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Despite the recent slip up by one of its celebrity endorser Sourav Ganguly’s team on social media which ended up prematurely revealing Meesho’s massive campaign, the team is all set to capture user attention this festive season.

The internet commerce company has mounted a massive festive sale campaign much ahead of its competition to capture user attention across Bharat. The celebrity-led campaign features nine celebrities including Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Rohit Sharma, Rashmika Mandanna, Kapil Sharma, Trisha Krishnan, Karthi Sivakumar, Ram Charan and Sourav Ganguly.

Addressing the faux pas 

In an exclusive conversation with Storyboard18, Megha Agarwal, CXO User Growth, says that the company is deploying a social media strategy to break festive advertising clutter.

One of the first strategies was to release a Blockbuster poster with celebrities to create intrigue and speculation whether it is a movie or ad campaign which led to conversation and buzz. Of course, until the Sourav Ganguly tweet mishap happened which the company handled in a smart tongue-and-cheek fashion.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">When Dada hits, it&#39;s a 6. When Dada mishits, it&#39;s still a 6. <a href="https://twitter.com/SGanguly99?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SGanguly99</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MegaBlockbuster?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MegaBlockbuster</a> <a href="https://t.co/JPHtvjpYYm">pic.twitter.com/JPHtvjpYYm</a>&mdash; Meesho (@Meesho_Official) <a href="https://twitter.com/Meesho_Official/status/1565703298254241792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 2, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“I’m not going to reveal whether it was a goof-up or not. I love the conversations that are happening in social media. Our objective was to create a lot of conversations around this campaign and I feel the outcome is exactly where we wanted it to be,” says Agarwal.

About the campaign 

Created by advertising agency Sideways, the two television spots announce the annual festive Mega Blockbuster Sale: ‘Saal ke Sabse Kam Daam’ from September 23 to 27. The campaign aims to position Meesho as a local marketplace where users can access a variety of products from across the country. The idea was to create a visual world representing celebrities as sellers of various categories, spreading awareness about the company’s unique value proposition of quality products at lowest prices.

Agarwal says the idea of the campaign came from their mission statement which is to democratise internet commerce both from suppliers and users perspective.

“There are 85 percent of people who consume an assortment (of products) from unbranded or unorganised sectors. That is what Meesho is bringing with a price that users really want. In our campaign, we have tried to bring the local market feel where users can buy the width and depth of the category at the right price point. For suppliers as well, Meesho is getting complete MSME online helping them sell online and that’s also reflected in our campaign. We are using celebrities for the first time in a very unique way as suppliers showcasing the depth and width of the campaign,” she says.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YS_pMC6Khbk" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Going deeper and more regional 

Meesho plans to leverage regional celebrities to target markets across the country. With a total of 12 films, each master is shot in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and further amplified in other regional languages like Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu and Gujarati. The campaign will be promoted across TV, digital, social, WhatsApp and print platforms.

Agarwal says the intent behind hiring a good mix of national and regional celebrities is to have a pan-India presence.

“We are penetrating deep in the tier II, III and IV towns of India. For that, it is important that while we cover national television or media we also go deep regionally. That’s why we have a good mix of celebrities from Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone to Rashmika, Ram Charan, Trisha and Sourav Ganguly,” she adds.

Meesho, recently strengthened its regional foothold by adding eight new languages on the app - Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia.

With approximately 68 million active product listings across 30 categories, Meesho says that while fashion will remain its mainstay, the company is expecting a strong surge in home & kitchen, furnishings, consumer electronics and accessories during the festive season.

Apart from mass media, there will be a strong influencer marketing leg as well which involves multiple micro and nano influencers who will increase the consideration set of the platform.

Meesho says that it currently has over seven lakh active sellers and it expects seller base to increase by 4X this festive season.

