An Insight on Branding, Advertising & Experiential Marketing by Mr. Ashish Bhardwaj, Business Head, Lowe Lintas Group

The Event Management and PR students of INLEAD recently got an insight into the world of Branding, Advertising & Experiential Marketing by an industry expert session undertaken by Mr. Ashish Bhardwaj, Business Head, Lowe Lintas Group.

The session began with a case study wherein the students were expected to identify the marketing problems and then suggest brand building tactics and plans. This short exercise worked like an ice breaker between the speaker and the students. Mr. Ashish Bhardwaj then took the students through strategies used in Advertising, Media, Brand Activation. He also talked in detail about the various types of media management techniques like ATL, BTL & TTL as well as also introduced a new concept of Experiential Selling.

Mr. Ashish gave the students a first-hand experience of coming up with a solution to branding scenario through a case study. This was followed by a detailed look into strategies followed by organisations like:

Advertising: is a communication accustomed to promote or sell a product or service, sometimes a business's product or service. In Latin, ad vertere suggests that "to flip towards".

Media: is the collective communication measure to store and deliver data or information.

Activation: promoting activation is the execution of all methods be it Above-the-line, Below-the-line or Through-the-line. The activation part is followed by customer feedback which is then evaluated.

Experiential selling: Engagement marketing, typically known as "experiential selling," "event selling," "on-ground selling," "live selling," or "participation selling," its a selling strategy that directly engages shoppers and encourages shoppers to participate in the evolution of a complete product or service.

Merchandising: At the retail in-store level, merchandising refers to the range of products out there for purchasing and therefore the display of these products in ways that stimulate interest and entices customers to shop.

The session culminated with a very interactive Q&A round. “I had a very participative audience, they were able to answer many questions and even had a few very interesting queries,” said  Mr. Ashish Bhardwaj.