What this BrandMasters episode teaches about brand purpose

Ladies and gentlemen good evening and welcome to episode 6 of Brand Studio Live. I'm Ramit Arora and I have yet another set of brand masters with me today hosted jointly by the HD Brand Studio and DMA Asia Brand Studio Live brings together the country's top CXOs to talk about the hottest topics in marketing. In the process we not only learn from the best but we are inspired by them. Before we start today's episode let me tell you what's special about it. Today we are celebrating the enormous success of the previous 5 episodes of Brand Studio

Live which have sparked many conversations among marketeers. Therefore, we have among us some of those who've spoken in previous episodes and thank you so much for coming back and being part of this sort of midway through the season celebration. The second thing that's fairly special about this episode is the theme itself. When we laid out the theme and we said we are going to be talking about marketing to the millennial woman. We got such a huge response that we actually had to shift out of the newsroom.

So this is our first episode where we've shifted to the studio outside of the newsroom and it's heartwarming that the attendance today is 25 plus brands and CXOs. So thank you very much everybody for being here. Without further delay let's get started with episode 6 of Brand Studio Live. India is adding more women to the internet than any country in the world. That's what CommScores report tells us and a customized report which is available today from CommScores marketing suite tells us that women actually access multiple devices more than men do.

They're increasingly driving retail and OTT and for many categories they are an unrecognized and unrealized demographic dividend. Today's young woman is more confident, more empowered, more independent, certainly more informed. And I would say far far more confident. What does all this mean for us? Are we ready to deal with this new world order? Are our brands evolving as fast as our world? More importantly, have we broken down legacy bias and is our thinking sort of moving in the same direction and at the same speed as the world is?

Sometimes legacy is going to be part of our challenges but hopefully in today's discussion we are going to break through that and we are going to get to some real answers on marketing to women in this new millennium in the age of the internet. My first guest today is Ritu Modi Kamdar, the founder and managing director of Jigsaw Brand Consultants. With a deep understanding of human behavior, Ritu has helped several companies find context in the lives of consumers.

Ritu also teaches branding and consumer behavior at universities in India, France, Germany and Australia. Welcome to HD Ritu. Ritu today will talk to us about how brands can overcome laid down norms. While communicating with the millennial woman. But before that, let me share an interesting study that I read this morning in fact conducted by the CAA and a tech firm called Shift 7 in America. Basically they researched 350 movies produced in Hollywood over the last 10 years and they

found that 110 of those movies actually had women in leading roles or as titles before the men. And what the research says is that across all budget levels, small budget, blockbusters, big budget movies, the movies that were led by women perform better than the movies that were led by men. Which is, you know, quite a myth buster in so many ways. It reflects two realities. One that has been deflected by myths forever. That the hero is not a single archetype. And I know you've just released a white paper on archetypes in women, right?

And the other is that 50% of the box office is women. And that's the unrealized demographic dividend. I know your recent work, the white paper that you've produced and we're using today as a basis for a lot of the discussion we are having emphasizes the many roles and motivations around the millennial woman. And you've often told me that much of this has not been discovered because marketeers are lazy. We stereotype, you know, we tend to stay with convention and the roles that we've ascribed to women over the years. So tell us more.

So, I think you've established the fact, Ramit, that women are the world's most influential consumers, the most important consumer, right? 50% is a big number. And the fact that 80% of them, actually there's an 80% influencing role that they play. And like you said, they're very rarely kind of understood or represented in media. They're not adequately, you know, put out there for the media to see. And in all the study that we've done with women, we've been doing studies with women for over many years now.

And what we've essentially seen is that women don't feel like they're represented in the right manner, you know, they feel that they're not understood, that their deep seated motivations, or their latent desires are not really decoded in the right manner. And there's a lot of change that is happening, you know, as we speak, you know, things are things are changing around us. You see a lot of people, a lot of women in fact, are breaking out of the conventional grids, that we as marketers or we as advertisers have put them into.

But, you know, unfortunately, advertisers and marketers continue to draw caricatures of women. Yeah. So, for example, why is a woman who is a boss in an office expected to come home and cook a hot freshly prepared meal for her husband? Yeah. Or for that matter, why is a woman expected to find her harrowed husband's socks every morning? You know, why is it that we continue to draw these caricatures of women? Why do we represent them in these manners? Why is it that we draw pictures like, you know, a woman can't do any financial transactions

without her husband? Or the fact that a woman can't change a tire on a car? Or a woman, her kind of main existence depends on the fact that her child wins a trophy in a race. Now, these are things that we've used in a way as grids to define women. And unfortunately, as marketers, we haven't taken it upon ourselves to kind of represent them in the right manner. You know, the unfortunate thing, Ramit, is the fact that as marketers and advertisers, we mirror society. And in a way, we are perpetuating these realities that we think exist.

Yeah, we think that this is what the reality is because we have not understood the woman out there. And because of that, we're representing her in the wrong manner. Now, our research, in fact, the archetypes that we've drawn out, we call it the nine avatars of the Indian woman. What we're really saying here is that there are many mini revolutions and newer kinds of cohorts that are forming, newer segments that are forming. You know, the perfect homemaker, whom we've traditionally known as the woman whose existence

depended on making sure that her home was the perfect space, she cooked the perfect meal, she cooked the perfect meal, she had the perfect kids. All of that is now being replaced by women who are increasingly stepping out of the house boundaries and are defining themselves or are finding their identity outside. Imperfection is something that women are embracing in a better way today. You know, it's okay to be imperfect. It's okay to throw in the towel. It's okay to not be body perfect. It's okay to have a more positive body image of yourselves.

It's okay to not be the unattainable sex symbol that we've always looked up to. And these are the things that we're seeing more and more, not in urban cities, but in smaller towns. The beauty of this is that there are so many women out there who are kind of wanting to get out, speak up, you know, talk about what they believe in. And as advertisers and marketers, we need to sit up and take notice of this. Yeah, even for that matter, the fact that women are choosing to be unattached.

Yeah, earlier it kind of, you know, if you're not married or if you don't have a child, you were looked at as an outlaw. But today women are choosing to be childless or choosing to be not married, are choosing to define themselves for who they are. The beauty of this is, in context to your topic today, is the fact that in the age of the internet, this is all possible. Yeah, the woman is today not feeling alone or she's not feeling alienated because there are many more out there who are like her.

And earlier, maybe about 20 years back, we didn't have the privilege of forming these communities. Yeah, and the communities today that are forming because of the mobile phone, because of social media, you look at more and more women outside who believe in the same things that you do. And therefore, you don't feel alone anymore. You don't feel stifled also to fit in. Yeah, I feel that too, in fact, in a lot of ways where I see women out there and you know, you kind of want to join that community or you feel that you can also identify with this.

Essentially, I feel as marketers, as advertisers, there's a purpose that we need to, you know, believe in and the fact that we represent a section of the society, we are perpetuating realities, we are setting the way for how women should be looked at. And, you know, if we are going to be defining them through narrow lenses, if we are not going to go out there and really understand them for who they are, I think we are creating, you know, I mean, I don't think it's fair on the new age millennial woman, the fact that she

needs to be represented for who she is. And if we do that, I think we are creating a new order for women today in India. And a new order for the world. That's right. You know, you did talk about financial transactions and it's a good segue. Before we go to questions, Vishwajit is here. He heads marketing and brand for Bajaj Capital. Financial products is a category, Vishwajit, that for very long was completely male-centric. It just completely assumed that the woman had no role in either investing money or in the family's fortunes or future security.

But that's changing and changing very, very fast. And I can see that financial service brands are scrambling to sort of keep up with that reality. What's your experience been with that very quickly? So I think I'll agree to what the ma'am was saying a few minutes back. Though we believe that women are born financial planners. Whenever there is an emergency of cash, they will bring out from some source or other source. But really, are they doing financial transactions? That's number, data is not supporting that.

There is a gradual increase, but I would not say drastic increase. The trends are changing. So if you look at financial planners a few years back, it used to be only 4-5%. But now there is a 20% financial planners who are advising people to where to invest. So there is no lack of knowledge, there is no lack of expertise. They are scientists, they are entrepreneurs. But when it comes to transactions, still they are not taking their decisions. So they are the main influencers in the family. They are not fully taking.

