What this BrandMasters episode teaches about brand purpose

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to episode 14 of Brand Studio Live. I'm Rameet Tarora and I have a brand new set of Brand Masters with me in the newsroom today. Hosted jointly by HD Brand Studio and DMA Asia, Brand Studio Live brings together the country's top CXOs to talk about the hottest topics in marketing today. In the process, we not only end up learning from the best, but also being inspired by them. Without further delay then, let's get started with today's episode. The millennials are coming. Isn't that how the popular saying goes?

But in reality, millennials are not coming. They're already here. They're the largest demographic group in India and a 47% share in the working age population. Let's hear about it from stalwarts in the automotive industry sector that's especially feeling some of the impact of this influential generation. Millennials who were once considered the lost generation for the sector are now actually driving growth. And I didn't say that. Experience said it. So due credit there. But our first speaker, actually a very big day for her. MG Motor.

Bookings open for the Hector. Big launch. Possibly the biggest launch in a while in the sector. And millennials. Market share. Does the strategy work? What is the strategy? Pallavi Singh is head of marketing at MG Motor. She joined MG Motor after a very long and illustrious career including as head of marketing at Harley Davidson in India. You know, cut to chase. Is millennials going to drive growth? And if yes, what's the strategy? I think A, of course the topic is very interesting. But most importantly for us at MG, fondly known as Morris Garajan.

I would just touch on two, three aspects today from a strategy point of view. Today marketing has evolved and it's all about the three C's, which is conversation, content and commerce. Broadly because I truly feel that in today's day and age, how it has changed is to do with technology. And at MG, our purpose is to create exciting experiences every time. And we have different pillars, which is innovation, experiences, diversity, and most importantly is community. Today communities, so Gen Z and Gen Y are also communities which are driving conversations.

Content, of course, plays a very, very critical role when it comes to this segment. And how we are looking at it from a market share driving point of view is MG is a new brand. We are just entering into the market with a very interesting project and with a very interesting car, which is the Hector. And it's called the Internet Car. And when we say Internet Car, it's all about the experience. I think gone are the days when people only looked at anything, whether it's cars or any other stuff, from an external shell. It's what inside, what matters most.

It's what experience I'm getting by the end of the day when I sit in my car. Is my car interactive? Can my car understand my behavior? So I think it's what the people like today. Today you go into a restaurant. First thing you do is actually click a picture and put it on Instagram, whether it's Gen Y or Gen Z. It's about driving conversation. It's about engaging people who potentially would be your customers in the future. So with us, our strategy has been about three things. We think mobile and we think vertical. That's the way to go.

But being a new brand, of course, you have to do different things while entering into the market. The media mix has to be extremely thought through. But there is no one customer today. So we've looked at different personas. So there's no one persona of customer who will buy. So as marketers, and I think potentially somebody like me and my team, it's most important is to have the right set of people who understand how the world of marketing has changed. And marketing today is about intelligence.

It's not about making beautiful ads, potentially making, oh my God, that headline really cracks. Who cares? Nobody has the time. But how are you really making that content appealing? Does it really click and people say, oh my God, I remember that. So for us, of course, new brand coming into the market, our strategy was very, very simple. Do less, but do the best. The point is not to do so much and say that I'm present everywhere. Point is, how are you leading that conversation which is leading to commerce today? And that's what we did.

And we looked at different categories. And if you look at the strategy we've adopted, it's a lot to do with content. When we came into the market, we said, what will really work is to actually talk about the brand, which is the legacy brand. It's 94 years history. And I think that's what Indians like, come what may. We are moving at a pace where we want to have everything new, everything which drives conversation. But the moment you have something to do with, oh my God, it's 80 years old or 90 years old, there is that sense of romance.

You know, so there is a great blend in our country today, which is happening is modern plus legacy. How do you imbibe modern plus legacy together to drive conversations? Having the right set of people who understand what's coming future forward 10 years down the line is very important. Then to think, oh my God, I did a great ad and it was a great post. It got 100 shares or 200 shares and it had a lot of impressions, which millennials really like. And I think that's important, but that's not the metric a marketer needs to drive today.

We need to really think of how is that one person probably going to be influencing a thousand more people. So that I'm able to actually do commerce through conversation, not just to content and communicate. I think that's the strategy we've largely looked at from an MG perspective. What's the one thing that you feel this generation will sort of put at priority for purchase? Experience. I think we all say that, we all understand it. And I think that's the best word every marketer uses, experience.

