Brands ‘cautiously optimistic’ over sales prospect in coming festival months

A digital panel discussion, held on the topic ‘How to make the most of the festive season’ and moderated by Vikram Sakhuja, Group CEO, Madison Media & OOH has concluded with the good news for the advertising industry which incurred huge revenue loss due to the impact of Covid19.

The panel features key industry people such as Amit Syngle, CEO, Asian Paints, Kunal Bahl, Co-founder & CEO, Snapdeal, Rohit Gupta, President, Sony Pictures Network India, Shailesh Gupta, Director, Jagran Prakashan Ltd, and Avinash Pandey, CEO of ABP Network. All the panelists unanimously expressed positive sentiments from both sides; demand and supply with regards to business revival from the start of festival season.

Kunal shared that the pandemic has impacted his company’s retail e-commerce severely, especially from late March to May which continues to hamper with intermittent lockdowns imposed in some parts of the country. However, things are picking up.

“There should be improvement in sales during the festive season as many of their brands and sellers are waiting for festive season to make up their losses, Hence, we are ‘cautiously optimistic’ over sales prospect in coming months,” said Kunal Bahl.

Another member of panel Amit said that there is always a need to act and adapt to the situation than just waiting for the things to become normal. “The consumers are changing dynamically. And it takes a lot to regain the market share if once lost.  Hence, brands which are attempting to pre-empt and adjust to the environment and the situation, always gains,” explained Amit.

Also, he shared that his brand, Asian Paint, assured the target audience through TVC that painting is safe for home. Amit added, “We concentrated on Tier III & Tier IV markets which are less affected by the pandemic as compared to metro cities. It got us double digital growth from these markets.”

Highlighting the significance of mass medium, Kunal has explained that during lockdown, there has been a tectonic shift taken place in terms of consumer’s time spent online and the audience numbers using digital media. However, there will be a need for advertising wherein brands will look for return on investment (ROI) each medium. Therefore, ‘call to action’ will be included in the ads to gauge its performance.

Adding to this, Rohit pointed out that even the ROI-driven brands explore means to create an impact of their advertisement. Hence, it becomes important for the vendors to give some out of the box solutions to their clients. Also, this will strengthen the relation between a client and a vendor.

Avinash believes that weddings were happening even during lockdown which led to some amount of purchasing in terms of houses, clothes and other products. Likewise, this year, festivals will be celebrated in a simple manner but they will help in fast recovery of the economy.