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Decoding disruption

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Every advertiser, every marketer Irrespective of the campaign budget, wants that his campaign should be disruptive. Something which has never been done before which will catch the fancy of the consumers and create buzz. Every piece of content must go viral. And the managers from agency brief many publishers/partners as well as try their own hand at making the campaign unique with a pinch of innovation and impact. And no reward for guessing that most of the time the outcome is not as expected. The way it works is a brand manager wants to max out their agency on the role. The agency guys, bombarded with big ticket ideas from partners feel frustrated due to low budget and end up just doing the tick work. In this hustle bustle the brand positioning and the consumers it wants to engage with is  made to sit on the last bench. It just becomes a cheap shiny golden feather which must be worn not for the consumers but for the stakeholders and the aam janta at large. A big
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After internet its social media giving sleepless nights to the marketers

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Social media has caught up like a never seen before wild fire and it’s still spreading at never seen before speed. There are several brands, which have garnered huge mileage out of it. The best thing about this is that it is out there; there is no secret code or system or mechanism. So, ideally it should be easy to replicate but alas! Reality is not so. Many advertisers are still wondering how to go about it. They hear about it they have consultants for it, even they do participate in this phenomena but, they are CLUELESS about how their brand is going to get mileage of it. The good thing is that they have understood that they can’t do without it. Why this huge cry? What is the problem? First, they want to be part of it without knowing the context they want to be in. Social media is where people participate for their self fulfillment without any actual physical gains. Different set of people seek different things out of it. Depending on value system of a consumer, he or she
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"Sales is ok but mindshare and brand scores are going down buddy!"

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Brand managers of my account are really worried about the dipping mind-share. We media guys can simply shrug it off by saying that "it's the failure of creative strategy." But, if we really are up for the challenge we know that a media planner's job is not only visibility but engaging the consumers as well with whatever creative strategy we have. Considering the post evaluations met the objective; the possible reasons of falling mind-share or brand scores from a media context could be: 1. Spends below optimal level 2. Poorly designed campaign and vehicle mix 3. Mediocre scheduling 4. Faulty benchmarks, e.g., 55@4+ instead of 30@6+ If creative is average, the job of media becomes more demanding. To make strategy work for the brand media has to go whole hog. It has to be high decibel and engaging and innovative enough to not only reach but touch the audience... Hope, in coming quarters we would be able to contain this problem and our brand managers again wou
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Media buying efficiency preferred over media planning or strategy

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Normally in a media pitch presentation we come up with various strategies or beautiful slides in the name of strategies. We assume POV (Point of View-- what management has to select when deciding on strategy) on behalf of our esteemed would be client and stretch strategy to the limit.  Only condition is that it should look and sound vague. If it is simple it can not be strategy and obviously we are considered specialist and so anything from a horse's mouth has to sound as foreign language, it should generate awe in the audience. And, at times we do come up with good solutions or say nice strategies that really have the potential to shape up the business. And, then after rounds of applause and amused looks, clients especially with smaller pockets come up with this one liner i.e., but, those are all gyaan (theoretical knowledge) what matters is how much value you bring to the table say if I give you Rs. 10 crs. if you make it Rs. 25 crs. through buying, I'm on. 
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