But I think it's very important to understand experience at what level. Experience could potentially be also ensuring that when the customer is asked, at 11 o'clock I'm coming for a test drive, 11 means 11. We tend to think of experience at a larger level, but we forget the basics. I think it's so important to get the basics right, is what can delight a customer. Everybody is busy, and especially buying a car or anything which is very experiential and high value, is very emotional. And second is data. Data drives everything today.

And for us, we looked at Adobe as an experience cloud. And today, because we are new, we don't have legacy systems, we don't have processes. I think sometimes we become victim of processes. And that's very important, that how are you building the foundation. So if the foundation is absolutely great, and systems talk to each other, and human interference is less, is when you can really give a wow experience. Not just marketing, everybody in the ecosystem needs to understand that customer is king.

One customer can change the destiny of the organization today. And I guess, yeah, that's important. We can take one question from the group. Is there a question? I just wanted to understand from you, what's the long-term vision for the brand, and India being so competitive with the market, and knowing the numbers that has happened in the last few months, how do you want to take it on? Considering what's happening in the market is so volatile, I think it's very challenging for us, yet exciting, but adventurous, if I can put that.

Of course, the brand and everybody in the ecosystem has to look at how are we going to evolve, how are we committed to the market from an experience point of view, and how are we going to get our ecosystem right, which is our dealer partners. I think dealer partners are your first customers. They have to really imbibe the brand more than the brand people themselves, because they are the real brand evangelist by the end of the day. So all of us have to be really up there to ensure that we are able to help our dealers,

and help the customer by the end of the day, but it is challenging. Thank you so much. Thank you. My next guest is Bishwajit Samal, head of marketing Volkswagen passenger cars. Bishwajit is a seasoned marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. He's worked in various industries, including media, advertising, and telecom. Welcome, Bishwajit. Thank you, Ramin. Bishwajit's relevance is something that all brands strive to achieve in today's digital age, in particular. Talk to us a little bit more from the perspective of a premium automaker.

How does a premium brand like yours remain relevant with millennials, yet aspirational? How does relevance become a strategy for market share with this community of internet millennials? Bishwajit Samal, Yes, as a premium brand, we are focusing on being relevant to the audience. The larger audience as such, millennials, of course, are a target group that we are addressing by creating the content that would be relevant for them and also the platforms on which they are consuming content. So as a brand, our focus has been to do this.

And while a larger target audience is the aspiring middle class, but it is important for us to look in the future and have the millennials with us as we progress and create more content for them. Wonderful. But tell me, what is this number one, number two, number three strategy on the internet for an automobile company? So first is to create content that engages with the audience. Obviously, reach and frequency is something we know. You have to reach out. You have to have the number of impressions. Those are basics.

But if I talk about the priorities while we are addressing the millennials through internet, I would say it is important to create the right content, which there's a debate going on right now whether snackable content is more consumable or it's a long format content. It is important to create both while snackable content is important, but long format content can also do the magic. And being present in the platforms that are being consumed by the millennials is also very important.

So be it OTD platform, like to give an example, all of us were used to Facebook and then came Instagram and we got hooked onto that. And that is how things progress. As a brand also, it's important for us that we plan for this. We stay ahead of the curve and we create this kind of content. Tell us how the relevance that you create on the internet actually then in the purchase cycle or the customer journey translates into experience or behavior at the dealer network.

So for an automobile brand, obviously, as Pallavi also mentioned, experience is a big topic. We want more number of people to experience our cars. Now how do you do that? There are many ways in which technology kind of helps you there. So you can give VR experiences to customers when they are coming for, say, a motor show or any kind of exhibition where the car is displayed. You can make them experience the car and then through VR they can actually feel how a test drive would be.

And then later it could be translated through a real test drive where a customer walks into a dealership or the dealer gets in touch with a customer and gives them the test drive. So that is one way of looking at it. The other thing is that through internet you can make people talk to the customers about what their experience has been with the car. So that also travels. And then you ensure that more number of people are seeing what the experience with the car is and they have their takes from it. At this point I am going to go to you, Rachid.

As an influencer, do you have any sort of observations, reactions or questions? Now the biggest difficult thing for a person today is, okay, I buy the car, I experience it. How is it when I live with it? So that is one area where not much has been done. Is there anything being done to answer such a thing? So Rachid, I think it's a fantastic question. What Rachid brought up is service which is one of the core aspects of our business, right? And increasingly I think all auto manufacturers are focusing on this. We are also doing that.

