Guest Lecture by Mr. Gaurav Sharma

What is digital marketing? Is it the next big thing? How does it help businesses to grow? To answer all these questions, SIMSREE’s Corporate Relations Committee organized a guest lecture by Mr. Gaurav Sharma on Digital Marketing. 

Mr. Gaurav Sharma is the General Manager (Digital & Mobility) at Omnicom Media Group. He considers himself as a Solutions Specialist and a Sales Professional with an experience to sell digital solutions to clients. He builds a connect with clients, understands their business issues and works on result oriented solutions

He commenced the session with a short video clip on motivation to inspire the students to stretch themselves and stay ahead in today’s intensively competitive marketing industry. He then shared his varied experiences as a marketing and sales professional and emphasized upon the challenges that an marketing job needs to face. One of the major challenges in this job is achieving the given targets on time.

Mr. Sharma then elaborated on the concepts of video marketing, substantiating each concept with a corporate example. Moreover, he also explained how an advertisement should be relevant and attractive to the consumers. According to him, viral marketing through the social media could be a cheap and effective means of communication for the same. He stressed that businesses should constantly revamp themselves to sustain and survive in this ever changing market by citing an example of how a leading bank changed its advertisement from serious commercials to fun filled animated viral online videos to connect with a wider audience.

Having said that, he also explained how the advertising industry is technologically budding every day with several advertisers now using mobile apps to engage with their customers. Mr. Sharma gave an example of a new trend in the market wherein marketers are making the use of mobile apps coupled with the Bluetooth or Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to create interactive multi-player games for children. 

“The internet of things” was another topic which he spoke about. He explained how businesses are trying to connect various devices such as a washing machine, a refrigerator, or even a smoke detector, to the internet and let consumers control them from any location.

Towards the end he left the audience with a hard hitting example of social advertising. The “Kankhajura Tesan”, winner of 3 Lions Gold awards at Cannes 2014, is an initiative aimed at entertaining media-dark villagers through mobile phones and also creating brand awareness amongst them, making the rural market ready for urban brands.

Mr. Sharma's enriching interaction with the batch resulted in an enthusiastic response from the audience which was evident in the fruitful question answer round towards the end of the session.