It's not that they are not at all doing. The gradual increase is there. The woman understands today that if they are not financially independent, that's not the real thing. So if they have to be financially independent, they have to take investment decisions. So they are taking it. But is it on a great rise? I don't think so. There is still a long way to go. That's what I feel. Ritu, I have a question for you. Do you think that a large part of the reason why you have observed what you have and it's

not completely untrue, is that this was all advertising and marketing over the years conceptualized by men for women? Or do you think it's just the community which has not done justice to? No, in fact that's exactly why maybe financial companies have not been able to really understand women in the way they are. I think men have had a headway, a significant headway as compared to women. The fact that men are better represented in companies, they are the ones in the boardrooms, they are the ones taking the decisions.

Marketing is something that is fairly male driven. I don't think women have had that kind of representation in the company for them to have that lens existing. Like I said, making a product pink is not the answer to making it gender specific. That's not the way to look at marketing to women. It's about really looking at a product from the root and understanding it from the woman's perspective.

Now for example, financial products could be looked at from a totally different lens, but we continue to look at it from the male lens and think that women don't understand it. You know, so I think the balance is something that hasn't come in because of the fact that women don't have representation even in the company. Very interesting and I am sure we are going to talk about this more as we go along. Any other questions? Yeah, Praveen has a question. I think it's a very interesting debate. There are sectors where women have been the forerunners.

Look at the BPO sector, look at the IT sector, look at the media sector for that matter. And just a comment, it is important that we start looking at the millennials, especially the women who have come out to the fore, have started working in these sectors and they are the ones who would specifically when it comes to categories like financial products or insurance for that matter, they are the ones who would start thinking about it and have started thinking about it.

I think it is the time that brand wake up to that audience and start bringing those icons in their communication. Absolutely. Good point. Yes, Krishnan. Thanks for that. I think that was lovely. Very, very clear and very eye opening. I had a question for you. So, I got a lot of the not from what you said. Do you have some examples of brands which have communicated well with women and with millennial women and, you know, people who have done it well? Can you share some insights there?

So, there are some, you know, award winning campaigns, but they are very far and few in between is what I feel. But I think one of the noteworthy ones there is the Share the Load campaign. I think that was the one which the Ariel Share the Load campaign, I think was one of the few campaigns that clearly spoke to the woman and, you know, ensured that there was a balanced role responsibility that the men also took on.

Swiggy is doing that right now with the way in which they are representing the woman and the fact that, you know, it's okay for her not to cook that hot prepared meal and give her kid the phone instead to call for a meal. I think it's, you know, these are the traits that I see a lot of brands now taking in.

But like I said, it's few and far in between, you know, it's, it's essentially, you still have the campaigns which are still talking to that woman, but she still has to come back home and do the stuff that she's supposed to, you know, those kind of dichotomies still exist. But yeah, some of the noteworthy ones that I just mentioned definitely are there and it's slowly and steadily changing. So, thank you so much for a wonderful session.

The report that you've, that you've spoken about is now available and anybody who wants it can possibly get in touch with you or us and we'll, we'll put out the details in the episode. Thank you so much. My next guest is Priyanka Gill, founder and CEO of PopXO, which is India's largest digital community for women. An ambitious entrepreneur, she built the company into a highly tech driven, data driven, media tech platform. But let that not confuse you. It is also a massively consumer centered, consumer driven brand. Brand.

The brand now drives over 200 million engagements every month and all from women. 300. 300 as growing as we speak. In June 2017 Priyanka launched, Plixo India's largest influencer marketing program. She's received several awards including the Fikki Flowpar to Empower Award in 2018. And the Young Business Women Award at the CNBC Young Turks Conclave. Now you're at HT. Congratulations. Priyanka, it's lovely to have you here.

A. Rutu has given us a great segue into, you know, the importance of communities, brands being built by women, and PopXO certainly stands out. But there's some data as well. And, you know, Comscore India's data from October 17 to 18, tells us a few numbers. These are headlines. First, India is adding more women to the internet every year than any other country in the world. Second, the percentage growth of women on e-commerce is twice that of the growth of women on the internet.

So, you know, women on e-commerce are growing at 70% and they far outscore the men. And the third, that 90% of urban women between 25 and 34, and I think the numbers about 25 million women active at a certain point of time, could actually have been found on a retail site on the internet over the last year. I see you've chosen to speak to us today about women-oriented e-commerce platforms. Is this the perfect moment or the perfect storm? I think women have been a story that's been happening for a while.

And brands and marketers have just been slow to understand what it's all about, right? If you look at even traditional households, decisions while on paper might look, it's a male credit card that's being swiped. But women are often the influencers behind decisions that happen. Today, women are becoming agents in themselves in which they themselves are the ones who are spending money, etc. But as Ritu said very powerfully that brands and marketers are just not understanding. The tropes are old and the mediums are old.

I mean, the first rule and law of marketing, as all of you already know, is find the user where she is. And millennial women are on their mobile phones, right? Magazines, paper magazines, all of us know what the readerships are on those. So if you have to reach your female consumer, if you have to reach her on the mobile phone, you use mediums that speak to her in a way that she likes and understands, right? No woman today likes being spoken down to. No woman today likes being stereotyped. No woman today likes being told that she is less in any capacity.

But a lot of the messages that we get from ads, etc., do exactly that. So if you're talking to the millennial woman today, you have to understand her way and speak her language in a way that she feels an affinity to your brand. Simple ways of doing that are, I mean, pink is of course classic, right? It's easy, it's lazy, and you just turn something pink and you suddenly are female friendly. It's exactly not that.

It's in many ways going deeper to understand who she is, what her motivation is, and why is she going to be buying a financial product, and what motivates her to do that. All those things have to come out by understanding where the female consumer lies. And that's where a lot of the data that we look at at PopExo comes true. In a month, we will create 1500 stories. We will create at least 100 videos every month. We put it out to the audience. We know exactly what they're consuming. Women ask and answer questions on our platform.

We know what they're asking and answering in real time. All the data we pull together to understand what she's feeling and thinking at any given moment. That then informs the next batch of stories and the next batch of videos that we create. And that gives us a broad trends in what she's interested in. If a company like PopExo, which is just about coming to five years this March, if we can do it at scale, where we are reaching 39 million women across platforms every month.

I have a whole bunch of legacy brands and big brands with big budgets sitting in the room right now. They should definitely be able to do the same thing. We do it because we are a female focused brand and our mission in life is just to understand women better and to reach them better. I think all brands who are looking to make a significant positive impact on their top and bottom lines should be doing exactly the same. It's the low hanging fruit.

The brands who do that first are the brands who will be able to capture the market and capture this unoccupied space. It's a big unoccupied space right now. So I think it's high time that we understand that it's doable and it's possible because brands like PopExo have already begun to do so. And if you're selling anything today, please, you have to be selling to women because they are the ones who are not being spoken to and they're just waiting to be spoken to. I don't know what further incentive would any company need, right?

And millennial women, again repeating myself, don't like being spoken down to. They like being empowered. They like being considered empowered. And they're not the second person on the table. They are the first person on the table now. Telling. And this is somebody who's really created a brand for women. You know, I've spoken to you about this before and Ritu mentioned it as well. This whole thing of women creating brands for women. And I know that your company is 68% women, mostly millennial women, and your leadership is 60% women.

How much of that reflects in the brand? So, you know, till we were 50 people in the company, we were 100% women. And then we added tech, e-commerce, a whole. Now we are 170 people in the company and the sex ratio has changed a little bit more. But because the DNA of the company is female, it's a bunch of women who kind of built the company, who started the company, the way that we run, the way that we think, that discounting that everyone just almost automatically and unconsciously does, even though they don't want to, that doesn't happen in PopXO.