It is important for people to understand how they could have better experience with the car and then you could create content which could drive this on internet. Coming to a used car also, it's an important segment. It's a growing segment. Again, there you can tell people how the car is going to feel in a few years from now. With Volkswagen, I can take pride and say that our car still feels new even if you have bought it like 7 to 10 years back, it feels like new. That's the build quality. Any other questions?

So are there any metrics that you've already involved, you know, you've put in place to figure out which content is successful, how do you measure it and so on and so forth? So I'll give you an example. Again, very interesting question, relevant question for this discussion. We recently created a Passat film and I call it a film because it's not a TVC. That is how we approached it. We created a 1.20 second of Passat film which ran on the cinemas for three weeks before it could be seen anywhere else.

So when it comes to creating long format content, say views of course, how many people viewed it, initially during the first two weeks it was tracking at a VTR of 65%. Now that is something which is unheard of. If you create the right content and it engages with the audience, they're more than happy to watch it till the end. Because that is the behavior which the consumer is coming up with because they're used to seeing content on their mobile phones or internet. So VTR is one thing.

At the end we achieved 45% which is also huge for a 1.20 second of film. Apart from that, what are the influences on the brand metrics like a product metrics? Did it lead to more consideration? So we do have brand lift studies which help us in tracking this. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rameen. Pleasure having you. Thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity. My next guest is Naveen Khemka, CEO of Mediacom. Naveen has played a key role in successfully launching brands like McDonald's and Samsung. You know, Naveen, there are two Indias.

There's India and there's Bharat. Yeah, of course. And some people say they're in collision course. Some people say they're just in different stages of the same journey. But they're certainly at different places. Of course. Is this also true of millennials and in all your experience with brands and consumers and data, do you find that there are actually two different Indias that need to be tamed for market share? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I strongly believe in that. And there is definitely two distinct millennials or Gen Y as we call them.

The Gen Y in India actually consumes more and saves less, which is very good from a consumption economy point of view. The previous generation, all of us possibly here, possibly our savings rate are much higher than possibly the millennials in India today. So therefore, they are also really fueling growth in the economy in the country today. If you just look at the numbers, mind bogging numbers actually, India, we estimate that today there could be around 400 million plus population of this age group. Out of that, only 36% is actually urban.

So which means still about 64% of this audience is actually rural. And just to give you a sense on the numbers. So about 256 million people actually of this age group actually live in rural part of the country. 147 million live in urban. So therefore, the media strategy or the marketing strategy that you need to evolve for each of each of these sets within their subgroups is actually extremely different depending on the product group or the categories that you are looking at them. Does the cell phone unite India?

If you look at the media reach of this audience, media reach in urban India, I would say is predominantly led by television still, is about 90-95% television, followed closely by the mobile phone and then digital. Because India is a mobile phone first economy where people are getting into the digital through the mobile phone. However, in the rural India still, the mobile phone is still only about 40-45%. So which still means that if you have to reach out to the person in the rural part of the

country, you should look at television as a primary media, followed by print, followed by radio and then possibly followed by mobile phone. Again giving you a difference of strategies that one needs to employ in terms of looking at the millennial audience. The reason I asked about the mobile phone is because India is possibly a country where people, at least millennials, will not experience internet on a computer, they'll experience internet on a phone. And in that sense with data becoming cheaper, with it becoming more accessible, is the first

sign of India and Bharat coming together really the internet which is a source of information? I would tend to agree with that. If you look at the latest data from the App Store and if you look at the top 10 apps that are getting downloaded in the country especially from an Android point of view because that is where the 95% of the population is where the mobile phone is concerned. I would say the key apps that are getting downloaded today are TikTok, or ShareChat, or apps like WhatsApp, or apps like ShareIt.

So if you see these apps are not necessarily English, they are catering to the mass audiences, they are catering to regional audiences, they are catering to the younger audiences. So yes, they are adopting this technology very fast, they are adopting the mobile phones very fast, they are adopting the app culture also very fast. Also if you look at it from a news point of view, today Daily Hunt is also becoming the largest news aggregator where 90% of their viewership or readership actually coming from,

not from the urban towns, actually coming from 90% of the pin codes in the country. We will bring it back to cars and automobile. Is India and Bharat on collision course or is India and Bharat thinking differently about cars? Yeah, I would say they are thinking differently right now. Cars is still slightly more urban in India. In terms of the auto sector I would say it is still the two wheeler category which penetrates deep into the heartland of the country. Yes, Zinnia has a question.

