Flipkart introduces memes in TV ads to promote Big Billion Days

Looking at the way memes are becoming popular on social media, Flipkart has introduced the format in its television ads to promote its Big Billion Days (BBD) sale. Although memes are being used purely in the form of television commercials using celebrities, the format making its ways to TV is expected to open up opportunities for content marketers.

Calling meme on TV as disruption in the marketing of this year’s BBD, Kunal Dubey, Director Brand Marketing Communications and Head Media Planning, Flipkart, said, “We have brought memes on TV and that is something internet audience consumes a lot. Meme is very disruptive when we see it in TV content. The celebs are interacting with the peg and reacting to what is written there.”

“An event as popular as this, with faces as popular as the ones we have, needs a take from Flipkart to bring them all together. That is where internet memes come in, the ultimate validator to all things mass India has found love and excitement about. For a technology brand like ours with an audience that depends on mobile phones, we found this to be the perfect formula,” said Dubey.

Talking about the role of content in marketing of Flipkart, Dubey said, “There are two ways of content — direct content or lean forward content and lean back content. Lean forward is something which is not pure advertising and the consumer wants to consume it. If you look at BBD content that we have created this year, 70-80% content is lean forward.”

With the attention span coming down heavily, which is now 6 seconds this year as against 8 seconds last year, and ways of content consumption changing, it has become difficult for brands to keep the consumers engaged with the brand’s content.

“People are smarter to understand that the content put up by a brand is an ad. It is very difficult to tell people that it is content and not an ad. The way we do is that we pick up the pop culture and the trends in the market and try and present advertising and content in a manner that people would consume,” said Dubey.

Flipkart has intensified its focus on digital in last 18 months and the brand’s spend on the medium has touched 55% now. Explaining the rationale behind increasing digital spend, Dubey said, “The ratio of traditional vs digital spends is 80:20 across the industry. At Flipkart, normally the ratio is around 60:40 or at best 50:50. Because of the scale that we have right now, the number of customers and signals we have, we are sitting at such a huge data. With this data, we have the opportunity to target every consumer separately on digital. If you also look at the penetration of TV vs mobile with internet, mobile wins hands down. If that is the reality, and as a marketer if I’m not reacting to this fact then I’m not doing something right.”

The Videos: