MUMBAI: The metaverse is very nascent. It is where the Internet was in 2003. It will still be nascent for another three years. But the infrastructure that supports it is constantly growing. But everybody including Amazon Prime, Netflix, Sony are building on it. It allows various brands across categories from confectionery to BFSI to offer deeper, engaging consumer experiences.
When dealing in emerging tech an agency given the risk out there has to convince clients by constantly creating prototypes and tell them that it is near. It is not far away. Clone creation is something that brands can leverage and this is what GroupM did with Hritik Roshan where it created a celeb clone. Another good example is Cadbury's Shah Rukh Khan My Ad which won Titanium. Now what the agency has done is to add models to it. The clone can speak in various languages. This is what is so good about synthetic A.I.
These points were made at a panel discussion at the Media Investment Summit organised by Indiantelevision.com. The panel was called Role Of Emerging Technologies In An Ever Changing Digital Marketing Space. The speakers were Raymond Consumer Care CMO Pooja Sahgal, Hershey's CMO Ankit Desai, Tata Starbucks director - Marketing, Category, Loyalty & Digital Deepa Krishnan, QWR (Question What's Real) founder, CEO Suraj Aiar, ICICI Lombard head marketing, Corporate Communication & CSR Sheena Kapoor and UltraTech Cement head brand building Kanupriya Didwania. The session was moderated by - Head of Mobile and Emerging Tech, Emerging Tech Lead - WPP India, GroupM India Niraj Ruparel.
Ruparel started the session with a speech. He spoke about clone technology which is taking advertising to the next level. Generative A.I. plays a role. He gave the example of re-creating a young 16 year old Sachin Tendulkar for Aegis Federal. This is an example of A.I. video regeneration. There are tons of innovations happening in this space. A record number of tech innovations are happening. The aim is to devise a solution for every audience type wherever they are. Emerging tech innovations are there for feature phones, smartphones, and tablets.
He also spoke about meaningful experimentation being done by his agency along with QWR in the metaverse. Last year a Nestleverse was created for the IPL. Moondating on Mondelez was done. On the music front due to 5G one will have meta human pops happening on live concerts. The level of computing will only grow and through the metaverse for example, Virat Kohli can teach top IPL fans how to play. “In 2023 you will see metaverse experiences that will drive scale for us.” Hershey’s has launched a metaverse experience. A lot of work is happening in the NFT space as well. While the novelty value of the NFT has faded the aim now is to look at utility value.
Didwania spoke about tech interventions happening in the basic feature phone category. Her category is one that everybody uses but nobody sees. “It is at the bottom of the pyramid. Cement is ubiquitous and is not branded. It is used more in rural or small town India. In urban areas very few build their homes. Creativity, content, reach and scale were the mantras for Digicare. Bhaat Karki is a series that was started to teach about home building. The goal was to teach people in a village whose only access is a feature phone. From a tech angle the company used vernacular and went across nine languages with 200 pieces of content. It had to be put in an audio format. Jio Network was one of the tools used and it worked wonders for listening to the content and repeatedly wanting more content.
Then the aim was to take it to a handheld device that has limited data. A.I. and ML played a role in personalising content. These kinds of media nudges like contextual targeting were done. Innovation was needed to get to the bottom of the pyramid. “There is no rural and urban. There are people with mobility and those who don’t.” The key is not to use tech in a mindless manner. “We had to pick and choose.” Digicare gave an opportunity to show not just creativity but also reach at scale. This is the question asked about tech.
Ruparel noted that video bots are being launched on feature phones. Unilever has done this. Today marketers also adopt an omnichannel strategy. It is not just about voice. Richer communication can be sent through Whatsapp for example. He also noted that the social conversational marketing space is another area that is picking up. Emojis are driving the wave. Regular emojis are getting converted to brand led emojis. Keyboard level marketing is going on.
Sahgal noted the work done for Kamasutra condoms which is a very old category. “What we figured out was that while sex is one of the most searched terms it is a term that people use very less and people are not very open about it. We wanted to take our brand which is old fashioned compared to durex etc and make it very modern and relevant.” Work was done with Bobble. When people spoke about love, sex etc the company made sure that a Kamasutra emoji was inserted into the conversation. The aim was to be contextual and not forced. It aided in the conversation. It helped people build a relationship wioth each other.
There were millions of conversations and great engagement. NFTs were growing also. So the company took its most engaging stickers and minted NFTs with them. The six NFTs were sold well and the proceeds were donated to a social cause around birth control. It drove the brand among youngsters in the right context. “Tech drives engagement, reach and also brand imagery”.
Meanwhile Krishnan’s company has done work in the web3 space around loyalty. It focuses on a more sustained approach in web3, not just a PR tactic. She noted that in India Starbucks has a two million+ loyalty programme. It has huge access to first party data. She said that tech is meaningless without this data. On its loyalty programme the aim is to get into a segment of one with analytics. So extensive recency, frequency, monetary kind of segmentation is done. The aim is to understand consumer behaviour right upto their favourite beverage, the time of the day they visit a store, which is their favourite store etc. This data is handed over to Starbucks’ store partners with the consent of the customer. “Privacy is a very, very important aspect.” You can figure out if a customer likes Americano for instance. Starbucks uses this data to drive one on one conversations with customers, sending them personalised videos. More than 400,000 personalised videos have been done talking about the customer journey.
