DESTINATION: MADISON ONE
ON THE GENESIS OF DATASK
At a time when consumer touch-points are increasing and with an abundance of data available to marketers and media agencies, Madison’s Datask will allow companies to harness data and then analyse it to target better. Sakhuja explains, “At one point of time, the question we asked ourselves was – do we have the power to market to a billion, one at a time? In the context of a consumer’s journey, harnessing data becomes very important, but today there is so much data floating around. How do you then harness, make some sense out of it and use it to target better?” The platform will take first party, second party and third party data together to create a rich way of targeting. Sakhuja adds that while the platform will retain the anonymity of all individuals, it puts Madison in a position to be able to profile consumers on the basis of its client requirements. “With data, we can find lead indicators, build profiles and in general make marketing work that much harder,” Sakhuja remarks.
Vishal Chinchankar, Chief Digital Officer, Madison Media, talks about the genesis of the platform and adds that its core objectives are to empower the agency and its clientele. “It all started when Vikram stood up around six months ago, and said, ‘Look, we are running a media business, and we need to know who the consumers are, what they are watching and where they are shopping.’ At Madison, we realize that at the cost of media money being spent on behalf of our clients, there is a whole lot of learning that is actually going back to the Googles of the world, thereby making them more powerful. That’s when we thought of building our own platform, which gives us a lot more insights about who the consumer is for various brands,” Chinchankar recalls. He adds that with Datask, there will be greater learning and insights available for the agency and its clients.
TOWARDS RAMPED-UP DIGITAL PROWESS
Madison Media Digital now handles 36 clients, out of which 17 are stand-alone clients, which means they do not use Madison Media traditional services, but use only Madison’s Digital services. Madison Media Digital has also emerged strongly in the content area. It recently arranged a full-day programme – Elevention - for its content partners and clients where 11 content partners who were given a one-paragraph brief met with 11 brands face-to-face and offered them customized solutions.
Now, Datask will enable a more focused and integrated approach to marketing by giving brands data-driven insights about their target consumers, enabling them to understand better just what they like to watch and read, where they like to shop and so on. “Datask improves our knowledge of the target audience, which helps us build a much smarter plan. That’s an integrated approach, which is not just limited to Digital but can also be scaled on Television and Print. This is a real edge that we can now bring to the table for our clients. An advertiser would see real value in insights like these,” Chinchankar states.
With Madison creating its own platform, it is no longer solely dependent on today’s Internet giants for data mining and insights. Sakhuja points out that an estimated 44% of Indians are on Digital in some way or the other, thereby making the availability of data and data-driven insights even more critical and insightful to a media planner. “As a media agency, I can now collect data of all these consumers and share that with my client and then marry it with some of the brand’s data,” notes Sakhuja. Madison’s digital push gathered steam two years ago when it acquired digital agency HiveMinds to strengthen its capabilities in performance, social and e-commerce. HiveMinds today handles 52 clients across Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, managing brands like Marico, Domino’s, Big Basket, and Mobikwik. Says Jyothirmayee JT, Founder & CEO, Hiveminds, “Madison now enables access to many best practices and tools like Datask. We are excited about the new tool and the immense possibilities it brings to create value for our clients.”
THE GOAL: MADISON ONE
Madison has already done a pilot of Datask with a leading FMCG food advertiser. In a period of less than a week, the tool helped collect a base of over 4 million unique user profiles. An interesting insight that the tool threw up was that the household income of 70% of the audience interacting with the branded content was over Rs 50,000 per month. Also, they were interested in ready-to-eat cereals (a product that is not present in the brand’s portfolio at the moment). These insights gave a directional input to the brand in not only defining their media deployment, but also in developing their brand portfolio and pricing strategy over a longer period of time. As far as driving acceleration in learning and capability building is concerned, Chinchankar elaborates, “Madison Media Digital has accelerated in three key areas- Integrated Media Solutions, Data and our Creative Solutions. We are working towards building hybrid planners, who plan across mediums keeping Digital at the centre. We have also consciously invested in hiring talent with ad-tech background, acting as data scientists who can analyse large data sets that help in ongoing media optimization for brands. We have also been investing in strengthening our creative arm which has led to recognition.” With the growing popularity of OTT channels and in the absence of any single panel measuring both TV and Digital, Madison has also brought in integrated planning through a single currency, combining both the mediums. Madison’s proprietary tools like M:Spectra, Digi Planner and F-Maximizer are the key pillars of deployment for a new integrated planning approach that Madison calls TV PLUS.
The agency is moving towards an elaborate integration system, which will bring together all its disciplines. “Madison has always been at the forefront in giving our clients cutting edge adtech/mar-tech solutions. In this era of digital transformation, we have already implemented solutions in the areas of Digital OOH, Connected TVs, Voice and Online/Offline attribution. Now, we are working on an elaborate system called Madison ONE where we are integrating Digital into all Madison World practices of Activation, OOH, Rural and PR. We would like to believe that Madison is a present perfect and future-ready digital marketing agency,” Chinchankar says.
“Being recognized for our work only validates that we’re onto something. In ‘17, we won the Grand Prix at Emvies for being the first to run Hindi Search Ads for Asian Paints. We’ve created phygital experiences for Godrej Properties and created AR-powered experiences for consumers across campaigns like #DareToStare for MTV that have gone on to win awards across categories. Winning Mobile Agency of the Year at e4m’s IDMA this year was a testimony to our growing expertise in mobile as a medium and technology as its enabler. Our aim is to offer clients an integrated approach by marrying data insights along with cutting edge solutions, which are then seamlessly stitched into an efficient media recommendation.”
VISHAL CHINCHANKAR
Chief Digital Officer, Madison Media Digital
“In the last 2-3 years Madison Media has been in Digital overdrive. We have developed cutting edge expertise in Video/Display Advertising, Performance, Search, Social, Content and now Data. We have been recognized by Google for building best reach on Digital platforms especially at higher frequencies, for pioneering rgional language search, using technology creatively to deliver award winning brand solutions and managing online sales for a number of our clients. We are now very excited about using Datask, our targeting and insight generation platform, to mine through data, find lead indicators and use them to target more effectively. I am extremely pleased that with all this momentum, our Digital business has grown fourfold in three years.”
VIKRAM SAKHUJA
Partner & Group CEO, Madison Media & OOH
Tags : Interview