And the team of people creating the content, the team of people distributing the content, are actually the users as well. So there's a deep connect with the people that we are trying, with the women that we are trying to reach. And that usually helps. I mean, I, at the risk of sounding awful, but I don't think a man could have built a company like PopXO. It takes kind of a team of women to do that. But I do have another question for you, which is, we often accuse the men for stereotyping women, particularly in marketing and ads.

But do sometimes women also stereotype women? And is that something to be cautious about? I think all of us can do it at any given point in time, right? And especially in today's day and age, staying aware, staying conscious, and staying very aware of everything that we are saying and doing is important. And it's not to say that, oh my God, like, you know, women are in the room, so let's just leave. It's not to say that. But you're in a digital age today, everything that you do can have a massive repercussion on your personal brand,

on the brand of your company, on everything that actually matters. So, it's not just men, it's not just women, but all of us as a whole have to be conscious of what we are saying and doing, and what is the impression that's coming forward. You guys, it might be a room like this, when you could be kind of exchanging what might seem like a funny banter. But, you have to think of the impact that might have on someone and be conscious of it. Like, women, we do it all the time, right?

If we enter a space, we kind of have our boundaries already kind of circumcised, circumscribed around us. Because we've been kind of feeling it for a long time. But it's time that men become aware that we've been doing it, right? If a woman enters a bus, you will see her standing in a certain way. Men don't have to do that. But, we do it. But it has to come to a point where the men in the bus realize that we have to make sure that she doesn't feel that she has to kind of squeeze herself in a corner. So, I think these are important discussions.

I'm really glad that we're actually finally having them in a space that's open and they're being discussed. I know there's a lot of hype and hysteria at one point, but it's a correction. It's high time that this was coming. And this is the marketing community. Absolutely. This is 25 brands. Ritu kept saying that you guys are supposed to reflect what's happening in the real world. But, I also worry that every single time an ad plays in which a woman is being shown anything less, you're also telling the young girl watching that ad, this is what reality is.

Right? So, that has to change. Because it's a self kind of perpetuating circle at this point. Marketers believe, predominantly male marketers believe that women are a certain way. So, that's what they portray. The young women who are watching it then get told that reality is like this. So, then you have to kind of squeeze yourself in a corner. So, I mean you guys are kind of the perfect audience that can actually put a stop to what I think is a complete travesty. And don't do it for any empowerment reasons. Do it for the bottom line.

Because that is where you will begin to see a positive impact. And so speaks a brand builder who's actually launched eCom and successfully. So, any questions? Yeah. Sorry, there's lots of questions. So, there's Praveen and then I know there's Puneet. Yeah. Great thoughts. You are perhaps one of the only media portal which is offering content in different languages. I think it's six to seven Indian languages. So, one we would be very eager to understand what percentage of your traffic is coming from non-English speaking audience.

And what are your insights about that? Two, do you have any recommendations for the brand managers and marketeers in this room? That what can they do about that audience which is online, vernacular and potentially not an urban audience? Sure. So, we launched in English and we actually had a small adventure in Hindi a couple of years ago. We couldn't figure out how to crack the Hindi female audience. We had to shut down Hindi for a little while. And we relaunched Hindi again early this year.

And we launched in Tamil, Telugu, Bangla and Marathi two weeks ago. So, as of today, PopXO is available in six languages. We don't translate in all the languages. We actually create original content in all the six languages. English, of course, the news has been out for a while. We know exactly what's happening in English. The Hindi audience is actually growing at a much faster pace, although on a lower base as far as the English audience is concerned.

And the other languages, Bangla and Marathi are actually growing much faster as compared to Tamil and Telugu. So, a couple of things that we know in trying to run a multilingual platform that's actually original content. The English user versus the Hindi user, there is a dramatic difference. In the beginning, we tried translating. Translation doesn't work. What matters to the English female user, the same things might matter to the Hindi female user, but the proportionality is different.

The kind of things that you're sending, the kind of messages you're giving, they have to be bespoke. They have to be curated and created for the audience that you're trying to speak to. So, even in the four languages that we've launched, although I don't speak any of the, or read any of those four languages, we are still taking broad guesses right now. And over time, once we start seeing responses to certain stories and content being put out, we will begin to change our content mix accordingly. So, it's a data game.

There's no way that you can put out 1500 stories in a month just by waking up in the morning and thinking, hey, I'm going to write this today. It doesn't happen like that. So, you look at a lot of data to understand what exactly are you putting out. So, the news is still kind of going to be out on that. But like the Hindi user, for example, is far more interested in say, beauty and hair as she is, than in fashion. The English user has a little bit more propensity towards fashion stories versus makeup stories.

So, all those insights are things that basically sit with us. The second part of your question was, just… What is your message for the marketing? Yeah, so, I mean, my thing is, firstly, get women in your teams. If you don't have women in your teams, you have no one to represent and then you are just trying to speak for something that you… Like, I would never want to do an ad… do a campaign for a purely male brand because I don't presume to understand men very well, right? Similarly, get women in your teams and listen to when they are talking.

Like, it's still automatic for all of us to kind of just behave in a certain way, right? So, just notice what you are doing. Let them speak and give them the creative freedom to actually… to express what they are saying. That would be my first thing, right? If you are going to… if you are going to an ex-ad agency, if they are pitching for your account, just notice how many women they bring into the room. If they are not bringing enough women into the room, they are not going to be able to create a campaign that actually speaks to women, right?

So, those are simple checks that you guys can have when you are trying to kind of create a message that how is it going to resonate. If you have something coming out when you are trying to test out a line or you are going to test out kind of an ad campaign, just make sure that you are showing it to enough women beforehand and just to see the reactions that they are getting. And all this is not lip service because a lot… and I am not going to give examples, but there are a lot of tone deaf campaigns that just come out.

And then women in the room are just thinking… what were they thinking, right? So, your brand should not be the brand that makes those mistakes and it simply happens because there just were not enough women in the room at the time when a campaign was being decided. So, yeah, so that would be my main thing. Get women in your team and just make sure that whoever that you are using to create the campaign with your partners there, have enough women there to just be the checks in place. All right. I will close this discussion. Thank you very much.

That was fantastic. And I think wonderful to go from the need for communities to real communities and communities that are profitable and the ability to actually build not just a successful brand but a successful business around women as customers. And I think the lessons are telling. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. My next guest is Pankaj Duhan, Chief Marketing Officer, Rekid Binkizar, South Asia Health. He brings with him more than 15 years of blue chip experience across categories, geographies and business models.

He started his career with Procter & Gamble in 2002 and has successful stints in countries such as Australia, Singapore, India and Thailand. His two most recent roles were Director Skincare China and Director Hair Care North in South America. Pankaj Insight Mining is 101 marketing. Yet we feel the need to speak about it, which is good, I guess, and we should keep talking about it. And fittingly after Ritu and Priyanka, clearly there seems to be the need for many of us to be searching for more insight.

I know that in RB and in general in your career, insights has been a very, very, very large part of the success stories that you've charted. Talk to us about the process. Talk to us about the what, how it's different from the how. Tell us how insight mining can actually change some of the conversation in this room if we were to meet again. I think the first of all, it is very critical for yourself to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer.

And if it is a woman consumer, it doesn't matter and you're a man, it doesn't matter, you still have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. Right. And understand the trials and tribulations, understand the moments and feelings of joy, understand what she goes through and what gives her delight. And I genuinely believe any good marketer does not need to be a great marketer, but a good marketer if you put yourself into the shoes of the consumers and genuinely make the effort to understand, find the barriers to try, find the barriers to overcome.

And therefore, what will truly delight the consumers, that will be the first starting point. The second is to use all the technology at your disposal. There is tremendous amount of technology that is available for us. Predictive analytics, you can predict so many things. You can predict the future and you appear fast doing it like when you have to go. And not many people actually go and take advantage of it.

Detall for example, one of the big like really iconic brands in India that I look after, actually uses predictive analytics to predict three weeks in advance an outbreak of a flu. And that is simply, you know, getting metrics of the temperature, at the same time the humidity, okay, and the conversations on the digital platforms that are cropping up, okay. Those are all predictors and signs of how the flu outbreaks will happen.

