MAM
iNext rolls out new campaign conceptualised by Mudra Max
MUMBAI: Jagran Prakashan’s tabloid iNext has launched a new campaign to make inextlive.com the “news website of choice for the youth”.
Created by Mudra Max, the campaign will run for three months.
Mudra Max has defined the target group (TG) of iNext as one with traditional values but global aspirations. They covet fame and are materialistic but still care for their parents. They live in tier 2 and 3 cities and villages of India. On the Internet, the TG is looking for Infotainment – songs, music, local news, and videos.
Taking these into consideration, a folk singing competition, IKtara, was used to launch the website with a fresh look and feel. The company claims that this competition would bring the TG close to the tabloid; as registrations and updates about the competition will be available on the website of Inextlive, exposure to the fresh website was bound to be there.
A call to action for the youth was created with the tagline “Aao Maati ki dhun sunao”. An online media plan along with print support from iNext and Dainik Jagran was designed to launch the campaign.
On the social media front, the Youtube, Facebook and Twitter pages of Inextlive were revamped. The likes to the page were targeted to get regular fans of iNextlive page.
Also, for the initial three days, a teaser campaign was launched before the final campaign to announce the competition.
Mudra Group COO Pratap Bose said, “The challenge was to launch with an idea that brings stature, awareness and engagement for iNextlive and endears iNext to its core constituency. Initial results of the campaign are more than encouraging to say the least.”
Inext COO and editor Alok Sanwal added, “Not only will it bring this largely neglected form of music to the fore, but also help amateur folk singers venture into the mainstream and connect the youth of today with the music of their roots.”
Iktara is an initiative to have happened on the web-space, wherein except the shortlisting by judges and recording of the content in studios everything else such as the call for entry, registration, upload of user generated content and finally the airing of the content is all on the same platform.
IKtara received 532 users registered for the competition within four days of the teaser campaign. Also, daily visitors to inextlive.com have almost grown three times after the launch of campaign.
MAM
The Merit of Madness: How AI is Changing the Game in Advertising
By Ritz Malik, founder, Ritz Media World.
MUMBAI: When it comes to growth in a competitive landscape, a businessman always has to be a firm believer in Darwinism. You either need to bring a better product, or a better price, or both to the table to get customers and scale. Without this value proposition, you remain unnoticed, and staying unnoticed is not something that a brand wants to do.
You have to do all this and also make sure that you stay cashflow positive at the same time. Otherwise, you’re at a real risk of becoming a large hollow balloon that your competitors are just waiting for to explode or implode under its own weight.
As we’ve entered the era of AI, the notion of a product’s efficacy, cost efficiency, marketability, workflow management, and logistics reliability has become increasingly relevant and prevalently impactful. None of this is background noise anymore. It is the difference between bleeding money on traditional media and actually engineering a profitable campaign.
For example, META’s AI Algorithm has finally given us the ability to measure the ‘CREATIVE’ for a business’s promotions. The best part is that we can do so organically. Content that is actually relevant to the target audience gets more views through reach. This tells us exactly how the audience is reacting before we even scale the budget. This is how we have been gifted the ability to provide merit to the madness of the creative process.
So, our process is as follows:
A set of creatives is built for social media
Their performance is closely monitored for reach and engagement.
Based on the best organic performance, we choose the creative.
Make micro adjustments to add a sales proposition and CTA (but keep it subtle)
Publish the modified creative as an ad.
There’s a lot that goes on in between, but this is the basic method for getting it right. And this is just the AI that’s being used by platforms across the world.
AI utilisation is something that has greatly made the creative process a lot easier. As an agency that thrives on coming up with ideas that are out of this world, we have made the most of leveraging AI to bring ideas to life without spending a fortune.
So, this way, the ability to create high-impact brand stories is no longer under the tyrannical gatekeeping of large budget organisations. It is now that merit solely falls on the storyteller.
Now, AI-powered content production and the AI algorithm on Social Media platforms are asking the question: Is your content compelling?. If yes, the audience will watch your content, share it, and engage with it.
And when it comes to keeping budgets down, we can surely say that it holds the capability to execute million-dollar shoots at a fraction of the cost.
For example, we recently came across a creative challenge by a major Real Estate Developer from Gurugram. They had signed a celebrity couple for their brand ambassadorship a few months ago. They were now about to launch their new project, but for some reason, they could not get their shoot done.
What we came up with was to use the likeness of this celebrity couple and place them throughout the project’s feature video. With the help of AI generation, we were able to rebuild a completely new feature video with their brand ambassadors in 2 days, and no additional physical shots were required.
Imagine being able to save 50-60 lakhs in production costs, 15-20 days in production time, and comfortably be ahead of schedule to launch the project.
This has changed the game entirely. With AI, you can now just acquire the likeness rights of celebrities, and you can just build environments and scenarios with them. The balance between creative and artificial intelligence isn’t a battle for control; it is simply the ultimate tool for survival and scale in a landscape that rewards the fastest and the smartest.
