MAM
How Broadcoasters’ LED screens are lighting up the Mumbai coastline
MUMBAI: What started as a seed of an idea to explore India’s vast coastline as a marketing medium led to a whole new and unique concept of having LED hoardings over water. Launched in 2017, Zen Digital Media is an Indian start-up co-founded by Sanjay Raval and Payal Raval and Broadcoasters is one of its first products to go live this month.
The novel OOH set-up uses a customised, self-propelled vessel to carry high resolution LED screens with auto-brightness sensors along India’s coastal areas as an advertising platform, showcasing various formats of eye-catching static and video content.
While the start-up had the first-mover advantage in the segment, it did bring its fair share of challenges too. Right from designing the vessel according to the specifications mandated by the Indian Register of Shipping and customising it to support the weight of huge LED screens, combining high-tech tools with mobility while taking into account the wind pressure – the team had the whole thing planned down to a tee.
“A lot of effort has gone into creating this kind of infrastructure. What we have done is make a platform that is very future tech-ready in terms of new technologies like VR, AR at our back end and infrastructure. So tomorrow if any gaming or tech companies want to take over the platform to screen gaming finales or have people interact with the screen, we will be ready for that too,” Zen Digital Media head of marketing Varun Ramrakhyani told Indiantelevision.com.
Though capital-intensive and cost-heavy, Ramrakhyani believes the platform is different enough to warrant a new category in itself, and not be compared to other out-of-home (OOH) advertising media. “We are essentially broadcasters who can relay anything we want on our space, in addition to operating on the coast, hence the name Broadcoasters,” he quipped.
The first Broadcoaster vessel was launched and anchored at Mumbai’s Bandra Worli Sealink promenade on 15 March. The next launch is scheduled across the beautiful coastline of Juhu-Versova Beach this month. It is a cyclical industry which can only operate in the ocean for eight months – between October and May – in a year, as they have to be out of the waters during the monsoon.
“While there have been a few global precedents of having LEDs on water, we have opened up the platform to a lot of participants in a lot of different ways,” said Ramrakhyani. “It is new-age storytelling where brands can flex their creative muscles, play around with light, animation, VFX special effects, and long-form videos. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Mumbai police and ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India) are already participating and using the platform to educate people and relay their messages very creatively.”
For the Juhu launch, the team has selected a five-kilometre stretch wherein the vessel will keep plying to and fro. The second vessel is accordingly designed to carry dual screens while moving from point A to point B and back, all while using heavy animation, VFX, and full-length videos.
Zen Digital also plans to use the screens to highlight important events and achievements, such as an Olympics victory for India or an ISRO launch. “So, the entire idea is to engage, entice, educate and excite the audience in a way that has never been done before,” he remarked.
Several brands such as Amul, MG Hector, Skoda, Tata Motors, Volvo, Mercedes, Kotak, HSBC, Amazon Prime, and non-government bodies such as ASCI are already on board. The start-up has also tied up with five-star properties along Juhu beach to conduct full-scale events.
Its second initiative, ‘Beach and You’ is modelled along the lines of “Equal Streets” of Bombay, wherein it will showcase content which people coming to the beach can make use of, like Zumba or yoga. This will be executed with the help of tie-ups with health and fitness companies to air fitness sessions.
But what of the profitability and feasibility aspects of this hitherto unexplored segment in India?
“No capital-intensive business can be profitable from day one. We believe it will take its own sweet time to give returns. The traditional industry is very RoI-centric, and everything has to be measured. But creativity is very subjective and cannot be measured. Brands that want to test the market with creativity come to us,” summed up Ramrakhyani.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
