Decoding “NOW OR NEVER” Marketing

INTRODUCTION

An advertising campaign will not be effective if delivered at the wrong time, no matter how visually appealing, nerve-wracking and groundbreaking it is. In order to create an impact, one has to wait for the right moment. And this is where the role of Moment Marketing jumps in. 

Recent times are filled with memorable events and brands are using moment marketing now more than ever. The reason for that is quite simple - brands want to be a part of consumer conversations so they make use of these trends to catch the attention and to stay on top of their minds.

 

ADVANTAGES OF MOMENT MARKETING

1. COST EFFICIENT: A marketing campaign is effective only when it reaches the right people at the right time but that is not the case with moment marketing campaigns. It is more about seizing (or even creating) the moment and making the most of it. For this, brands do not need to break the bank and splurge on whooping advertising costs. Only a team that remains on the top of their game when it comes to trends and knows their ways around the audience is needed.

 

2. BECOMING THE TALK OF THE TOWN: The way a brand expresses their opinion about a trend connects with their audience and communicates their brand value. If the content comes out well and the message is communicated nicely, the brand will soon become a sensation and its engagement will increase. People have a short attention span, which can be a real challenge for people to engage with a brand. In order to overcome this hurdle, moment marketing is the best.

 

3. 3CS: CONNECTION, CONVERSATION AND CONVERSION: Moment marketing provides a great platform to strike a conversation as well as create a real-time connection with your consumers, as the latter is searching or reading about a particular event or news at the time. It further increases the chances of a brand being discovered by consumers, besides creating a high recall. Also, it creates an organic relationship with your followers, who are more likely to convert into a purchaser of goods or services on their terms.

 

KEY ELEMENTS FOR THE SUCCESS OF MOMENT MARKETING

 

1. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR TRENDS: By identifying the audience and also the trends, you should capture their interest and also can insert your brand into audience conversations. If you don’t notice a connection between your brand and whatever the latest trend is, it pays to dig deeper and try to add your brand’s spin on the latest conversations. 

 

2. MAKE HUMOUR CENTRAL TO YOUR COMMUNICATION: When it comes to crafting creative moment marketing for brands you handle, remember to be funny and don’t be offensive. For example, Even though Zomato shares topical content, by adding references to food, hunger etc., it keeps the conversation within the realm of their brand’s goals. 

3. POP CULTURE ALL THE WAY: Make sure that your copy and also the design includes pop culture elements. This helps build an inherent virality factor to your topical posts and also helps in successful marketing. A brand can also create posts with an inside joke by keeping in mind the brand ethos and subtly building affinity within your target audience. For example, HDFC Bank.

4. STAY TRUE TO YOUR BRAND WITHOUT BEING PUSHY: To make sure your efforts don’t fall into vain, keep your brand’s core values at the topmost priority of all your moment marketing activities. Whatever the trending topic of discussion may be, try to plug in your brand’s core messaging and also its features. Same as Dunzo talks about the Whatsapp-Signal privacy dilemma.

 

 

EVENTS DEPICTING MOMENT MARKETING

 

1. NEERAJ CHOPRA WINS GOLD: as Neeraj Chopra won the gold medal for India in JAVELIN throw, various brands took advantage of the moment by congratulating him along with boosting their advertising game. Indigo congratulated Neeraj by giving him a year of free flights, while KFC, SWIGGY and AMUL praised him for his fantastic performance by the following tweets.

 

 

 

2. VACCINATION BEGINS IN INDIA: Recently the government started the vaccination process for all 18 or above age groups.

Durex, one of the leaders of moment marketing perfectly used this opportunity to create an advertisement. The injection in the image depicts a condom, and the brand perfectly adds up their brand message of ‘stay protected’ in the caption. Also, Dominos humorously depicted the necessity of vaccination by showcasing two types of shots, one that we want and the one that we actually need.

3. THE LAUNCH OF MONEY HEIST SEASON 5: The release of Money Heist Season 5 led to a collaboration between Pepsi and Netflix to celebrate the show’s premiere with its latest campaign. In the ad, we can see Tiger Shroff who is on a mission to search for the missing golden cans, released for commemorating season 5 of the show.

Another incident was A Jaipur-based agency announcing an official holiday on the release date appreciating its employees for their dedicated efforts during the pandemic in WFH scenarios, gifting them a much needed ‘Netflix & Chill, Holiday’

 

WHY MOMENT MARKETING PLANS ARE IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BRAND

 

1. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR ANALYSIS: Modern consumers’ lives are busy where the amount of content produced is way more than any consumer can possibly consume making the consumer prosperous in terms of entertainment avenues. 

This has forced marketers to shift from “Interruption marketing” to “Moment Marketing”. This means that brands and marketers can no longer interrupt the consumers from what they are doing to place their brand or product rather they must grab the attention of consumers by their message.

 

2. EDGE OVER TRADITIONAL MARKETING: Moment marketing wins over traditional interruption marketing because of the following points -

• Unlike a typical TV commercial or skippable YouTube ad, it feels less forced and artificial. 

• It is more real in terms of engagement which builds the virality in the content.

• The chance of being discovered by consumers increases and creates a high recall value of the brand.  

 

WHEN MOMENT MARKETING GOES SOUTH

As Moment Marketing involves leveraging a personality or an event to grab eyeballs and become a part of the conversation, brands must be careful and avoid legal complications when using moment marketing as a strategy.

 

THE SINDHU CASE

• Last year, PV Sindhu made the country proud by bagging the Bronze Medal at Tokyo Olympics 2020. Numerous brands joined in to ride on the trend that Sindhu had created with her win.

• The fact that these brands used PV Sindhu’s images and name on their posts is a clear infringement of the player’s privacy along with flouting the norms of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

• Sindhu took a lot of these brands to court, for using her name and image for their marketing agendas without proper authorization and sought damages worth Rs 5 crores from each of  these brands

 

 

CONCLUSION

Be it Amul girl’s sense of humour and the way get she gets away with every controversy with her wide-eyes innocence, twirly red polka dot dress or Netflix’s gripping, grilling and grasping reaction on almost everything – these days brands are making a real-time connection with their customers through moment marketing. That is happening because customers are always looking for a particular trend or news on social media and their chances of getting discovered increase, besides creating a high recall.

Although moment marketing is short-lived given that brands can only leverage for a particular time or event which is trending by linking it to their core products and services to induce sales, a person handling this segment who is a fast decision-maker and who knows things (like Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones) is of utmost importance. Therefore, clever marketers make the most of this strategy in order to connect to the online and offline audience at a large scale by exhausting lesser resources.

Hence, moment marketing campaigns provide an efficient means to creep into daily conversations of target customers and shape their preferences.