"This will translate into a deeper assortment on the platform. This will also lead to good discounts from these suppliers. We are hoping for a very strong festive season supplied from the inputs from suppliers,” notes Agarwal.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-S9W5mBe3g" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Agency Speak 

On the objective of the campaign, Abhijit Avasthi, Founder, Sideways says that the campaign has been devised to address the key barrier in the adoption of e-commerce by mass India - a sense of distance and 'not-for-me' feeling.

“Hence, the campaign exhibits the feel of a local market. The look, feel, flavour builds affinity and familiarity. I believe using India's biggest celebrities as sellers who welcome customers to Meesho's 'Mega Blockbuster Sale' will help break clutter as it has not been done before, and makes them endearing too,” he says.

Festive season is a massive opportunity for e-commerce players that hinge on aggressive discounts and interesting advertising to capture consumer attention.

In 2021, e-commerce players clocked a gross merchandise value of $9.2 billion, an increase of 23 percent compared to 2020, according to data released by research firm RedSeer.

While Amazon and Flipkart continue to be the big players in the festive sale, more companies such as Meesho, and Tata Cliq are also actively taking a greater part in the sales.

Exclusive: Meesho mounts first massive celebrity-led festive campaign

In June, e-commerce company Meesho said it had sent legal notices to select social media influencers and certain people in contact with them for allegedly running smear campaigns against the company. These influencers were allegedly posting negative content about the company and tagging their investors. Jaymin Shah, chief executive of influencer marketing agency SocialGrid Media, has been sent a notice. Several users of Twitter also came out and said that they were approached to post negative content about Meesho.

“This is not the first time that Meesho has been targeted by those with vested interests looking to defame the company. Meesho will continue to monitor the situation and consider strict legal recourse against those spreading misinformation and lies about the company,” the company said.

Online travel company EaseMyTrip also said that multiple Twitter accounts commented on the company's posts on the social media channel, alleging that the travel portal "stole money" from them. The company said that it is looking to take the legal route against these accounts and individuals. Apart from firms, even VC firms such as Sequoia Capital, that backs startups including Bira, Blinkit and Byju’s, have been attacked by "trolls".

Digital marketing experts that Storyboard18 spoke to highlighted that smear campaigns are designed differently than regular campaigns and can run from one or two days to several weeks. It can be as simple as a negative product review on an e-commerce platform, fake news around a founder to even plummeting profits of a company. The objective of such campaigns is primarily to sabotage new launches by competition, malign the founder whose company might be in the market for funding, dig up old negative developments in a firm and flag them to media houses.

Experts note that there are various aberrations when one notices that there are an unrealistic number of negative reviews of a product, mentions on the digital platforms, numbers don’t match or there are sudden mentions of the brand in a negative light.

Spotting a smear campaign

The first tell-tale sign of a possible smear campaign is a sudden jump in the number of mentions of brands online and that too out of the blue, says Shradha Agarwal, CEO and cofounder, Grapes Digital.

“One has to then categorize whether these mentions are positive or negative and brand or consumer initiated. If it is negative and consumer initiated is when one starts questioning what has happened and starts tracing the origins of the campaign,” she says.

Smear campaigns are done using somebody else's media so it could be placing a paid article in a news media outlet or paying an influencer to post something negative on their account. Such campaigns are also done by a chain of parties so it can’t be easily traced to one person or an agency.

“One has to join the dots to know who got it done,” Agarwal adds.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-21" src="https://images.storyboard18.com/storyboard18/2022/07/Smear-anatomy.png" alt="" width="701" height="1000" />

Volume matters

Experts share that the topic decides the length of a smear campaign. A campaign can go on for a long time if a product/service needs to be tarnished. On the other hand, in the case of a founder, it can be a few days.

Pricing depends on the intensity of the vilification and can start from Rs 600 for each negative review on an e-commerce site or a tweet that can be bought for Rs 50 to several lakhs. While regular user accounts on Twitter with negligible following would be paid Rs 50 for each tweet, bigger influencers with clout can be paid several lakhs to post negative content about a brand.

