An Interview Session With Mr. Amit Duggal, Founder- MonkeyMinds
An award-winning digital marketer, Amit Duggal has worked with some of world’s top agencies that include Travelguru, Mindshare, Madison, Omnicom and GroupM to name a few and has led multiple teams to strategically plan and implement award winning digital marketing campaigns.
Currently working on his own project Monkey Minds, which is a digital media agency, Mr. Duggal provides digital marketing consulting & solutions to some of the top marketers of the world for building digital excellence and establishing their businesses to beat the competition.
With an exposure of working in different sectors and industries that include Telecom, Mobile, Consumer Durables, FMCG, Politics, Automobile etc., Mr. Duggal has remained instrumental in driving media planning across offline and online (Digital) both for diverse categories.
In this Exclusive Interview With Preety Singh for Digipublicschool, Amit shares his views on how mobile marketing strategy has become a crucial part of marketing and how drastically marketing is being transformed by technology. He also shares with us about his favorite trends & technologies in this all-so evolving digital media industry as well as his favorite digital campaign and more.
Question# 1: You have been an award winning digital marketer and have worked in numerous start-ups as well as world’s top agencies like Travel guru, Mindshare, Madison, Omnicom etc. and at present you are the Founder of Monkey Minds which is a digital marketing agency. Please tell us something about the major challenges you have come across in this journey till date?
Answer: Nothing is exciting if it’s not challenging, and the digital business has always been exciting. I would say I have been lucky to be part of this industry since its inception in India. 2005 was an exciting time, when we use to get an SEM report from an agency for one of the eCom brands I worked for, and the report presented showed 30 clicks from SEM. No one had any clue whether it was good, bad or ugly. We all learnt digital on the job and industry allowed us to do so. I always felt digital marketing measurability is like a double edged sword, on one hand if it’s working, it is highly efficient and is measurable to the “T”, while on the other, brands are impatient for the result and within a day/ couple of days, they stop digital marketing underperformer. The challenge of the industry is being patient and not expecting quick wins from digital. The gestation period to perform for other media is much, much higher as compared to digital.
Question#2: Trends have changed. What was in a decade ago has now become obsolete in digital media industry. So, as on date what are the most effective measures that you adopt for delivering a highly effective digital campaign?
Answer: A decade ago the metrics were more of media-vanity perspective (impressions, clicks, CTR, bounce rate, visits, etc.) and few evolved brands looked at conversions. Now more and more advertisers are worried about who is viewing it – Target reach, viewability, ad-fraud have become utmost important for brands now.
Question#3: That one lesson you have learnt from the work you are doing at present?
Answer: It’s an ever evolving industry, things change at a rapid pace and we have to be on our toes to keep abreast with changing trends. As the saying goes, we have to be a student for lifetime.
Question#4: Smartphones have become ubiquitous making it more & more crucial for businesses to have a mobile based marketing strategy! Please share your view on this?
Answer: We are entering the age of cord-cutters. This doesn’t mean that the consumption of content has gone down. It’s still getting consumed but at a more personalized level on the mobile screen. I will watch the content I like basis my convenience. The power of mobile can be seen in immediate effect it has on the platform traffic post offline advertising.
Mobile is the gateway to connect with anyone who has a data connection.
Question#5: Almost every new day in digital media industry arrives with new trends & technologies, please share the trends & technologies you find exciting and helpful for your clients.
Answer:
Cross screen attribution- It’s a very interesting area which globally has been cracked. Its an exciting space to figure out how one medium is leading to brand intent and business KPI’s from other medium
TV attribution – There are some global companies which have started work to track TV advertising with ACR (Automatic content recognition) technology, this is a very interesting space to get into. Companies like Adorithm.com are developing tools to track TV advertising in real time and its brand impact and business KPI’s.
ML / AI led planning – How media planning will get evolved with help of ML and AI
Marketplace marketing management – This is one of the underrated stories as of now. The marketing dollars are moving here, watch out for this space to explode
Question#6: Coming to the ever changing social media trends, what according to you is the actual meaning of social media engagement for business as on date and what are the key factors you consider while planning to tap social media?
Answer: Any message or a trigger which can lead to ripple effect is Social Media for me. There is no set formula which will make communication go ‘Viral’. It depends on multiple factors like content, context of the message, sentiment of people and emotional connection with the message. For me, Social media is a mass amplification platform and when used properly, it can drive performance and branding as well.
Question#7: Please tell us something about the main issues or challenges your potential clients face these days?
Answer: Fragmentation of digital media. Handling multiple platforms at the same time and making sure they talk to each other.
The other issue which I have seen, is the isolation of creative and media services. A lot of times the struggle is to get both the services talk to each other for a winning formula. For me, Integration is the key, creative and media need to work together from the inception of the brief and idea.
Question#8: Sir! Any recent campaign that you found most noteworthy and the factors that make it stand out?
Answer: I really like Netflix & Zomato digital pieces. They are smart, quirky and contextual. The online banter between each other is icing on the cake. The two brands have time and again shown how a small piece of content (a tweet or Instagram pic) can be made memorable and bring a smile on your face.
Question#9: Something that you would like to put across to the digital advertisers/ marketers from your experiences in the industry?
Answer: Digital is not an inexpensive platform. The currency which you buy at is relatively low as compared to mainline. The currency of digital has contributed to digital being labelled as a ‘cheap’ medium. Advertisers should also keep in mind the volume which they need to consider when planning digital.