And it happens at a different time in Srinagar, it happens at a different time in Chennai, and it happens at a different time in Lucknow for example. So, we were able to, you take pollution as a category for example. And in pollution as a category, it is a category that you, that is active for about six weeks in the year, even though like the PM 2.5 exists right throughout the year and it is at a high level, but it exists for six weeks, eight weeks in Delhi for example, okay.

And there you have to get all of your focus, your marketing, your attention, your insights into that six week period because 70% of your sales will happen in those six weeks period for the masks and so on so forth. And there you are able to predict the, the upsurge of the concern related to this by marrying the, the wind speed, the temperature and the crop burning, okay. So if you marry the three together, you are able to predict to a very high degree of accuracy on when would you be, when would the concern actually rise the highest, right.

And this has not just a benefit to the bottom line and the top line and so to speak, but also has societal advantages. For flus, you will give out preventive messages and so on so forth because prevention is one of the biggest forms of cure. So that is the second part of it. The third is I think many times we underestimate the power of the character of the brand. And I wanted to actually go back in the previous session, we were talking a little bit about how, you know, brands talk down to women. So one of the brands that I look after is Durex, okay.

It's in the sexual wellbeing category, makes condoms amongst other things. It's a great brand. It's a, it stands for safety, durability, reliability and so on so forth. But it's a category to a, which to earn, you know, outsider might seem like which talks down to women, it objectifies women. It's a category that tends to do that if you take a look at some of the advertisements. It is a category where cheap is good, so to speak, sometimes it may feel like that, etc. And disproportionately women tend to use Durex more than any other brand.

I mean, that's the, that's the data that we had. And I'm now retrofitting because this is not what we actually designed to do. But this is a brand that has never ever talked down to women. It always stands for equality of the woman and you look at the commercials, for example, you'll be able to see it for themselves. It's a good case study. It always tries to have all the digital content placed on intelligent humor, okay. Humor that is not slapstick, but has to have an essence of intelligence in it. Okay. And it is premium and it is safe and reliable.

And when I look back and think about it, isn't that what a woman actually sometimes looks for in a guy? Okay. Isn't that what, you know, you would actually look for in your partner as well. And when you put those things together, maybe the consumers are actually starting to move from just buying benefits to buying the personality of the brand, the character of the brand, the purpose of the brand and so on and so forth. So those would be three of my tips, my learnings, my insights of how to go about doing it. Outstanding. You are on the hot seat.

So there will be questions. Absolutely. Who's going to start? I bet it's going to be on Durex. No, you know, Durex is an interesting category because the truth is they still got lots of taboos. And part of the reason it has taboos is because there is a whole conversation around what you can show and what you can't show. Is that also about sensitivity to, you know, women as an audience or is that more around just cultural taboos and our inability to express brands the way they should be?

See, you have to, as a marketeer, you have to ask yourself the question, are you trying to sell the product or are you genuinely trying to improve the lives of the consumer? The moment you answer the answer as you're genuinely trying to improve the lives or to bring sexual equality in this case, for example, your execution will turn out excellent. You don't need to worry about it. The moment you start to sell the product, you will get into all of these stereotypes because those are formulas that you need to go after. Yeah.

So somebody had a question and I. So Pankaj, very interesting perspective. Do you have any insights on the kind of conversations that happen around condoms for women? See, the problem is the conversations don't happen. Okay. That is the biggest problem because nobody wants to talk about it. Okay. And one of the roles of a leadership brand, and I'm not talking about market leading brand, market leadership brand. I'm talking about thought leadership brands. Okay. The one of the roles of the thought leadership brands is to get the conversations out in the

open. Okay. It will improve the sexual equality. And when it improves the sexual equality, the market share will come to you. It will come to you. You don't need to run after it. You get the equality right and the market share will come to you. It may not come immediately, but it will come to you. So that's what I would say. Okay. There is, if you get into the statistics of the sexual well-being category, etc. Like it is amazing and horrifying at the same time.

Like when you think about it, of all the sexual occasions that happen in India, only 5% actually use condoms and that is claimed. Okay. Nobody uses condoms. Why? Because the guy doesn't think that he needs a condom. Why? Because it will reduce the sexual pleasure. And what does a woman do? Sometimes, not all the times, actually comes back and makes herself subservient, right, to that point of view. And what is needed is don't make yourself subservient to that point of view because you have your own point of view. And what about your…

So there is tons to be done. There is tons to be done. And I believe all brands, marketeers, this is one example. You take another category and you will find all of these kinds of issues, right, that you should solve. You solve an issue, the market share will come. I love the fact that through episodes I found all our conversations actually go back to marketing 101. You know, give the brand a purpose, the business will follow. Ankur, you had a question. I believe as brands we face a lot of challenges and challenges being a very dynamic ecosystem.

Challenges differ from day to day and from year to year. So, as a brand my question to you is since there is a lot of conversations around empathy and trust in the air around messaging because for any campaign to be successful there has to be a context and the ability to anticipate how the consumers will consume that messaging. So, are there any specific… My question number one is one or two, any challenges that you may have faced as a brand in any of your product lines within the past year in messaging completely to the market.

the mass audience where there has been a challenge making the concept in messaging to women in particular. And my second part of the question is how did you overcome that challenge if there has been a challenge like that. Be true to yourself. Again, be true to what the brand is. So, first understanding the brand is very important. Understanding the personality, the character, the benefit of the brand is very important. Once you understand that, that is what you need to communicate. You shouldn't change that. You don't change it to the consumer.

You communicate that. But what you do is you communicate it in a way that makes it relevant for her. So, what you need to do is not to find out a new benefit, a new platform, a new positioning for yourself. You find out a new way of making it relevant for her. So, let me give, it's not an example for women per se but I will give an example of in a brand. The brand at all is all about protection from germs. Okay. And therefore, it has many consequences, etc. Okay. The moment you wear away from protection from germs because that is what the consumer says

that she wants. Okay. That is not a space that you can occupy. You will never be successful. It doesn't matter. You know, it might look attractive. You will never be successful. So, therefore, you need to figure out ways of making germs more relevant and hopefully, you know, have an impact on the life that is visible to be seen. So, don't wear away from that. Be true to who you are and understanding yourself is the most important thing. Excellent. On that note, thank you very much, Pankaj. Thank you so much. Thank you.

My next guest is Gulbahar Taurani, Marketing Director Phillips. A veteran of the small durables industry, Gulbahar has been instrumental in establishing Philips as a clear market leader in the space it operates in. He is also credited for single-handedly creating the Air Fryer, which is a millennium health gadget. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. I am certainly not going with the cliché question, what do women want? But I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a question that's becoming bigger in our marketing war rooms.

It certainly is becoming bigger in my office. As a category, appliances and durables and small appliances have always sort of assigned traditional roles to women, for good reason or bad reason. I've been there. I personally accept it to have been a fact. But today's young woman is empowered with information, with technology, with an increasing financial independence and confidence. It's a whole new world. How are you adopting this new world order and how are you adapting to this very, very rapid transformation?

First of all, you know, after hearing all the thoughts on this show, I was expecting a question like this. So, I knew that the question is not going to be simple. See, one way of looking at it is like I can always say no, things are changing. But of course, things are changing, but we also need to accept the reality first. Then only the change will happen. Now, if you look at it, what I see more and more and we had a chat around don't do it for empowerment, do it for your top line, do it for your bottom line.

And as marketers, as business heads, that becomes one of the prime responsibilities. So, what I see in and around me and especially in the industry that I am in, that more and more brands are embracing the rise of the modern movement. Okay. They are not only acknowledging the inherent capabilities, but the power of the technology that is coming to them. Because a combination of two is actually empowering them more and more. And that's why you will see that not only brands are consciously taking this effort of not just hammering

messages on them and praying that they get swayed by this, but very softly, they are actually exposing them with their message, allowing them to understand, evaluate and buy the story on the merit of the story. And once they know that if there is a buy-in of the story, then that's a force. Okay. And that's a force which not only actually has an impact on a particular individual, but if there is a buy-in of the story, and if you are able to expose the woman in a very relevant way about the story, and if you have a buy-in,

they actually take your story forward. And you will see that that was also there traditionally, but with media and with the new technology that they have. Actually, the scalability is something which is possible now. And before I go to one of the examples wherein we were facing a business problem and how do we reach out to the millennials, and I would like to share with you one of the stories around air fryer. So you said, you know, we were able to and thanks for calling it as a millennium gadget.