She added that in the US Starbucks is pioneering Starbucks Odyssey. It is an experience based on metaverse and NFT. It is restricted to loyalty members. The NFT mined will be used to get rewards on the programme. In India the company launched its first reserve store last October. This is a high end format and their AR has been used very well. The walls of the store talk to you. There are living murals in the store. “To sum up I would say that first you have to get the fundamentals right. Get your first party data, dissect it, get to a segment of one and then use technology as an experience enabler.”
Web AR is one way to get a first party database. Volumetric video will have a role to play and for instance Ranbir Kapoor can pop out of a Coca Cola bottle and the consumer can have a live interaction with him. This requires a volumetric capture with him. Celebrities can come alive on the pack. Desai spoke about the work his company has done in leveraging QR codes. “Chocolates is a fun category but it is also very close to Indians for obvious reasons. Technology becomes an enabler versus a destination. For us it is important to pick the occasion, the contexuality, the mindset of the consumer and then participate in it.” He gave the examples of Valentine’s Day and Women’s Day. Valentine’s Day is all about gifting. So a QR code allows the consumer to express him/herself. Tech is built into it. It is a phygital experience. A consumer can buy a pack, proclaim a message. The message gets displayed on-ground and there is a closing the loop gratification as well.
The difference is that while Valentine’s Day is an occasion for the category, Women's Day is not an occasion for the category. But there was something intrinsic in the Hershey’s brand name with the words her and she being present in it. Those words go unnoticed in the brand name and likewise the achievements of a lot of hers and she’s go unnoticed. “We said that Women’s Day is the occasion to celebrate it. We celebrated six sheroes from different walks of life. We decided that we did not need to celebrate sheroes who are achievers only. You can celebrate with anybody.” He explained that a seamless experience was created. There was a QR code on the pack. It can be scanned. One can go to the portal and send a message to a shero. She can share it. Then for Christmas the Hersheyverse was launched as it is a fun time of the year. The intent was to make people have fun. His message is to create an experience that is contextually relevant to the TG and do it seamlessly. Then the metaverse is an enabler.
Aiar noted that there are two sorts of people looking at the metaverse – marketers and the gaming audiences. A gamer will say that a metaverse is just a multiplayer experience. People have gotten freedom to just socialise. The metric is no longer a game. The metric is living, especially due to COVID. GTA 5 is seen as being brutal by marketers but can be used by them. He learnt about stock broking from it. He got real life experience out of a metaverse. For advertisers to leverage this though immersive brand mascots would have to be created who would be able to run around and play. He noted that India is a leapfrog economy. The same thing will happen with 5G adoption.
“Now when you talk about screens in the pocket one is already getting 4k Ultra HD content from Netflix. What is the true utility of 5G? Computers in the future will be worn on people’s heads. They will not sit inside people’s pockets. When you wear a computer on your head which is primarily like a VR or a AR headset it unlocks more potential to consume data as well relay back your expressions or emotions. Emotional feelings have to be transported through digital sandboxes.” He said that tier two and three towns and cities are seeing a lot more adoption of VR and AR headsets than the tier one Metros and cities. With 5G becoming more ubiquitous this will be the year that more people will adopt this tech because the only thing that is limiting is the network speeds.
He noted that Byjus has ventured into the gaming space for kids because gamification of education is growing. The child gets the best of entertainment and education while saving a lot of time. He also spoke about Pixel streaming which allows people to have heavy duty computers that cost Rs. 40-50 lakhs inside a smartphone. That kind of horsepower is needed for larger organisations to use the power of 5G.
Meanwhile ICICI Lombard is using drone technology and VR in a BFSI category. Kapoor noted that insurance as a category is about covering risk. Tech is used in various ways. A.I., ML allows the company to look at critical parameters in something like cargo, marine transit where one can check on the humidity, temperature control, meddling of the cargo etc. Detectors are put there to pre-empt theft or damage. Through mobile apps insurers capture biomarkers, genetics, genomes. The healthstack gets more advanced and progressive to capture a lot of data. Insurance IRDA she said has just made it mandatory from a KYC standpoint that it will get linked. Insurance policies will go and follow the route of demat the way in which securities and stocks are incorporated and stored. This allows the entire ecosystem of data to be captured. So the entire ecosystem of data being enabled for an insurer or an underwriter or an actuary to look at the parameters and the risk profiling of a consumer.
Drones are used for agriculture or crop insurance where it is about acres and acres of land where a climatic situation has caused damage. Tons of data are captured at a granular level. Even on VR work has been done to safeguard goods or premises. Remote scanning is done to get a 3D simulation of the factory and build a case of insurance. When the claim arises one can overlay the Drone pictures with the pre damage. One can underwrite the extent of settlement that one needs to do. Then the company went a step further to offer drone insurance. Cyber risk has also come into play. All of this is inter connected.
