Midweek slices: India's BoAt cracks top 5 globally <> Big brands stopped spending on digital ads. Nothing happened. Why? <> Indian stars to light up the ad world <> And other stories
Lots of news, so thought I would slip in a bonus edition.
Chances are that you have been served an ad of a boAt wearable. Chances are you have been served many. In quite a remarkable achievement, boAt tied Fitbit in third quarter shipments and market share to crack the top 5 globally amid giants including Apple, Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi. From the ZDNet article:
Overall, the global wearables market jumped 35.1% from a year ago to 125 million units. Seasonality, product launches and the opening of global economies following COVID-19 restrictions.
According to IDC, BoAt has surged from less than 1% market share a year ago to 2.6% in the third quarter. BoAt's third quarter shipments and market share tied Fitbit for No. 5.
Promptly, private equity firm Warburg Pincus has invested $100 million in the four-year old company valuing it at thrice that amount. This Mint piece tells you more.
Big brands turned off million of dollars of digital advertising and saw no change. Small businesses tuned (lowered) their spending and saw no change. I used to co-author another newsletter called The Paper, which we shut down end of Aug 2020. You can read why we did that here. We had started a Facebook (FB) page for The Paper, where we dutifully posted all our articles. Then when nothing happened (views or likes), one started spending approximately INR 1000 (about US $15) a week on FB ads. I come from a school of YoDa (your own data), which means doing small but rapid experiments with clear targets and making further decisions with the data you collect. I soon realised that I was wasting our money. Massive clicks would be reported but nothing would reflect on the website (Substack, the platform we used for our newsletter automatically converts each email post into a website post). The fun part of the story is that I last posted on the FB page on Aug 15th. Even till date we are getting a steady stream of ‘likes’ on The Paper page daily, sometimes more than what we got when we were posting articles everyday!
If you are spending your own money, or you are responsible for a brand budget or you are spending your client’s hard earned cash, read this Forbes article carefully. And after you are done with that read this 2013 (yes) HBR article about how eBay proved that paid search ads don’t work.
Everyday we read and hear about many economic indicators of the health of the Indian economy. It can get confusing at times. Power consumption went down, car sales boomed, rural demand is slowing, FMCGs are killing it, Mumbai had more home registrations than ever before..you get the drift.
So, when I read this article I started feeling a bit more reassured about the economy.
Why am I reassured you ask? We all know that when bad times hit, CFOs first port of call is advertising cost. It’s also the last to get a leg up when the gloom starts lifting. So, when I see brands signing up multi-crore brand ambassadors I am thinking that the marketing honchos are not doing that to have a cup of tea with them. CEAT has signed Aamir Khan who, even at a discount, would cost close to INR 10 Cr (about USD 1.4 million) for a year. So, one would expect to spend a few multiples of that on ads with Mr Khan to get a decent ROI on that investment. CEAT is a very well run company, so one can safely conclude that the top management is feeling pretty bullish of the near term future. Now, when one looks at the spate of deals and if one can rely on the wisdom of crowds, looks like the economy is taking on a rosier tint.
Just a word of caution though. The Dhathri Ayurveda ad case may have escaped your attention. The ad claimed that company's hair cream helped grow new hair which is found to be misleading. The consumer disputes redressal commission fined Dhathri and actor Anoop Menon, for false claims. Read here.
I guess CEAT needs to make sure Mr Khan has a few of his cars re-tyred. If that’s a term.
In a real surprise, Haven, the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture to disrupt health care, is disbanding after 3 years. The announcement in January 2018 had sent shivers down the spines of other healthcare companies and every expert predicting the combination to upend healthcare. More on the story here on CNBC and here in the NYT.
And lastly, in quite a remarkable achievement an 18 year old Gen Z finds herself in the AdAge’s 40 under 40 list.
She runs Zfluence — the first and only digital solution that connects companies directly with leading members of Gen Z who love their products and want to promote them authentically to their friends on social media. Read all about here at the Patch.
Your bit on facebook advertising reminded me of a recent thread I can across on Uber getting scammed for over $100m in the name of performance advertising. Take a look https://mobile.twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1345774768746852353