And I personally believe that when we were introducing air fryer to India, you know, again, there are stereotypes. Tell us what an air fryer is. Okay, so air fryer is an appliance which can get you your favorite fried food without oil. Right. And trust you me, even today when I go and speak to people and say, you know, you can have your favorite samosa without oil, people don't believe me. I don't. So exactly the challenge that I had. Not only that, you know, stereotypes are of different types.

And I would just go to a stereotype in terms of pricing also. So normally when you are operating in a small kitchen appliances business, you say the ticket size of that business is only one of the things. The ticket business is only two and a half thousand three, three thousand. And you are here you are bringing a gadget first. The claim is almost like impossible can't be. And whenever you say healthy and fried doesn't come along naturally. It's only healthy and baked. So we have to actually establish something which is healthy and fried.

Now, again, you know, one is price. Second, it's a cooking appliance. And you can always say there is a way you have to reach out to the audience. But if you understand the problem, you remain genuine to the promise that you are making. And then if you reach out to the consumers without stereotyping everything and look at who is your TG and how are you reaching out to them. Actually, it makes sense to them.

So there were a lot of stories around and, you know, we had spoken in the show earlier also around this is how you should project an air fryer since it's a cooking appliance. And these are all traditional thoughts. If you look at the campaign that we did on air fryers, it was actually a risky campaign. First proposition which you are still not ready to believe. So I will organize a demo for you and I can tell you that you are going to take my story. Discount coupons. You won't ask for discount for sure. The proposition is so strong.

And in fact, you are going to take it forward. So one risky proposition. Second, then you are going to, you know, but when we were making that entire campaign, we never thought of like, we have to project it in a particular way or not. We realized that this is a gadget. This is an appliance which is going to appeal both men and women. Okay. So let's not do something which is very traditional and not. We went out and we created a situation and this is the merit of the story we went for that.

And, you know, today, it's such a pride to, you know, to feel like, you know, you have introduced something to the market. And you have actually raised the bar for others. And today, air fryer is something which is becoming almost like a household phenomenon. And it's the new way of cooking. And that's where, you know, if, if you just, just stay true to your promise and just stay connected to the audiences, I think, half of the problem is solved. And this two stereotypes go automatically.

However, the second thing that I just wanted to share was, when we say that there is an inherent capability to influence with women and we heard everyone that they are more into the influencer position rather than taking the actual call, whether that's financial products or anything else. I think that's also changing. And that we discovered. And again, in one of the cases wherein we wanted to actually create content, which we can take it to our consumers. And that's where the idea of digital gorilla army came to us.

And what we did was, we called for the influencers in that particular category without looking at whether that's men, women, predominantly a women category. So that's what you stereotype it from a cooking appliances point of view. We created a workshop. We called people who can actually make difference to our story. We had an expert in that workshop. They got to learn a lot of tips and tricks from the expert. We immersed them with the products, allowed them to, you know, use the product and feel the benefits of it. And that's it.

After that, if you see the power that technology brings in and the way the content was created. And today we have a digital gorilla army which takes the brand story forward for us and does a lot of things which actually sometimes we are surprised. Because the way they discover our propositions and then the way they communicate about our products is sometimes, you know, is even much, it's much better than what you think as a brand and the owner of the product category. So that's it. I have a question for you.

I know in a previous conversation where you and me were talking about something else, you had mentioned to me that, you know, even now, even though it's changing rapidly, even now, if there's a purchase over 5000 rupees, you tend to find that it's the man using a credit card, not the woman. But e-commerce is certainly changing that at a really fast pace, because if Comscore's data is to be believed, women aren't just moving into e-commerce, they're driving it. And running e-commerce. And for your categories, that would most certainly be true.

And if it is, how does that customer journey work? Because that customer journey most certainly would initiate somewhere in the digital space and end on the internet. So I think e-commerce is fast emerging as one of the channels wherein appliances as a category is growing. And you are absolutely right. You see a little bit different behavior from the consumer side when you go to the e-commerce bit of it. And we were talking when we were talking, I said, it's when it comes to technology, even today, you see, you know, the influencer is there.

But the final transaction you see at least the husband and wife or, you know, father or daughter or coming together. But on e-commerce, you see a trend wherein women are buying and the ratio of female consumers is actually increasing. And that's where you will see a lot of content from the brands is made with a thought that how do you appeal or how do you make yourself relevant to the consumer and the consumer needs.

And that you will see more and more happening, especially in the consumer durables and the small appliances industry, because that's the shift which is very, very clear. So Rajiv has a question and then from the audience. So out of your portfolio, can you while focusing on sort of one brand that particularly does well with millennial women, can you give us some insight on whether your journey was sort of more audience in or which was more product out?

See, I think, you know, if you look at how we have evolved as a brand, it's it was more like what the audience want today, because we have a legacy of an electronics brand. And from there, we move towards health and well being brand. That's the change. That's the shift we brought in. And that that change was not because it was product out. That was more about audience in that. What are the audience looking for? What is the consumer saying to us?

And that's where we in fact looked at our brand promise and went to a brand promise, which is we need to improve 3 billion lives by 2025. And that is more about consumers and consumer centric. So that's the approach that we have taken. Okay, so we quickly point question. So first of all, you have made my life difficult because I brought up air fryer, Philips air fryer and my wife tells me it's weekend, you prepare the breakfast.

So on that note, but while it was on a lighter note, but the fact of the matter is while the today's topic is about marketing it to the millennial woman, but have you not thought about marketing it to the millennial men with this kind of a product? See, so as I said, when we were doing this product, we were we were not thinking men, women, we realized that it is, you know, it appeals to both. So instead of looking at from a cooking appliances point of view and buying into traditional stories, we said it appeals to both.

And that's where we took the risky proposition. In fact, the communication is also around the men cooking and, you know, at least any initiative. That's why you bought it. That's why you bought it. So that's the idea. The idea is not to, you know, focus on a particular gender or it's about what's the appeal and how you make it relevant. Thank you so much. That was fantastic. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure.

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Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. It was Bangalore. And that time of the day. And mostly it's brown spirits that are being consumed. And his reason for drinking vodka was that his wife will be able to smell the spirit in his breath. And basically she's not going to give him anything to eat when he gets home. And that was the way women were looked at. That okay how can we appease her so that he can drink. You know.

And that's really a tactic. And a lot of brands even now give away different carriers, frying pans so that when he gets home, he has a frying pan in his hand. And she's like oh wow you got a frying pan and you know go back there and get me another one. So you know. So women are a big part of the Alcobev industry and coming up with ways and means to you know make her happy and you know enhance the all-male consumer you know drinking. And that's slowly and steadily of course it is changing. There's so many women now who drink.

They drink whiskey, they drink beer, they drink everything. And a few years ago people used to say that oh wine is for women. And you know vodka is for women. And no woman likes whiskey. And I meet women all the time who are breaking those rules. I remember we did like a little pop up bar with Kati Saak. We did that at Little Black Book Delhi before. I think they got their second round of funding. So it was still a smallish team. Now they're like a massive company. And there were about 35 women in the room.

And only one guy, some techie in the background was supposed to be the software or you know some guy. And they were like schooling my bartender that the whiskey sour that you've made is wrong. And this is not the recipe of a whiskey sour. And you are way out of depth. And for me that was the time when it was like an eye opening experience for me. And we just thrown together some very you know nice palatable cocktails that everybody will enjoy. It's like a crowd pleaser, couple of hits. You know like make a mint julep but make it with whiskey.

Or make a you know make a nice whiskey sour loaded with you know don't let the egg sort of come out. But women were like so quick to catch oh this is sweeter than what it needs to be. Or this is got too much mint or you know. And I realized wow this is things have changed. And they know their drinks. They know what they want. And they were so it was lovely actually to see that energy. And maybe that was because they were mostly women in that room. Because a lot of what the you know earlier I think what you know that lady also shared.