“Smear campaigns are usually done in volumes and by micro influencers/nano influencers usually not done by big influencers. College kids, Twitter accounts in bulk to do retweets and trend a topic. WhatsApp is the new hot platform for smear campaigns and sharing screenshots about a brand or founder,” says Agarwal.

Agencies, on the behalf of the brand, approach smaller agencies who can get in touch with people (influencers/general people) to create buzz or post online, says Pratik Gupta, co-founder, Zoo Media, which owns creative digital agency FoxyMoron.

“Meme pages are another way to run a smear campaign or malign a brand. For instance, there were memes around how an Oppo phone owner is touted as a beggar. In such instances, although it is being said in fun and jest but it does create a perception. Meme pages are massive places where smear campaigns are run,” he adds.

Smear vs ambush marketing

Can a smear campaign be dubbed as a form of ambush marketing? Experts disagree.

Smear campaign is a systematic and long-term exercise while ambush marketing goes after a particular event/ campaign. Ambush marketing is also fair competition and primarily about brands hijacking conversation from their competition and not necessarily maligning them.

“Brands having fun with competition in a legal realm is fine and not the same as smearing someone. Coke and Pepsi have been taking digs at each other for 30 years and that’s great for advertising as it pushes you to be more creative that’s not the case in smear campaigns,” Gupta concludes.

At a time when purchases and sales of companies are being impacted by digital reviews or powerful influencers who can make or break a brand's image by click of a button, such smear campaigns ought to be taken seriously. Each review, tweet or Instagram post counts and it can possibly alter the destiny of a company.

Making of a smear campaign and the dark side of digital marketing

Note to readers: Storyboard18’s new Month In Focus initiative spotlights themes and topics that are pushing marketers to reshape and rethink how brands interact with today’s customers. Our theme for this month is Stacks &amp; Strategies, a martech and adtech spotlight on how decision makers and marketers are advancing the adoption of new technologies and tech-driven strategies in the brand marketing ecosystem. From the defining trends and preparing for a cookiepocalypse to how progressive martech strategies help fast track business and brand growth. Catch this special on Storyboard18.

Softbank and Meta-backed e-commerce platform Meesho's recent campaign “Arre Waah” has been tailored to capture India’s regional nuances and thereby build resonance among various audiences. The campaign was shot in three zonal languages - Hindi, Bengali, and Tamil -and it was further amplified in other regional languages.

Month In Focus Int Logo vootSimilarly, logistics and grocery delivery platform Dunzo is known for creating hyperlocal advertising such as “Kannada Starter Pack” or Netflix that often partners with audio streaming sites to create local language content to promote regional titles being released on its platform.

As more Indians log on to the internet, the demand for local language content is steadily growing followed by the need for advertisers to consider creating regional advertising which has gone beyond dubbed ads. This is reflective in user behaviour which is why the click-through rate of regional creatives is much higher and why 70 percent of Indians find vernacular digital content more reliable than English, according to a joint study conducted by Google and KPMG.

Of the around 700 million active internet users in India, only 216 million transact online. According to the IAMAI-Kantar ICUBE 2020 report, this is expected to swell to 900 million by 2025. New consumer segments are continuously being formed and purchasing power is increasing steadfastly.

Experts and platforms Storyboard18 spoke to asserted that vernacular content is helping brands break adoption barriers and making the experience of not only consuming content but also transacting online more relatable. Unlike print or TV, Digital does not need a separate regional edition or channel, as it can be personalised real time via an instance.

Stay focused, stay local

Shradha Agarwal, CEO and co-founder, Grapes, believes that regional content cannot be homogenized, hence, gone are the days when dubbing used to be done in the region-specific dialect.

“Creative teams must curate messages keeping in mind the region and integrate the lifestyle, interests, colloquialisms, and cultural nuances of the specific audience base. Collaborating with nano and micro-influencers can prove to be very helpful in bringing out the desired result. It has endless scope for personalisation for the generation of hyper-focused messaging winning the loyalty of the regional audience,” she adds.

