Digital is the new frontier for the modern advertising age. Agencies that cut their teeth with TV advertising rapidly created digital divisions over the past decade. As digital grows up, marketing budgets as well as the creativity displayed on the digital side have gone up exponentially as well.
To recognise the impact and innovation playing out the in digital marketing space, Social Samosa, a leading industry publication, founded the SAMMIE Awards, focused on awarding the best in social media for the year. Over 230 nominations streamed in from brands and agencies from across India, spread across 19 industry sectors and 14 special categories. The winners were a mix of digital first brands like Flipkart sharing space with legacy brands like Good Knight that have quickly adapted to the digital age.
In their deliberations, the jury paid special attention to nominations that were able to showcase a strong bottom line impact and ROI. As digital budgets increase, the focus on measurable digital ROI will continue to increase correspondingly. The Awards function saw sessions by Virgina Sharma, Director of Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn India, as well as Bhaskar Ramesh, head of YouTube and brand advertising for Google India.
Virgina Sharma’s LinkedIn focused session spoke about the importance of thought leadership content, and how B2B industry need to focus on niches they can and dominate the conversation for. The coming years are likely to see B2B brands diversifying their focus from just a sales-force oriented B2B sales strategy to one that also focuses on brand marketing via content that adds value.
Bhaskar Ramesh from YouTube spoke about the increasing ROI being seen on video ads on YouTube. He noted an interesting trend wherein brands are eschewing a TV launch to instead launch directly on YouTube, most notably with Garnier’s new product, the Garnier Skin Naturals Micellar Cleaning Water product that prominently featured Alia Bhatt.
The awards saw a group of younger brands get recognised as well, including Epigamia, Filter Copy, Timeliners, GIRLIYAPA, Raw Pressery and The Man Company. It was also interesting to see foreign brands making an inroads into the Indian market via smart social media campaigns. This included brands such as NBA India, Burger King, Maybelline New York and Skechers.
In the closely watched movie category, ‘Padmaavat’ and ‘Sachin, a Billion Dreams’ walked away with awards. In terms of legacy sectors, the participation of the BFSI sector in the digital space has been interesting to observe. Apart from embracing conversion focused measures and going all-in on the SEO front, the BFSI space has also seen adoption of content marketing, influencer marketing and other innovations in the social media space. The Edelweiss Group, Yes Bank and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance were some of the prominent winners here.
Overall, the second edition of the SAMMIE Awards are a sign that the industry as a whole is maturing in India. Key members of the industry including Social Samosa are helping to create an ecosystem where members can network and share ideas to help push digital marketing forward in a company’s overall strategic agenda.
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