Hi, so you said there are two kinds of millennials, urban millennials and rural millennials. So what is the kind of content that resonates better with rural millennials? Like is there a difference in the content strategy that brands should adopt when reaching out? Of course, I will go medium by medium. So if you look at video media, so I would say in rural or SEC CD in urban areas also, the lower SEC millennials, sorry NCCS millennials. I would still say they are consuming content on television, very limited access to the mobile

content and so on and so forth. However, the more evolved millennials are twice over consuming the ODT platforms or the video platforms from the Netflix or the Amazon Prime of the world. If you look at radio, slightly lower SEC or the rural population is still looking at radio as a means of entertainment, as a background medium, listening to music and so on and so forth. While the more evolved guy, the evolved person is actually streaming music now, is actually

listening to a lot of music apps that are available with them, is listening to music on the go and so on and so forth. If you look at newspapers for the time being, on one hand there is the news app population which is actually consuming a lot of news content online or through the app or on digital or on the web browsers. However, if you look at slightly more not so evolved person, he is still consuming through the physical form of the newspaper. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Fantastic. Lovely having you. Thank you.

My next guest is Sunil Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of Avis India. Sunil has over 25 years of work experience with leading MNCs and FFCG companies in India. Under his leadership, Avis became one of the top three operating lease companies in the country. Welcome Sunil. You know, millennials are actually the gatekeepers between their network and other millennials and brands and in many ways they are also the influencers and the generation that aspires to services like yours. How do you sort of address the gatekeeper?

How do you open the gates up to more millennials, more influence and more brand power? So essentially what happens is that how millennials are different is that for them, the social persona of the brand is far more important than the brand speak or brand claims because they have a very high suspicion of what manufacturers or marketers say about the brand, they depend a lot on what their network says. So actually, you said very correctly, the millennial is at the center of the brand and his network.

And so it's very important for brands to also then be in sync with what kind of content millennials consume. For example, there's a study which shows that more than 50% of them trust user content much more than what a brand says. The other issue is that the credibility of user generated content is far higher. They consume it more avidly. So I think that is something which is critical for any marketer. It's not just a matter of gaining market share. I think in the current age, if you're not digital, social or responsible, you might as well close down.

You have to have it's essential survival kit for brands. Is this whole new social world just a natural fit for the service that you provide? Yeah, actually, we are at a very critical juncture because what happens is that most of the millennials have aspirations like their parents. They all want a big house. They want a car. But I think there's a gap between aspiration and readiness. What you could call the access versus ownership. That paradigm is very important for the millennials. They want the good stuff, but they need to wait a bit more.

So till they wait, what do they do? They share. And which is why people don't realize it. But I think Avis is one of the oldest shared economy brands because the whole revenue stream, our whole profitability depends on how people use our services if they don't have their own or they find a service more convenient than using their own. So I think this shared economy is helping a lot of brands and it's also causing a lot of disruption to the whole automobile mobility space.

And one important thing we always keep in mind is that for people who are sharing, they want three things. They want immediacy, they want transparency and they want control. So if you can't get a gap within let's say half an hour of thinking of one, you lost it. So I think a lot of it is to do with immediacy, a lot of it is to do with transparency because millennials are naturally suspicious. They don't bow before a god of brand. They depend much more on the network.

So for example, recommendations, research on their own is far more important than getting a brand saying something to them. What's the correlation between or is there a correlation between automobile as a sector, what you do, which is this whole shared economy on cars and on travel. And between this new world of aggregator, cabs and all the other local transport. How does the dynamic work? See, essentially I think the horses for courses. So you don't consume mobility in only one manner.

For example, if you are let's say going on a leisure holiday with your family and you want a big car, you'll probably take a self-drive car. If you're let's say going on official work where compliance and reliability is important, then you would come to a service like ours. If you're getting a drop just to the airport, you could probably take an Uber or Ola. So I think there's a lot of consumption of mobility happening in diverse ways. So I think its market is huge and you have to only figure out how to keep pivoting so that

you're always relevant and engage with the customer. What's your number one market share strategy? I think number one market share strategy is essentially to say that if you, I would rather have spent money or focus on user generated content than on ads. Because I think the credibility of user generated ads is huge. For example, we had a very successful campaign. We ran a chief adventure officer campaign. We wanted people to exclusively become CAOs of Avis and actually put up content of their cellular experience in the world.

So we got a lot of people to take domestic holidays in our cars. They took a lot of trips abroad. So what happens is that if I keep talking about it as a brand, it has less traction than if a user is himself talking about it and showing the virtues of the experience and the values the brand brings. So I think user generated content is our biggest priority. Thank you so much. Rachid Hirani, my next guest is a founder of MotorOctane.com which is the largest Hindi auto YouTube channel and the fastest growing auto channel as well.

