Beyond the Numbers: Interview with OgilvyOne’s Deepak Gopalakrishnan

Update, June 2015: Since this interview was published, Deepak has moved to Indigo Consulting as the Senior Planning Director.

In this week’s Beyond the Numbers interview series, we spoke to Deepak Gopalakrishnan, the Planning Director at OgilvyOne Worldwide and a cartoonist in his spare time.  Follow him on Twitter for more insights on digital planning for brands.

Get an inside look at how OgilvyOne approaches social media with the message dictating the medium and what it’s currently experimenting with.

This interview is part of an ongoing series, see other great interviews with industry experts in our Interview archive here

How does your agency approach social media marketing on behalf of clients, and how does it fit into the larger digital marketing picture?

Social media is pretty important for a lot of our clients who’re looking to interact with their consumers online. For us at OgilvyOne Worldwide, we try to develop our social media strategies depending on client business objectives.  Social media works best if it’s integrated with other aspects of digital. I personally am not a fan of medium dictating the message – it should be the other way around. 

How have you seen social media greatly impact the business of your clients?

Social media, at the end of the day, works best for reach and awareness, imagery building and customer complaint response. Recently, with Facebook’s shift towards becoming a reach medium, we’re experimenting with a few ad formats to see if we can combine Facebook’s terrific targeting capability to divert more traffic towards websites – hence becoming more ‘performance’ oriented in nature. 

When is social media data most critical to your efforts: During the planning process; while you’re executing a campaign, so you can change course or allocate more resources; or afterwards, to measure your success?

I would say during the first and last things mentioned. Social media data often helps us when we’re starting off – either for a pitch, or for a direction, etc. Once we get into execution, yes, there’s a certain amount of data that helps us – such as monthly reporting. 

What’s more valuable, competitive intelligence on brands within your client’s industry, or being able to look at the efforts from brands in other verticals?

I’d have to say a mix of both! While it’s extremely important to see what other brands within the same industry are doing, it also helps to keep an eye out for other categories – sometimes totally unrelated. You never know what you might learn – a new platform, a new way of looking at a platform, a new concept, or just the way social media marketing is heading! For instance, a lot of Coke’s ‘feel good’ videos can extend to many categories, not just soft drinks!

Thanks, Deepak for your thoughts!

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