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The fight for eyeballs among the e-commerce players is going to get fiercer this festive season as the e-commerce giant Amazon has decided to loosen its purse and splurge up to Rs 250 crore on marketing and promotions.
This is within a month after arch-rival Snapdeal launched its Rs 200 crore blitzkrieg for rebranding.
Amazon, multiple executives of media agencies said, is going to go all out this festive season. "All the three major players - Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal - had reduced their media spends in the first half of this year. But since last month, they are back with a vengeance and are fighting for more and more media space with a sense of one-upmanship," a top executive of a media buying agency told ET.
"Amazon seems to be spending top dollars to reinvent itself in a far more disruptive manner. Looking at its media plan, I would peg spends between Rs 230-250 crore," he added.
In order to reach out to the masses, Amazon India has partnered with Viacom18 to create a televised music festival for the very first time. The music festival has been envisioned as a platform to unveil Amazon Great Indian Festival sale.
The music festival stage will host the likes of Badshah, Vishal & Shekhar, Sunidhi Chauhan, Papon and Shaan and will be aired across Viacom18 channels - Colors, MTV, MTV Beats, Rishtey, Colors Marathi and Colors Gujarati on September 30, culminating in the start of the sale.
In fact, Amazon's latest campaign - 'Tyohaar Bade Diwala', prior to its Amazon Great Indian Festival sale - captures the flavour of festival season (Navratri, Dussehra, Diwali), and spreads message that there is a certain magic in the air that knowingly or unknowingly makes everyone feel a little more magnanimous than usual.
While not disclosing the media spends, Amit Agarwal, VP and Country Head, Amazon India said, "This year we recognise and celebrate the big heartedness that underlies festivities and have themed the Great Indian Festival as Tyohar Bade Dilwala."
"We are delighted to celebrate this with our customers as much as with the entire ecosystem of our sellers, vendors and partners to bring festive cheer all over the country. These marathon 120 hours of the event mark our continuing commitment to work closely with our partners and together bring the biggest sale yet for our customers, with the best ever shopping experience powered by Prime," he added.
This is not for the first time that ecommerce players are in festive mood themselves. In 2014, between September-December, Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, along with other startups, had spent almost Rs 1300 crore, which went up to Rs 2,000 crore in 2015 with superstars like Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan fronting the brands.
This year, however, big brands have so far taken non-celebrity route to spread their message and pull more consumers from traditional stores to online marketplaces during the all-important festival season.
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