its personality into a common throw, now that’s much more valuable. Because that’s human. Films are not personalised. Art is not personalised. Music is not personalised. What is this great need to personalise in brand messages? It’s a lazy, non-creative approach. It’s only temporary that people are getting click-baited by a bombardment on digital media. They’ll learn to ignore that soon enough. 

Q5. The new-age consumers now believe in brand democracy more than brand loyalty. Do you agree? How can marketers build an impactful communication strategy for them?

There is no one kind of consumer. And there is no one kind of brand like that. Some brands operate with the audience above them, some below and some at the level. And that will continue. If the light of your lighthouse is so warm and appealing people will converge at that lighthouse. Yes, the old cliche lighthouses are gone for good. We’ll need new. But that’s it. Not all brands will behave or need to behave democratically with their audience.

Brands operate exactly like our society. Even if the brand is a friend that friend could be one you look up to or just put your arm over their shoulder or kick about and make useful when required and ignore when not!

Brand loyalty has changed drastically. But this is more a function of the vast choices available than anything else. Product loyalty has more relevance than brand loyalty. If the fit of your jeans from a particular brand suits you the most or the bluetooth innie from a brand, your ear, then even the most aspirational or inspirational messages from another brand are unlikely to move you.

Brand loyalty is either a lack of choice or it’s actually product loyalty and yes it’s bust.