Priyanka shared that you know how in the bus you are actually standing in the corner. But when you are given that environment then you see women really open up and you know come into their own. And I see a lot of that behavior being reflected now because you know there's so much of because of social media there's so much of power behind community. That you know you can be a woman who doesn't have to get married or it's okay to say no to kids or it's okay to pursue a career. You know there's so many women I mean Archana is an inspiration for me.

Yes you are. So there are a lot of women who sort of written their own path and they're able to share their story. And that's sort of motivated a lot of people to come forward and to live different lives and to choose their own. So yeah it's an exciting time and Alcobev is responding but we don't want to respond like say that especially for women. No pink viewers. No no. Because honestly women hate that like when it's engineered or doctored to be for a woman like we don't get as if we don't get stuff which is so so stupid.

I mean I know women who can I mean do everything better than a guy like like everything whether it's cocktails or it's rolling something you know what I mean. But women can do everything better. So. Sorry. Sorry. Okay questions. Archana. Sorry. Karan. I'm just curious what you think about the people who are doing. I'm just curious what you think about Johnny Walker doing Jane Walker. It has to get your blood curling at some level right. It did. It did. I didn't want to name them now that you have I can talk about it.

What do you think what do you think went in that brand managers head or the marketing managers head. Why would you think somebody like them would do something like that. But you get invited to this forum. Karan I'm happy you brought that up because I didn't want to say anything about them but I think that maybe a guy was behind it who didn't even consider that you know maybe it was like oh it was women's day and you know they tried to take a spin on it and call it Jane Walker rather than Johnny Walker. And it ticked off so many women worldwide.

They were like oh my god I never thought before I reached for my bottle of Johnny that it wasn't for me all along. Suddenly you're I mean suddenly women felt alienated that all this time I'm using this product thinking that it's as much mine as it's yours. But you put a question in my head that oh it was never Jane it was always Johnny.

So I feel that that was a big mistake that was a little bit much a little bit like dove trying to do the whole you know bottles in the shape of women's bodies which I was which I thought was taking the concept too far when you over engineering a concept and you're like you're like trying to make it so relevant that it's irrelevant by the time it gets executed. So I think that was a very classical you know what not to do. You know marketing to the millennials and women how not to do it. Rajiv has a question. So I'll start on a lighter note.

So you know I'm one of those people who my team makes fun of constantly because you know I'll go for the good tasting drink which will invariably turn out to be pink. And so in terms of you know take me through the process right because a lot of senior leaders in teams are men as you know we've discussed here. And so now let's say you've got this amazing insight about millennial women because you've done your consumer research and now you are a millennial woman and now you're trying to break through and actually go and get that decision made.

So can you take us through you know what's the process and what are the difficulties you encounter. So you know I don't think I have a plan which is like A to B answer but what I do believe in is research. I constantly do research even when I'm having a conversation with people in my mind I'm making notes about how they come across. And it's amazing the kind of stuff you learn from people who may not even be connected to your product. They may just be you know you learn how people think.

And I remember we were having this little we've got a channel in Tali it's called Cocktail Crew India. We just recently launched a film on it which was in which Diwendu Sharma is playing the lead. So we keep doing these little you know films these short films where we call you know a lot of millennial audience men and women. And one of the very interesting things that I learned there was that you know one a girl told me like this girl basically works with Accenture and well to do. The other lady was from working in a bank.

So that's the kind of crowd that I had and they were also bloggers and writers and their free time because everybody has two jobs now right. And she said that I asked her simple question I said what will you make of a guy who orders a cocktail in your date with him versus a guy who orders a scotch on the rocks. And this was because we were coming out with an entire campaign on what cocktails to push for Kati Saak for the coming season. So I could have never imagined the answer that that girl gave me.

She said that if a guy is going to order cocktails I'm totally judging him. And I said why she said because if he knows too much about mixing drinks then I don't know it's a little you know effeminate to me. Which was you know shocking because you have this whole movement about oh you know we have to be so accepting of women and women are out now. But how do they feel about men doing things in a female territory is a little or something that they don't fully you know. There's a I think there's a bridge to climb on both sides right.

And so this this woman said that you know but if a guy orders a scotch on the rocks then I'll think that he's you know more my kind of guy. So I said why because it's expensive or he's got taste. She said no because he'll drink it slowly and he'll talk to me. That was perfect. Okay. On that note. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. My next guest is Alok Shankar country general manager Fitbit. Alok has over 25 years of experience in the field of sales operations finance networking IT and HR. Well that's a lot of things. That's a lot of things.

That's why he's country manager. Did you notice no marketing? No marketing. He has worked in dynamically changing marketing market conditions. He has an in-depth understanding of fast moving technology goods in communication devices and Fitbit fits all of that into one. Alok most of us are aware that millennials are redefining healthy living. You know we've had a little chat about it in a previous session as well. A decade ago or so exercising was synonymous with old fashioned gym. But that's changed a lot.

And eating clean was about maintaining the right balance and you know a plate full of food and how much of what there should be. Cut to today and what you see is an influx of fitness trends which by the way come every week and go every week. And you know trends that appeal to millennials. Some of them are fads. Some of them stay. But a lot of that has to do with lifestyle. And a change in the way we look at fitness itself. And it's fascinating that technology and lifestyle find such a great intersection at this point.

And Fitbit is such a great case study. On that queue, tell us how a brand like Fitbit is entering into a category where I would like to believe that women are big consumers. And or at least increasingly bigger sets of consumers. Are there exciting projects in the pipeline? How are you tackling this? How do you think about the millennial woman, this whole lifestyle technology intersection? How do you think about the future? How do you think about the future? How do you think about the future? How do you think about the future?

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You know, your health and fitness goal is your own. We just want to enable you to reach that in the best possible manner. Very interesting. The questions? Yes. Two questions here. Daman, you want to start? Hi, I'm Daman. So I remember seeing an aggregation of data that you've done across countries, just to show how fit different countries are and stuff like that. I have two questions. One is, what are some of the top use cases that folks in India are buying your product for?

And what are some of the top use cases that you see them not using the product for? Because you have signals which tell you what the person is using the product for. Are they very different from some of the other countries where you have farmer penetration and the other countries? The second question is, do you see different usage patterns between men and women at an aggregate level in India specifically? And the reason I ask that is because, like you said, more than 50% of the users abroad are women.

The concept of fitness I've got to understand in our country is fairly different. Like you said, you know, you get fit. So, between men and women are there significant differences that you see in terms of usage patterns or in terms of aggregate data? Okay, so let me try and answer. Hopefully, I'll remember all the questions. Otherwise, you can prompt me back. I think, I mean, to simplify both the questions, we're looking for insights. A, us versus the world. And B, men versus women. So, us versus the world, I'll start off.

I think one of the studies that we did and it was widely reported was actually on sleep. Because Fitbit is actually doing a lot of work globally on sleep. Our data is actually almost lab quality that we do. And the interesting bit was that we were the second most sleep deprived country in the world. Only next to Japan. I believe that. Right? So, as you would have seen that. So, that was one insight that was very, very interesting. And as you would have read, more and more the studies are showing that sleep is actually

a very, very core and a critical element of your overall well-being. Even if you want to lose weight, you need to sleep well. Right? If you want to have, you know, manage your lifestyle related diseases, you need to sleep well. Right? And at least sleep a minimum number of hours. Okay? So, that is in some sense, you know, the global versus India if you wish. In terms of the key drivers, I guess what you're really asking about is what the goals are. What are the key motivators for people to use Fitbit or you know, what are the key goals

for health and wellness? Something that resonates very well in India is weight. Okay? So, typically, we kind of think that people expect that if you are thin, you are fit. Right? Again, it's a probably a good correlation to say if you are sort of fit, you may have lesser of the lifestyle diseases or thin. So, weight is one which is there. I guess not surprisingly enough, sleep pattern of people wanting to know how they are sleeping, you know, what kind of sleep stages they are in.

