MUMBAI: The Indian millennials’ favourite digital news brand, The Quint, organized the first edition of its workshop series for communications professionals. ‘Marketing to Millennials' was held at The Lalit Ashok in Bengaluru on 26th March, 2019 and attended by over 50 marketing mavericks.
Millennials are undoubtedly the most sought after consumer segment today, as we know that by 2022, India will have 410 million whose annual spends will be in the region of $330 billion. With this workshop series, The Quint brings to the forefront the most relevant best practices when it comes to ‘Marketing to Millennials'. It also aims to create a knowledge exchange platform for professionals, starting off discussions using its own experience & success in speaking the ‘millennial’ language.
The workshop kicked off with a panel discussion featuring a diverse range of stakeholders leading today's marketing landscape. Gaurav Jeet Singh, GM, Media Services, South Asia at Unilever, Umang Bedi, President of Daily Hunt, Dhanya Rajendran, Editor In Chief at The News Minute, Siddharth Nambiar, Head, Amazon Prime Now and Sudarshan Gangrade, Founder of Lo! Foods, kept the audience of seasoned marketers engaged and wanting for more.The workshop was curated with more engaging sessions designed to make the audience a part of the discourse on ‘Marketing to Millennials'.
Sohini Guharoy, Head of Audience Engagement and Social Media, The Quint, hosted a segment on ‘Social Media for Millennials'. With this session, she set out to help shape the best answers for some of the most pertinent questions faced by marketers when using social media to reach out to their audience.
Commenting on the session, she said, "Figuring out the psyche of millennials can be challenging, especially when you want to market products or create content for them. What works, what doesn't? What grabs their attention, what doesn't? What are brands doing right? Be it a publisher or a brand - we are all on the same journey. Through this workshop, we want to explore the best ways to appeal to the millennial bunch - with ideas, words and of course virality with a dash of spunk!"
She outlined the objective of the session by saying, "It is always insightful to hear and know more about content from those using it the most. The products may be different but the approach and the intentions are the same. Content is king as they say but distribution is key in the digital era. Cracking any social platform behaviour is essential for brands to make sure the 'tone of messaging' is right. It is out there for all, but only a few have managed to use it to its full potential. We intend to highlight exactly that through the workshop. We look forward to another interactive session for the next edition."
The workshop continued with a keynote by Aaqib Raza Khan, Associate Editor, Innovation, The Quint. His crisp presentation focussed on the role technology plays in the lives of the millennial consumer. His experience at a digital-first platform gives him the opportunity not only to talk about his work but also bounce off ideas to an illustrious audience that spark off conversations.
He said, "Limited attention span and unlimited notifications on their phone – Millennials are dealing with a lot of content to comprehend. How do you be the signal over this noise? Innovation in production, packaging and presentation is what makes you stand out, or rather, how the Millennials say – makes you lit! Personally, it was a refreshing experience to talk about 'engaging millennials with innovation' – something we have been actively experimenting at The Quint."
Leaving the audience with a simple tip, Aaqib said, "The digital space is buzzing with videos, and memes on everybody's timeline. It's crucial to make that time count, to engage audiences actively rather than passively swiping through your post. It pays to be edgy, to take a stand – Millennials like to voice their opinion, to be seen and heard. On the internet, the conventions recipient is an active participant. Be visual, be vocal."
The final piece of the workshop was a live case study that was presented by Vineet Singh, Head of Marketing - WeWork India.
The audience was then divided into different teams. WeWork & The Quint gave the teams a real-time brief to crack within 20 minutes. One team was awarded at the end for cracking the ideal creative strategy.
Commenting on the success of the workshop and the insights unearthed over time, Vineet Singh said, "It's a generation of millennials and it's important for every brand to cater to that segment. It was a great experience interacting with everyone at the ‘Marketing to Millennials' workshop who further came up with some brilliant ideas. Today, we have access to multiple tools and data points and it is imperative that we make full use of it to reach out to this generation. At WeWork, we have been able to tap into the pulse of what youngsters require from a workspace and these insights have helped us in polishing our efforts to offer a great experience to our members across all TouchPoints."
The next two editions of the workshop series are slated for New Delhi & Mumbai.
