News has credibility to drive conversations that seed the development agenda: Ajay Dang, UltraTech Cement
In an exclusive interview with Storyboard18, Ajay Dang, President and Head - Marketing at UltraTech Cement, shares the company's marketing approach and plans for the Election Season.
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The summer of 2024 promises to be a blockbuster season with the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections coinciding with the Indian Premier League (IPL). Storyboard18's Delshad Irani, caught up with one of the country's top advertisers to gauge their plans as the country gears up for the general elections. In an exclusive interview, Ajay Dang, President and Head - Marketing, UltraTech Cement, shares the company's marketing approach and plans for the Election Season.
Edited excerpts.
With the Lok Sabha Elections coming up, how do you see the election season from an advertiser's vantage?
Elections are about the developmental agenda and future direction of the country.
We thus have a unique interest in participation in this conversation. We see infrastructure playing a large enabling role in the development of the country. Infrastructure de-bottlenecks human potential and enables people to be more and do more in life. Infrastructure creation enables complete resetting of the ambitions and aspirations of the people of this great country, and we are part of this narrative.
Could you share your plans for the season - the overall objectives and crux of your brand and marketing?
As a company we participate in two very important and distinct market segments. One where we directly reach out to the consumers – Individual Home builders (IHBs). We are a company with a very large consumer footprint, nearly 70 percent of our revenue comes from the consumer segment, of this nearly two-third is Rural. Here we enable millions of consumers in the most important project of their life – building their first & only home. Cement is an irreversible & critical decision in the home building journey, where consumers don’t want to go wrong.
As India’s No.1 Cement brand, we understand that for the young IHB, building their home is deeply emotional. He is building not just a structure, but his identity. We have a deep sense of empathy for our consumers, UltraTech makes this critical decision safe and one that they can take with confidence.
The second segment is the institutional one, where our solutions get utilized in either infrastructure projects or large scale construction. Here too our focus is the end user. We believe that any infrastructure / construction should be judged not by its grandeur but by the human impact it creates.
This season too, we plan on continuing our deep engagement and meaningful conversations with the consumers across these segments. We aim to play an enabler role as an expert and trusted partner for our consumers and partners, from the individual home to era-defining infrastructure.
Tell us more about the calibration of your media strategy this season? In your media mix, what are the preferred mediums?
Our media strategy is based on attention adjusted reach that media channels and platforms deliver. Our media mix is designed to maximize reach and build mental availability across markets effectively. Besides this we use media not just as means to carry our communication but seek to use the power of media to have deep, meaningful conversations with our consumers.
We address a complex span of multiple consumers and stakeholders, from the IHB, the skilled but humble mason contractor, to the most sophisticated Engineers and large construction companies across the country. Thus our media mix spans multiple mediums. We aim to utilize the unique capabilities of each medium from high reach to ability to interact and provide a personalized experience.
We also firmly believe in the adage –“Medium is the Message”
As one of the country's top marketers and advertisers, what do you think about news as a genre?
News as a genre has the capability and credibility to drive conversations that can seed the development agenda and deliver credible information to make knowledgeable decisions by the audience. We have worked and will continue to work with channels in this genre on TV and digital platforms to take our messages to the audience and co-create trustworthy, useful information around building their own home or the nation, in meaningful ways.
Where do you see maximum ROI and how has what you measure and how you measure evolved? Will it be any different this season?
For media, our measures remain reach and message efficacy on brand measures, at an investment level across mediums. It will continue to be so. We will keep looking out for avenues that deliver better message efficacy at scale, with reasonable investments, measured through third-party sources and our own internal tracks. Besides this we also highly value the unique ability of certain media vehicles, eg. the ability of print and TV news to build trust, TV to build reach and stature etc.
How has the importance you give to certain mediums and channels evolved over time?
We evaluate media basis the attention adjusted reach that they deliver. While digital media is growing rapidly, TV continues to be the key media for us to drive reach and strengthen brand association. With audiences having multiple screens and content preferences, and viewing habits changing, our plans have also included those changes.
Can you share some key marketing and media innovations that have worked for you and what's in store this season?
Our philosophy is to contextualise for deeper engagement rather than being intrusive. We must earn the right to be; if you have to be an intruder in someone’s living room, we’d rather be a pleasant guest offering some value rather than being dull and boring. We have worked across multiple channel genres to integrate our brand messages over the years. The most effective ones are ones where both the channel and the brand come together with a unified purpose, integrating it with the existing content, rather than just treating a brand as an outside “sponsor”.
Shed some light on the brand's creative approach during such tentpole periods in the calendar, and also particularly this election season?
Our endeavour has always been to build endearing and contextual presence during such occasions led by insightful communication and interesting integrations. We look upon these opportunities not just as large scale audience aggregators, but also to have a unique conversation, embedding deeply in the content in interesting and meaningful ways.
For example ahead of the election season, we had just released our new communication “Banega toh Badhega India” as a deeply pertinent conversation about the future of India.
This film brings to life Aditya Birla Group’s purpose of enriching lives. We at UltraTech see ourselves as enablers of people’s progress and nation’s development. What inspires us at UltraTech every day is the people of the country who want to do more and be more.
We believe that whenever something is built, it boosts people’s aspiration. It is a philosophy that embodies UltraTech’s commitment to improving the lives of millions of Indians and to the nation’s development. This impact is not just limited to physical enablement but in its ability to permanently reset what is possible because infrastructure allows people to think new possibilities and recalibrate ambitions.
Families get more time when a new metro line is built. Children from villages dream of reaching the moon when science reaches the village via a newly constructed road. People do not have to migrate in search of employment when factories create new opportunities closer to home. And our soldiers are their bravest when a strong bridge is built to connect them with the border.
And what better time to have this conversation than just before the biggest festival of democracy – the Indian Elections
The elections also coincide with another mega event - the IPL. How do you see this clash play out from a top marketer and advertiser's perspective? What's your approach?
People have multiple interests and we understand that for our audience IPL and Election is not an either-or choice. We are looking at both opportunities to drive brand reach and salience efficiently.