That is we have seen as also kind of resonated very well with the users to do that. And just being overall fit, being fit kind of a thing. Those are some of the three kind of things that we have seen. Globally, if I were to look at that, you know, and especially if I look at our female audience, in a lot many places, as we have seen, women have so many roles, right? Apart from being homemaker, you know, working and all of that. So, devices like Fitbit kind of helps them, excuse me, devote enough time or to their own fitness journeys, right?

So, it's a device which helps you kind of understand better. Have you been able to put that much time around wellness and fitness, you know, in your very busy overall everyday life? A lot of use cases around people or women after giving childbirth wanting to get back into shape, right? And then again, it's a big journey as we all know to lose all, you know, the fat that you may have accumulated over the childbirth. How do you get back in shape? So, devices like Fitbit help again people on their journey and get back in shape.

So my question is, given that you are a global product, how are you approaching both product design and, you know, marketing in particular differently in India as opposed to the rest of the world given that there are these differences that you just mentioned about Indian consumers versus the world? So, I think in some sense, there are many commonalities as we all know. So, when it comes to product design, you know, the products are quite universal. So our focus is to try and give the best sensor package that you can get, right?

In a couple of key sort of form factors. One space is the watch space. So that's a certain form factor. And the other space is what you call tracker space, right? So those are the key form factors that we focus on and we continue to like I said evolve with the sensor packages. So every generation will have something more, better. We are adding things like SpO2 sensors which come in there. The heart rate monitors continue to improve. So from a product design aspect, it's far more global.

On the other aspect when you say localization, actually the key thing is all about data. You know, when I talk about localization like we said, the power of brands such as Fitbit is the fact that we have the world's largest health database, right? We have trillions of hours of sleep data, steps, exercise, right? And then we use that to customize it for that specific person, right? So if you are in India, based on what your sort of eating habits are, based on what your

exercise habits are and a little bit on your genetic sort of makeup because we know what height, weight, so on and so forth. We are able to mine the data, customize the algorithm for you in that specific country, right? So a person in a different geography or a different sort of health wellness profile will get something totally different from what you and I may get in India. And that is how we localize it, right? So it's not to say, okay, just the communication bit. It's the whole sort of information and data gets localized for you.

So you are basically personalizing to the unique individual rather than worrying so much about, okay, this individual in this country or in that country. True, true, got it. Thank you so much. I think that's a great case study in personalization though. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's a pleasure. My next guest is Karan Kumar, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer, Fab India. With a focus on storytelling to drive conversations, Karan has led several brands to category and industry leadership positions.

He's a founding member of the Marketing Society of India. He's been selected twice to present his research papers at the ESOMAR Asia Pacific Conference. Welcome, Karan. Thank you. Now, a recent study says that 8 out of 10 millennials find videos to be helpful when they are searching a product or a service, 8 out of 10 millennials. In fact, they are 85% more likely to purchase a product if they've seen a video explaining either the product or what it can do for them.

And you also know that Comscore's report which is the marketing impact suite and we've got data from October 17 to October 18 tells us that millennial women are far more likely to be multi-platform users and use multiple devices than their male counterparts which means they're probably easier to reach on the internet now than men are. Comscore also tells us that there's a rapid shift to OTT and that rapid shift is being driven increasingly by women and not by men. And that also means that women are paying for the video that they're watching.

I know you've chosen to speak to us about the role of video today. I'm curious where it fits into the brand journey for your customers, especially women given all of this data. Fab India does sell online but a large part of the business brand is also brick and mortar. So there is clearly a customer journey you've identified and a role for video and video on the internet which drives purchase in some ways. We'd like to understand more of how that happens. Thanks. That's quite a preamble and I'll try and do justice to that. So two parts to this question.

Let me first try and address the one that you mentioned about the role of video and the role of video in the context of an online versus an offline kind of a journey. Interesting one but I'll just, if you allow me, I'll just come back to it in a bit because for me as I see it, as we see it as a marketing organization, the role of video is not really platform dependent. It's pretty much platform agnostic and I'll talk to you about why I say that in a bit. But before that, I think and just to get this entire conversation into context, we discussing

about marketing to millennial women and we discussing that specifically in the context of the internet age as it were. Millennial women, if you would take the puritanical definitions of who can be called a millennial, would probably be people today who are in the age brackets of the mid 20s to the mid 30s, right, which roughly overlaps with the entire what is earlier called or popularly called Gen Y. There is enough and more data, some data that you mentioned right now from Comscore, there's

enough and more data from BCG, from Google on how India is not just a hugely and rapidly growing internet market. So, 400 million was the last number that I saw estimated to grow to close to 900 million in 2022-23. But that aside, the interesting part is that in that rapidly growing market internet being consumed in the form of OTT in 2023 is going to be close to 625, 630 odd million consumers, right. So, imagine a market which has 900 consumers, 900 million consumers out of which about 600

odd and some change is going to be consuming content in the form of OTT, video content, OTT content. So, clearly that contextualizes the role and the need for brands to actually wake up to the reality of that kind of messaging and that kind of format of conversations and video becomes important, video in the short format, video in the long format. The other reference point is that I believe this generation, the millionaire generation is probably the most hungry, focused, intelligent generation or a sub-audience group that I have

seen in the longest time in marketing and I have been around here for about 16 to 18 years. I think it's a generation which is very clearly conscious about brands which are trying to pull wool over their eyes. And this is a generation which is actually seeking truth, it's seeking authenticity, it's seeking a conversation on real issues. So when you put this entire context of video, internet and that proliferation and you put the context of the woman and why only the woman?

I know the context of this session is woman but if you look at the entire millennial subgroup of audiences, you are putting together potentially a plan where you are attempting to communicate with them in video format. Your content is in video format on issues which are very very real, on issues which are very very authentic, on issues which are very very probing to this particular subgroup. Give us an example. So some of the pieces, some trends for the want of a better word that I have noticed about

this particular subgroup is their search and association with causes that matter. This is a kind of an audience which is very very, and more than ever before, curiously looking at causes which matter to them, which find a resonance in them. And they look at brands which can espouse, stand for those causes, support those causes and automatically if they see the brand making a genuine effort there, they embrace brands more often than the other brands. It's also a generation which is extremely high on what I call social proofing.

It's a generation which is not one which takes very keen to broadcast messaging and broadcast advertising as how the marketer has done for the longest time. It's a generation which wants you to put your product out there, get that product evaluated and have feedback on it from their friends, from their families, maybe from influencers, experts in their field, seeking a lot of information on authentic reviews, on authentic feedback on the product and not necessarily only relying on the advertiser spiel on what my product can do.

It's also a generation which very clearly is always on and is extremely, extremely early adopter of what's happening in the technology and the internet space. So it's a generation which wants you to be alive in that socially connected world. It's a generation which wants you to be engaging with them in that ecosystem. They want you to be on top of every new social platform that's emerging. They want you to be on top of every new feature any new or current platform is coming out with and how you respond and engage with them on that.

If you are going to be speaking to this subgroup of this audience, then I think and for a moment I'll just keep Fab India out of this. I think the conversations that you need to have are very, very story driven and very, very authentic and true in terms of what they espouse. And at that moment I will bring Fab India back into the conversation because at Fab India we have one of the most beautiful heartwarming stories that I think any brand in India for sure has. It's a beautiful story about our products which are derived from, which are inspired by all

all of India's rich craft, heritage, traditions and yet these are products which are extremely contemporary, extremely relevant, have a certain intrinsic self worth in them and are there for the generation of today to use and to make them become a part of their everyday lifestyles. So how do you connect products which have been crafted by craftsmen, by master weavers across the various nooks and crannies of this country, through remote clusters, often hand made, hand

produced, hand processed, laboriously almost every product being a masterpiece in its own self because you can't really replicate it. And to get all of that and to be the perfect bridge between that stakeholder, that very critical stakeholder of the society with the urban Indian consumer. The stories that you tell of this journey, the stories that you tell about the origins of the various forms of craft that our products represent are extremely heartwarming and extremely

relevant stories and these are stories that go beyond our individual product categories because when you look at apparels, when you look at home and lifestyle, when you look at furniture, furnishings, when you look at our personal care products, when you look at our organic food, all of this is derived from traditional craft, art, in some cases traditional wisdom, traditional knowledge. And I think those stories are extremely relevant stories for the millennial for sure, but I think for the larger audience group at large.