Brands are taking note too.

For instance, Megha Agarwal, CXO, Growth at Meesho shares that with audiences increasingly veering towards video content in vernacular languages, 90 per cent of the company’s campaigns are localized. The company has been amplifying its campaigns in a plethora of languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi and Assamese, among others.

“We are also working closely with Google and Meta to tailor our narrative to our audiences. We are also exploring strategic tie-ups with AVOD (advertising video on demand) and SVOD (subscription video on demand) OTT platforms, especially with respect to regional content,” she adds.

Meesho said that it primarily engages with micro and nano influencers from Tier II+ regions as well to connect with consumers across smaller towns of the country.

“Through sustained influencer engagement, we have acquired over 700,000 unique transactors (directly attributable) since March 2021. Brands need to invest in better understanding this diverse India, if the next wave of growth has to be unlocked. 10X more visual, completely vernacular, short form content will have a large role to play in the foreseeable future,” Agarwal notes.

Rise of regional influencers, content

Platforms which take on the burden of curation such as Google search require heavy investments at a technology and infrastructure level to support each new language. For example, machine learning for identifying, serving and moderating content. On the other hand, social platforms which rely primarily on user-generated content can easily host a Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri video on the same platform, with basic translation of user prompts and buttons.

"This makes video platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Josh and Moj (owned by Sharechat) a powerful medium to connect with people in local languages. Further, the emergence of regional creators on these platforms means that it takes the load off the platform and brand to create high quality content, as these regional creators are great at touching a cord with the right use of language and nuance – whereas a lot of regional ads can often be prosaic translations or at best transliteration of a master created in Mumbai or Delhi," notes Amaresh Godbole, CEO, Digital Technology Business, Publicis Groupe India.

Indian social media platform ShareChat, for instance, said that it witnessed exponential growth during the first phase of lockdown. Post lockdown era, ShareChat has grown from 60 million MAU (monthly active users) to 180 million MAU, and the average user time spent increased from 24 minutes to 31 minutes daily.

The company, which opened its platform to advertising in early 2020, has signed up over 150 brands within six months including brands such as Nykaa, MTR, Bharti Airtel, Future Group, Snapdeal and Flipkart. The platform is available in 15 Indic languages, out of which Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi and Bengali are the most popular among brands for advertising.

“Localised content is mainstream on ShareChat, giving brands the advantage to advertise by micro-targeting. Regional creators are aware of the regional sensitivities and cultural nuances. They are rapidly growing on the platform especially due to the expansion of our monetisation models like influencer marketing, virtual gifting, and live and video commerce,” says Akshat Sahu, director of marketing, ShareChat.

Key challenges

Advertisers across a number of sectors such as fintech, edtech and e-commerce have realised that vernacular advertising is essential for reaching a wider audience in order to drive recommendations and conversions and the number is continuously growing.

Vipul Kedia, chief data and platforms officer and head of MAAS India (Affle), shares that given the demographics of the audience, the video and audio formats are more effective since they are more engaging and rich.

“We obviously need multiple creative sets for each language with regional context, but more importantly, it needs deeper data distillation and sharper targeting to be able to identify and target consumers based on their language preferences,” he adds.

Listing some challenges related to local language advertising, Kedia notes that having to communicate in several Indian dialects simultaneously can be resource-heavy for brands.

“During the campaign, there is also additional data analysis and reporting complexity given the numerous sub-campaigns and creatives. The optimisation complexity also increases accordingly. Another challenge is that regional marketing cannot be standardised. Brands must pay attention to regional insights to customise their content,” he adds.

Rise of vernacular advertising on digital in India

On Monday, esports and skill gaming app Mobile Premier League (MPL) laid off 100 people, which represents about 10 percent of its workforce, and said it is exiting the Indonesia market. MPL joins a slew of Indian startups like Unacademy, Vedantu, Trell, and Meesho among others who have had to lay off employees as they look to cut costs amid an expected funding slowdown in the country.