Everybody believes that content is the differentiating strategy and content is the way auto brands will get built. What is the strategy according to you to build better content and more relevance for all the auto representatives in the group today? I will start with a very simple joke. So content creation is like let's imagine DDLJ. when the movie was being made, imagine if it had a sponsor. Okay. So the sponsor would come and say, you know what, let's not keep the movie in Hindi because our audience is English.

that's like the movie success is straight away gone. The second joke that comes in, let's say there's that song called, if you think from a business angle, the big brands, they'll be like, this song doesn't fit in my, you know, my sort of audience. So technically what happens is when brands walk into content creation, most of the time they control it, manipulate it and that's not what the audience wants finally. So what I would like to say today is I'll try to highlight three points majorly. The first part is numbers where everyone is talking.

Digital is numbers. Millennials love digital and that's why they run behind numbers is what everyone thinks. But that's not completely true, at least in the auto genre, it's not very true. So let's take the example where, you know, the brands who've been talking about our ads have hit so many million views. We get releases on that on a daily basis. Now what it's been done is paid promotion. And the audience loves honesty. They love honesty. That's where they work on.

And talking of content creation, if most of the audience I've seen, the audience under 25, the 30, 35, that age group, they don't love advertisements. Like for example, coming back to the DDLJ topic, let's say if there was a Zara or a Vera Moda Shah Rukh Khan was wearing that jacket in the movie, for example, and then later they advertise it, okay, this was the jacket there. Then it adds value to a person. Okay, I would like to connect to that because he's already sold on that ad on the content. Let the content creator create its content.

And then you put in a brand. It should be so good that even if the brand is not involved, the content should be good. That should be a key for anything. And I believe brands getting into digital today, their focus is that let's hit numbers. There are many times you don't hit numbers. That is where you should be okay. You need to make your teams understand. You need to make your big bosses understand that it's an experiment phase where we have learned today something new and we'll go out and do something better next time.

So the idea is involvement, engagement with the audience every time you do something. Interesting. Say, Naveen, you've told us what metrics don't work. Tell us what metrics work. So it depends from brand to brand, segment to segment. I completely work on a feedback segment idea. So let's say I put out a story and I get 10 feedbacks for that. I work it out and ensure that my next story gets those things correct. So this makes people come back and say, okay, this is what my question was. I got it answered.

In fact, we've started working on Instagram off lately and it's just I'm giving an offsite number where people come back to us saying, hey, we purchased this car because of you and they share the picture with us. So wherever I've worked previously, I've never seen such a brand recall. So video content is definitely high on engagement, at least for the millennials. From what I have noticed, the website, YouTube, everything, wherever we see, it's video that's pulling in people today. And you just spoke of video. You didn't talk about our website.

That itself says that video is where the attraction is for the audience today. Right. Now, I give an example. way back. I think it was 2000 or thereabouts when a movie called Cast Away was launched. Right. It spoke about how product placement like a Federal Express and what it did for FedEx that point of time had an impact and how people started to kind of relate with that brand. How do you find that balance between content and what a client slash sponsor wants? So, see, the brand has every right to come in and talk.

I'm not saying that, but they should limit themselves after a certain point. I mean, let's look at Iron Man having Audi in it. It was said that Audi has seen some jump because of the Avengers and everything else. Now they don't come into the picture and they say, you know what, I want Iron Man to fly with my car. So, there has to be a connect, but let the creator, let the set of whatever organization run the show because they know the audience well. I know my audience well and I know what will work with them tomorrow.

So, let's say tomorrow you say a certain brand fits in here. I'll be like, okay, it does, but it has to go this manner because at the end of the day, the organization or the media house who's wanting the brand to come in will also want them to leverage the maximum results. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Wonderful having you here. Thank you. As we learned from our brand masters today, it's all about speaking to millennials in a language that they understand. It's about tapping deep-rooted aspirations, about being relevant.

It's about winning over them every day and, you know, moment by moment. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on episode number 14 of Brand Studio Live, co-hosted by the HD Brand Studio in DMA Asia. A very special thanks to DMA Asia and Vatsal Ashar for helping power this wonderful event. A very big thank you to Radio Fever FM who evangelizes our concept. I'd also like to take this opportunity to announce that with this episode, we finish season one of HD Brand Studio Live. Thank you for making this event such a tremendous success.

What a journey it's been. We look forward to coming back with season two soon. And in all probability, it's going to be bigger, better, bolder. So please stay tuned. Thank you very much.