Snapdeal’s Snap Point

Silver Lining: A lot of digital marketing and branded content production companies got their businesses up and rolling because of Snapdeal’s notorious love for spending on its marketing and branding.
Anyway, jokes aside, even while it was slowly laying off employees and struggling to survive, Snapdeal’s last big marketing budget was INR 200 crore for 60 days.
I run a creative marketing agency and do branded content, product placements and relatable digital campaigns et al to achieve clients’ marketing goals. But at the same time, as a consultant, I would never advise a company on ventilator to undertake rebranding exercises.
There’s a difference in spending on sponsoring entertaining digital content and spending on PPC and SEM. While the former translates to branding, the latter translates to direct sales. No points to guess what Snapdeal needed when.
Social media strategies change not just for every client but also changes at every stage that the client’s organization is in.
While losses because of adspend may look justified in case of other e-commerce companies like Amazon or even Flipkart, the marketing spend was visibly superfluous and ill-timed for Snapdeal.