It seems that the onset of winter in the startup world is also freezing advertising and marketing budgets. This is in sharp contrast to 2021 where startups contributed around 11 percent to the overall AdEx which stood at around Rs 74,000 crore as per industry estimates.

An email sent to Ola and Meesho on their possible ad budget cuts remained unanswered. However, advertising executives say that they are feeling the heat with clients cutting budgets.

“There is a huge slowdown on the advertising spends by startups because of the VC funding drying, these companies don’t have the money to spend. We have already started witnessing the slowdown post Indian Premier League (IPL). Within the startup category, we are witnessing a 30-40 percent reduction in media spends,” a senior media buyer tells Storyboard18 on the condition of anonymity.

Startups were some of the top advertising spenders as they pumped money in the first five months of the year including in the IPL. For instance, IPL’s official broadcaster Star Sports had roped in 14 sponsors out of which eight were startups – Dream11, Byju’s being co-presenting sponsors; CRED, PhonePe, Swiggy Instamart and Meesho as associate sponsors. Disney+Hotstar onboarded 18 sponsors with 12 of them being startups.

“We are hoping that it would be a temporary phenomenon so how adex will be impacted would be dependent on how July to September and World Cup pans out. I would not judge the whole year basis this slowdown but in the short-term it has really gone down because June, July and August are also lean periods. So if it goes down now nobody is bothered but if it sustains then people will get worried,” the executive quoted above adds.

Spending judiciously

There is capital but it is being deployed a lot more judiciously as compared to last year when the capital was flying all over the place, say industry executives. There will be rationalisation and marketing budgets will see some axing.

The amount of budget cuts depends on the stage of the company as well as valuation raised in their last funding round, says Arun Iyer, founder and creative partner, Spring Marketing Capital. “Later stage (Series B) onwards the fund raise is going to be a little tough this year. Twelve to 18 months being a tough environment so everybody is going to be cautious in the way they spend,” he notes.

Apart from working with multiple startups, Iyer’s advertising agency also has a Venture Capitalist (VC) arm which invests in new age companies. He sees this winter as an opportunity as well.

“We are in conversation with our companies where we have invested and having conversation about how to plan the way forward, having conversation on spending money effectively. As far as the investing part, we will be investing in companies this year as well. We will be seeing valuations which are a lot more real which is a good thing,” he notes.

But some are defying the changing tide. Arjun Mohan, CEO - India, upGrad said that they have not cut down on marketing spends at upGrad because they have been strategic in our expense planning to generate maximum ROI.

"In fact, our marketing spends have increased by 130 percent in FY23 because we are focused on creating relatable and personalised edutainment content, to make upGrad a household name, by targeting the right learner base across geographies. Our latest campaigns address the specific needs of our consumers, while piquing their interest with the concept of LifeLongLearning as a means to eradicate skill redundancy. Our plan is to spend an equal amount on both traditional and digital mediums, as we expand our course portfolio and tap into newer audience segments across the country," he adds.

Finding the silver lining

Media industry executives also believe that startups did have a good run so far and it is too early to completely write them off.

“The startups have had a spectacular run and it is only in the last couple of months that things have been relatively slow. These situations are cyclic at best and with India’s strong economic fundamentals and long-term growth outlook, we expect to ride out any temporary blip,” asserts Anupriya Acharya, South Asia CEO, Publicis Groupe.

Unlike established brands and industries, startups cannot afford to stop investing in brand building and sales either.

“They need to be in the consumer’s mind as the preferred choice and all communications are skewed towards ROI, given that growth targets need to be met on an ongoing basis. We expect sectors such as e-commerce, fintech and payment apps and now the gaming apps to continue advertising in a big way,” Acharya concludes.

MEESHO