And the best way of telling those stories is through the video format. If you contextualize that with what I just said when I began speaking to you on this video format and you juxtapose that with the internet penetration, you look at that with the kind of high quality of data that we get today at relatively extremely low costs, penetration of high quality mobile devices at relatively lower costs. looking at how OTT becomes such a potentially humongous platform for you to have conversations with, it's but natural.

It's but natural for you as a marketer to put these pieces of the puzzle together and to look at a slightly larger macro view which says that you need to speak to this audience who speaks truth and who seeks truth and authenticity, who seeks stories, who consumes internet already in the largest format of the story being told in terms of videos. And this segment and this habit of internet consumption is only there to grow irrespective of any data point that you look at that. Thank you. Are there any questions?

Hi, I just have one question related to the trend is changing and it has changed too related to online media and offline and social media. So considering your target audience and especially women, what's your feedback and how is it changing? Can you share that point of view? The online and offline? When you say trend, you say trend on media or are you… It's more offline and online, how the shopping, the era is moving. I'm glad you… I'm actually glad that you brought that point up because that's something that

Ramit started off by asking and I said I'll come back to that eventually, I did not. This is what I'll say, as part of your core marketing responsibility, one of the things that you are tasked with all the time 24 by 7 is to create consumer demand. Create consumer demand, create consumer preference. Yeah. Capture that demand and service that demand in as profitable a manner as possible. That is when you capture higher margins, that's why you add more value to the organization.

Now if you go back to this, the core concept of creating consumer demand, then creating consumer demand as I see it will be done through, will ideally be done most effectively in the context of the audience that we are speaking through telling stories. Now those stories create demand and post demand being created whether a consumer shops with us or for us online or offline, that's pretty much irrelevant. We have an extremely large retail footprint, close to 300 stores in this country in more than 100 odd cities.

That's an extremely important source of business for us, the retail format, the physical retail format. And yet we also equally passionately drive the online business. So insofar as I am concerned, how a consumer shops, whether he researches online, buys offline, researches online, places orders online, picks up products at our stores, all of that is secondary to the fact that we need to first create the demand in him or in her. And therefore irrespective of the channel format, I think for me the method to creating that demand is through storytelling.

And storytelling for me best happens in a video format across the platforms that we've discussed. I have a question. Is there any examples? Let's take Aperil as an example and I can see you're wearing a Fab India jacket. You know, is there any examples of feedback that you've got on the internet, for example, or on social media or, you know, as response to the storytelling, which has actually led to creating, creating lines. And I know that at Fab India, you do change your, you know, your lines available rather quickly.

Where is that feedback coming from? Is social, is internet, is all of this storytelling? Is the listening process sort of part of it or? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we have a very, very robust system in place where we are always seeking consumer feedback and information. We call that the customer insight and information management system where we are bringing in information from social platforms, from our visitor books, through tablets employed at the stores through

which we collect feedback, through store administered questionnaires, which is amongst the largest exercise in this country done in-house by a brand, through direct mails, through phone calls. So, social listening as a tool aside, there is a very large mix of elements at play, which makes us continuously strain our ear to hear more about what our consumers tell us and speak with us. That obviously, that obviously goes a very, very long way in us making our new product lines or in us even altering and making corrections in the current product lines.

There is feedback that we receive from various age groups, from various town tiers and market classes, and we try and incorporate all of that feedback to make that kind of change because today if we are available in more than 100 cities, clearly, it's our responsibility to be responsive to consumers in higher tier markets and lower tier markets and in every geography of the country. We take that responsibility fairly seriously.

And I think the marketing system that we have, the consumer information system that we have is something which all of us are extremely proud of. Okay, lovely. Okay. So, that was wonderful. And the two takeaways for me are A, storytelling works and B, video is a format that in general works and we know is going to be a format for the future but works for the millennial women audiences and storytelling on video therefore becomes both an art and a science for Fab India and for all of us. Thank you so much. My pleasure. It's been wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd now like to invite Rajiv Pansal from HD Media. He's the CEO of our HD Digital Streams which is really all the digital assets in the Hindustan time system. We've heard a lot today about creating brands which have a voice and which have a voice that resonate. But we've also heard some parts and some very important parts about building culture internally that resonates externally and is empathetic. I know at HD we are and in our digital teams we are trying really really hard to build a culture that will be more empathetic.

Tell us a little more about that. So you know really it's about building consumer centric organizations. And so let me start with the bad news and I think we heard plenty of it amongst all the groups that talked today. Today when we talk about millennial women in particular we don't have enough women in our leadership teams making decisions. We certainly don't have enough millennials in our overall organizations. Absolutely. So we are very different from the customers whom we are trying to serve. And then also on top of it we tend to breathe our own air.

So whatever we are building we fall in love with and then we blindly go and execute on it without being able to bring the consumer perspective in. So that's the bad news. The good news is we can this is all fixable. Right. So as a CEO I see my job essentially as one to bring in talent to make sure talent is successful and then you know stays for a long time and contributes to the organization. So I'm not someone who believes in setting you know specific a I want to hit this diversity goal.

I do believe though in opening up our organization in a way that's a process that just brings in all types of talent. Right. And as we've done that we've seen that our organization has gotten younger and it's gotten a lot more diverse with women leaders inside our organization. Right. So in that I would actually disagree a little bit with what Priyanka said that you know our organization should exactly be a model of exactly a customer. That's just not possible.

There's going to be a journey towards it and we're going to be servicing all different kinds of customers and we just can't say okay we're going to pick this customer and our organization is exactly going to be that. The second thing is we need to be a lot more data oriented. We talked a little bit about you know how we are now getting in a situation where we're getting lots and lots of insight from consumers but it's difficult to break through and make sure the right decisions get taken.

I think Pushpanjali was referring to you know some situations where she is a millennial is bringing this information and you know sometimes it can be hard to get through. So we need to become a lot more data oriented. The third thing I'd say is you know we really try and need to now bring the consumer in totally into our organization. So we need to do our foundational research. We need to do our ethnographic research and we need to take all the different functions along when you're doing product design.

So we need to take if you're doing a consumer internet product you need to take your engineers there. In our case we need to take our editorial people there and we need to take our user experience designers there and we need to take you know the entire organization. We take our sales team sometimes to our consumer research and that helps us get a lot of empathy for the consumer across a broader organization. So it's all fixable but we have work to do. Great. You know the cliche says there's no better time to be a woman than now.

Frankly I hope we say this every day for a very long time and this time actually becomes better. You know we're probably we've been guilty of lazy stereotyping perhaps chasing proven formulas for sales that have suddenly become redundant or will be in the future. The what and the how certainly need to evolve in the demographic dividend that's emerging out of a population of young affluent decision makers who are women and need to be leveraged.

It's never been truer for us on the internet as brands you know that that is already sort of the situation we're dealing with. Today's young women today's young women are not people who are ready to settle for less. Today's young woman is confident, influential, she's not ready to be typecasted, she's ambitious, willing to go the extra mile for what she wants.

Hopefully what we've learned from our brand masters today will inspire other marketers and everybody else who's watching the show to unravel many more fascinating sides to the millennial woman and thereby make that an inherent part of their brand journeys. On that note ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us on episode 6 of Brand Studio Live co-hosted by HT Brand Studio and DMA Asia. A very special thanks to our friends from DMA Asia and Vatsal Ashar for powering this wonderful event.

Thank you to Fever, our radio channel who does a wonderful job every time of covering us. A big round of applause for our 8 brand masters who took out the time to be with us and for everybody else who made this session so interactive. Thank you to CommScore India for providing a data layer that helped enrich this session and to Ritu for providing the white paper that actually started off our thinking. Thank you for tuning in. We look forward to coming back with another exciting theme and an all new set of brand masters. More details coming soon.

Thank you everyone.