January 10, 2020
Belinda – Why is benchmarking and celebrating great international advertising strategies essential for the success of the industry as a whole?
Sital – This helps us spot and recognize talent while commending great work done and milestones reached across geographies within an ever dynamic and challenging industry that we are part of as we look to connect and build relationships with our evolving consumers.
Belinda – What is your top tip for creating a winning entry?
Sital – Writing & Storytelling. How you craft the entry and tell your story is critical to grab the attention of the jurors and what helps your entry to stand out in a crowd. When detailing out what a specific campaign achieved, be sure to focus on how this drove business outcomes rather than just delivering campaign outputs.
Belinda – What is the secret to implementing a successful cross-border advertising campaign?
Sital – While defining the ‘What’ – It’s important for such a campaign idea to rise above the specific cultural & geographical nuances which tend to vary and instead focus on the universal human truths and relate these to the proposition being advertised. When it comes to the ‘how’ of communicating, it comes down to finding the relevant common denominators – not the lowest but the highest common emotional denominators, which can help connect with audiences across borders. With these elements in place, simple storytelling seems to have almost always worked.
Belinda – What’s the key difference between targeting a domestic audience and an international one?
Sital – In my view there is not much difference. One can say we tend to know more about domestic audiences and hence it is easier to manage them. However in today’s day & age of 24×7 global connectivity where audiences are not just consumers but also creators, editors & influencers – its important for those targeting either domestic or international audiences to keep ears to the ground and eyes on the ball – be ready to respond, optimise and on ‘always on’ mode.
Belinda – How can you measure the success of your partnerships during an international campaign?
Sital – Foremost, its absolutely critical to have a shared understanding of success criteria and KPIs with each individual partner prior to the launch of the campaign. Depending on objectives and stages of a campaign, these might differ and hence its important to have prior agreement on these. A brand building campaign would have clearly different success metrics compared to one that is planned to drive performance marketing. Once we have aligned objectives, it becomes easier to put measurements in place with the right timeframes to measure success. Increasingly of course in recent times we have been swaying significantly towards harder & business driving metrics to define and measure success of partnerships.
Sital is a member of the World Media Awards Jury 2020. He is joining the other esteemed members of Jury and will be discussing all of your entries for the awards this year. We are open for entries, to see how you can enter and share all your great work. Go to our How to Enter page.