A streaming radio station created specifically to cater to a single brand’s interest is a unique proposition. We take a look at ‘Road Tripping’, set up by Saavn for Maruti Suzuki, and how it has fared in the six months since its launch
BY NEETA NAIR
In India, we may not have reached the stage where we can take good Internet connectivity for granted, but that has not stopped the visible growth of music streaming apps like Saavn, Gaana.com, Wynk Music and Hungama. The digital music market is expected to grow from Rs 10.8 billion in 2015 to Rs 20.6 billion by 2020, according to a 2016 report by KPMG and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Thus, it comes as no surprise that brands are increasingly viewing these music streaming apps as effective platforms to advertise. But while we have seen traditional ads by several brands finding a place on such apps, creating a streaming radio station specifically to cater to a single brand’s interest is something unique in the business and the experiment seems to have worked well for Maruti Suzuki in the past five months.
THE JUGALBANDI
India’s biggest car-maker pulled off an interesting sort of jugalbandi by launching India’s first brand-dedicated streaming radio station on Saavn called ‘Road Tripping’ which has already garnered a Click-through-rate (CTR) of 7%. The radio station provides Maruti Suzuki an opportunity to tap active, young, upwardly mobile Indian listeners on Saavn by running branded audio ads and banners on the station 24 hours a day in between popular hits from Bollywood and Indie music. Elaborating on how Saavn helps to take the car-maker’s brand proposition to the target audience, Sanjeev Handa, VP, Marketing, Maruti Suzuki says, “Today’s youth connects with music the best. And we had two brands -- Alto and Swift -- which are youthoriented. Music is consumed to a large extent on mobiles and Saavn was one of the best properties we could think of associating with. More than 26 million people have downloaded this app and are engaging with the medium at least 45 minutes in a day. Out of that, we have managed to get a whopping 61 million impressions in the last quarter of our association. What’s more important is that out of the 61 million impressions, 25% form our core TG, 20% of which are active users of this application. So, in terms of impressions and engagements, we are very happy with the results achieved.”
‘ROAD TRIPPING’
About 28% of Saavn’s listeners are identified as young professionals, between the age group of 21-25, residing in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. A further 19% of them are 26-30 years old, and spend much of their week commuting. Thus the name of Maruti’s radio station ‘Road Tripping’ strikes the right chord with the listeners, who are generally tuned in while on the move. Razorfish is the digital agency which is spearheading this campaign by Maruti Suzuki. Says Vinodh Bhat, Co-founder, Saavn, “This radio station has been custommade after understanding the behaviour of Maruti Suzuki’s target audience. We gathered all that data, fed it to our algorithm and now there is a dynamic radio station that plays content completely in sync with the interest of their target buyers. In fact, after this tie-up, we have found that lots of other brands are interested in similar concepts on Saavn.” The ads on such a platform can take various formats like banner ads, voice and branded content. Additionally, the channel can drive audience engagement, customer loyalty as well as serve as a foundation to build a community through promotional offers, events, free music downloads, etc. But at the moment, there are only banner and audio ads on the forum. While a promotional ad played on the various channels on Saavn helps to drive listeners to the Maruti Suzuki radio station, once on it, music lovers can hear a Maruti Suzuki jingle after 3-4 songs. In stage two, Razorfish hopes to introduce branded content on the station. Says Piyush Aggarwal, Director – Digital Media, Razorfish, “’Road Tripping’ is meant to promote two brands by Maruti Suzuki -Alto and Swift - which have been playing in the youth space for a long time. We picked up certain music genres specific to the Alto and Swift audience. Once the curation of content was done, the challenge was to intersperse it with the brand message. We didn’t introduce a brand logo on the ‘Road Tripping’ channel on Saavn app on purpose. We didn’t want to kill the property, because an audience comes to the platform for the consumption of music and not to engage with a brand, to begin with. The fact that it is a radio station sponsored by Maruti Suzuki is seeded in a very subtle way on Saavn, without affecting the overall audience experience.”
THE AD EFFECT
There are different ways of measuring the consumer response on this platform, one of which is the click-through-rate, which basically means the number of listeners who clicked on a particular ad that appeared while they were listening to the radio station, that took them to the product page. “The click-through-rate in this case is way above the industry average for inapp advertising, which is between 3-4%. At least 25% of Maruti’s target listeners on Saavn have tuned in to ‘Road Tripping’,” Aggarwal adds. Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media Group, India & South Asia, says, “The ‘Road Tripping’ station is a great marketing initiative and is certainly inspired by HUL’s Kan Khajura Tesan from a broader view. The effectiveness depends on the objective – buzz, sales, branding or engagement. Consumption will depend on content. While the TG is defined and largely young with varied interests, a range of music will be needed to cater to them. This definitely has the capability to cultivate a loyal community with a universal language – music.”
At a time when the Indian music industry is slowly evolving towards musicon- demand, music providers like Saavn are using a mix of two business models to monetize this growing popularity— ad supported content delivery and subscription for services. According to Maruti Suzuki, one of the reasons for picking Saavn is that the user ratio on the platform stands at 95% free engagements to only 5% paid ones. So, most of the people who have downloaded the app use the free medium, thereby enabling brands like Maruti Suzuki to have access to a wider listener base.
A report by Deloitte estimated the total number of online music users in India to be around 27 million in March 2015. It also predicts that by March 2020 this number will increase to 273 million. In such a scenario, using a medium like Saavn, which provides ease of consumption to listeners at any time, clearly can help brands reap multiple benefits, even as the tried and tested free radio continues to exist in parallel.
@ FEEDBACK
neeta.nair@exchange4media.com
