121XP: New Experiences for Experiential Marketing

Alvin D’Souza, Founder, 121XP explains the nuances of experiential marketing and the uncertain scenario post COVID19

What was the genesis of 121XP?

One to one experiences (121XP), as they call it, was launched in 2015. It was basically a group of enthusiastic professionals who have been in the industry for so long that most of us had a relationship with several brands. We also had some amount of equity in terms of solutions that we provided to the brands. That was why when we started, we already had 7 clients on board. In fact, we had clients even before we did anything. The journey has been great so far in terms of acquiring clients and also doing some brilliant work in the marketing plan. We work with brands as a portfolio, like Budweiser, ITC, Gulf Oil, Eureka Forbes, Tata Salt, Tata Sampann. We are working with 45 brands all across the country noffering solutions in urban activations and also rural activations.

How important is experiential marketing in case of these rural activations?

Rural activations is a mainstay for us. For Gulf oil campaign we reach out to rural areas. In terms of experiential marketing, experiential is aligned to the brand proposition. So essentially what that means is how you explain to a layman the difference between a Colgate and Pepsodent. The key differentiation is Colgate will always talk about tooth decay while Pepsodent will talk about germs and how the product or the brand eliminates germs. So what we do is understand the space that the brand operates, what the proposition is what are the benefits and then bring that live on ground. So, we will talk about engagement devices. We will talk about how Colgate is as a product and as a brand help prevent tooth decay versus talking about germs,

Even normal marketing now is done in an omni channel format. It can be physical channel, social media channels, other digital channels or electronic media channels. So what is the difference in experiential marketing?

The experiential or activation in itself is a challenge. Like the design is one challenge for a marketer, activation is a media channel within itself. This channel allows you to engage with a consumer in a targeted fashion . For example, if I have to reach out to only let’s say, the chief wage earner between the age group of 20- 30 or 25- 35, I would go to pockets where I would get this audience. To audiences which frequent these touch points. So, essentially touchpoint prioritisation happens, which is the frequency of the age group or the consumer. Touch point will vary from a multiplex to a single screen theatre, from marketplaces to malls.  In rural geographies it could be the farms, at some point in time the Agri market could also form a touchpoint. So we go to these particular touch points and engage with the consumer. How experiential is different is because here you are using your target audience pretty easily compared to other media channels.

Even the brands like Budweiser or Gulf Oil who are working with you or many others or any brands that you have been working with, would be using the traditional marketing channels to at the same time. So when they are using both traditional and experiential marketing simultaneously, Is there any confusion about the messaging that is going out?

As a marketeer whenever we are sending out a message across any channels, messaging is uniform. You cannot have different messaging being sent out across different medium. So, every marketeer ensures that the messaging that goes is streamlined and similar across various medium. Modes of engagement could be different, but it will finally funnel down to the same message. So whatever engagements that we have to develop will also be around the products.

I will give one example for the brand called ITC Vivel. It had launched a fairness cream way back in 2013 specifically in Rajasthan and it was a fairness cream with SPF 15. And this was targeted obviously at a Google audience where the consumer understood a fairness cream and its USP as SPF 15. But the rural consumer did not understand what is SPF 15 and that it is for special protection of the skin from sun rays. So how do we bring that alive? What we did was we went to their market, engagedd with the consumers, and brought alive the fact with the help of photochromatic lens. What we did was we put the cream on one side of the lid and then moved it to the sun. The portion of the lens got darker. And that was how we brought alive the fact that SPF 15 will o protect you from tanning and thereforebringing life back and therefore making it more relatable and believable for the consumer in order to induce purchase. These are kind of multiple engagement devices that we use for understanding the kind of consumer.

How are analytics or AI integrated so that the real, the best insights come out in these kinds of scenarios?

We do primary research to basically pick out these types. However there are consumer behaviour patterns that can be looked at from a data science and analytics perspective. That however is very expensive. Though marketing or ad agencies deploy them, even theu find little RoI ON IT. So whatever insights that come in, is essentially done through primary research from focus group discussions that happened with the target audience, and so on, and so forth.

That is where we sort of go inside. Another key input that we have are the previous campaigns where a lot of data that comes in the form of reports which is consolidated and we pick out a lot of insights from there in terms of behavioural factor. The analytics and data science is something that going forward is going to be very important but it do not think agencies have the kind of budgets to focus on this sphere of marketing

Who are your customers– directly the brands are the ad agencies?

We work directly with brands. We do not with advertising agencies because they provide creative solutions. They do not have the specialisation. Within the marketing sphere, you have individual agencies, or with specialised skill sets. We are experts within the experiential space. We may not be able to provide creative solutions because we do not have that skill set.

In the post COVID scenario, all organisations are looking at reducing discretionary expenditure. The marketing budget will get severely truncated and so what would be the impact of that on experiential marketing and for an organisation like you?

The first one is the immediate and the other part is the future. So, now on an immediate basis, the impact has been total. This is because experiential is all about one to one or one to many outreach and obviously during this lockdown that cannot happen. Everything is on hold while there is some planning happening on certain brands with specific objectives. But at the same time, we do not know when this will w be able to go on ground. There could be impact with layoffs with a lot of smaller agencies shutting down. In terms of the future, I think it is premature to really rush to innovate and speculate what the future will be for us simply because the scenario is changing very fast.

What have been some of the key learnings with 121XP?

The best lesson that we have learnt is always trust your instinct and also people around you. Most of the people around us want us to succeed and most of the times what holds us back is our own inhibitions and doubts. Take a plunge – be it the idea you want to test or the venture you want to peruse and then trust people around you. As Paulo Coelho wrote about how the universe conspires to help you achieve what you seek – the same comes true if only one believes in own abilities and of those around him/her. Recently we continued to pursue an idea of Ganesh idol for visually challenged despite no one supporting it. It took a lot of effort to convince or get support. But we chose to go ahead alone and implemented a prototype. And then the support came from some esteemed clients towards the project and we showcased it and won awards for the same as well. It took us some more time but we did not lose focus or let the doubts shadow our idea.