Wasim Basir is Director, Integrated Marketing Communication for Coca Cola India. He joined the India Business Unit in mid-2010 and the Coca Cola system in China in September 2009 as the Marketing Activation Director, Coca Cola (China) Beverages Limited.

Wasim has an extensive experience of sixteen years in Advertising & Consumer Activation across leading firms and with the Coca Cola system. Prior to his current assignment, Wasim has been successful in variety of challenging assignments such as Group Executive VP for Re-diffusion Y&R in India, Managing Director for Red Lounge in China, Group Business Director for McCann Erickson in China and Group Brand Director for Leo Burnett in China.

In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Wasim talks about branding possibilities on the internet and the need to create interesting content to engage consumers.

How does the digital medium - both internet and mobile figure in Coca Cola’s plans to reach out to consumers?

The digital medium figures very aggressively in our plans. This is one of the foremost mediums that allows for a two way communication, all other mediums are only one way. This is a medium which helps us engage with the consumers, hear back from them and go back and forth with them. This is clearly what we need to do today and tomorrow. One way messaging era is over and most of the marketers are now moving to two way communication- talking to the consumers, listening to their feedback and engaging with them.

Do you think branding is possible on internet?

Absolutely! It is possible using connectivity to talk to your consumers, pushing your content to the consumers and engaging them with your ideas and stories. Look at the work we have done, starting with Coke Studio. 35 million views on Coke Studio, consumers go look for music in digital world.

Consumers are interested in expressing themselves. Sprite is a brand that exemplifies the ability to express yourself when you have clarity in your mind. Look at Sprite Teen Till I Die, 5 million views in almost 2 months. Its YouTube channel has 310 videos, 110 of them have been made by the consumers. So not only brands are making content, even consumers are making content.

Look at the work we are doing on Fanta for example. Fanta integrated graphic novel in creating engagement through Facebook and gamifying the experience of Fanta. Look at the work we are doing in terms of just tactical messaging with Coca Cola where we are trying to give people various expressions of Coca Cola whether it’s Republic Day, Independence Day or a festival or just Friendship’s Day and Mother’s Day and getting people to think about a brand and consume it in that way.

Look at the work that Thumbs Up is doing in trying to use its celebrity assests and pushing the content it creates.

There are huge possibilities and huge success stories that we have.

Coca-Cola’s ‘Open Happiness’ has received overwhelming happiness, can you share some of the most exciting online campaigns that the company has initiated so far?

If you look at the work we did last year with Small World Machine where we put a machine in Delhi, India and one in Lahore, Pakistan and people could interact through the machine. Once people on both the sides touched their hands on the screen and traced a sign, a Coke would drop on either sides and they could share it. That in itself was a big messaging for Coca Cola using this medium. 

When we launched ‘Crazy for Happiness’ campaign last year, we did what we called ‘random acts of kindness wall’ and a lot of people starting posting photos on that wall.

Coca Cola has a formidable presence on social media with over 78 million Facebook fans and Twitter fan following. How crucial is social media for the brand?

It’s very very crucial! In fact some of our research has told us that a person who has taken the pain to like us on Facebook is several times more likely to buy a product than a person who has not. Some research also suggested that the probability is up to 10 times. So it’s very crucial as we are trying to get more and more people to consume the portfolio of our products. It is impossible that they will like us unless we become a part of their lives.

In your category, visual brand building works the best. With new engagement forms such as videos coming up on internet, what are your thoughts on visual brand building exercises on internet in India?

We learnt extensively through Coke Studio and Sprite Teen Till I Die. The idea of a video is not to put just any video out there. If the video is good enough and it is the content I am interested in I am going to want to see that. Otherwise just a normal post is good enough. We must be not forget that the internet speeds in India are not that fast right now, so a post actually works better than asking somebody to click on a video and then wait for three minutes to get the message.

Having said that, there are people who actually go and consume a lot of videos. Through Facebook and YouTube analytics you can find out who those people are. If those are the kind of people you want to talk to then you can push your video content to them.

There is a lot of flexibility available. So I would not say one medium over the other or one form over the other, all forms exist, all forms are valid and all forms have consumers.    

What answers do you seek from your digital advertising agencies and digital media partners while promoting your brand on internet?

My only question to them is: Are you creating ideas that are interesting enough? If you are not interesting and share-worthy, the consumer is not going to bother with you. That’s the only thing I demand from them. How, what, why’s..all of those get taken care of, but if you are not interesting enough, I don’t need the idea. I do not login into my Facebook account to listen to a brand, I login to it to connect with my friends. If a brand can become a friend and actually add to the day and make my life interesting then I will share that brand’s message.

What innovations would you as a brand; want from online publishers in the country?

More flexibility is what I want. A little bit more data mining and more analytics. Currently, the analytics that are available are at a very surface level. We must appreciate the medium we are in. Within the permissible limits and without impinging on the privacy laws, we must get a little bit more granularity about who are the people consuming our content, who should we be talking to and what’s the best way to reach them because what we also don’t want is to disturb people when they don’t want to be disturbed. Getting a bit more knowledge about your end target will be good. This is not a spray and pray medium, so fine targeting will be my biggest demand from them.

People are speaking about mobile being a great medium for brand communication, but still, very less amounts are spent on the particular medium. What is your take on this?

I do not know if anybody has ever cracked the model of what to do with mobile. We need to ask ourselves what are the options available on mobile. Close group SMS, WAP ad push etc., that’s where the money goes and all of us know that we are shooting a little in the dark right now. How many people see those? How many people click through those? Yes they get served because the first screen that opens up is WAP screen of the mobile service provider. An ad served there is as effective as me getting an SMS. But do I even know how to read an SMS? We all know the literacy rates in our country. We have to be respectful of the options available before we start talking about such little money spent on this.

But trust me I don’t think there is any marketer out there who is not thinking about mobile. Maybe there is not going to be one solution on mobile and there will be multiple solutions. Those solutions will probably be customised to fit the marketing needs.  Money will come in, it may not show in numbers as of 2013 exit numbers but trust me a lot of money will come in.

How do you see more traditional advertisers like you embracing the digital medium now?

I have given you examples. If you go and look at them I think you will certify that we have embraced the medium already. But the challenge to us will continue to be how we can be more interesting and more share-worthy with every passing day and year.

How do you see Coke’s digital spends moving this year - in terms of growth and focus?

Positively. Our spends are going to increase.

How do you see your marketing objectives aligning with what the online medium offers from two years down the line?

We are evolving, we are in partnership, in conversation and in collaboration with all the major publishers, content producers and with the media agencies. I think we are in a good space. We are in tune with what’s coming our way in the next 12-18 months and we will be evolving accordingly.