What this BrandMasters episode teaches about brand purpose

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome back to HT Brand Studio Live. The show in which India's top CXOs share their insights into the hottest topics in marketing, branding and business. I'm Rameet Arora and I'm with a brand new set of brand leaders or brand masters as we call them in the newsroom today. Our brand masters don't just inspire us with their ideas and perspective. They open up new ways of thinking, give us a lot to learn. Without further ado, let's get to today's episode. Thank you.

A.B.C. book to consult for newspaper circulation numbers, a couple of channels on TV and the choices basically writing their own plan. A handful of outdoor agencies, a cinema plan that was largely slides, All India Radio completed the mix. That's it. Our greatest accomplishment in planning media was getting the right reach for our copies and price effectiveness. And then it all changed. And it changed so rapidly that we had no clue what was happening. Television exploded. Measurement became real. The choices on print began to multiply. FM happened.

Outdoor suddenly scaled. And there was the emergence of some large and some small standalone media agencies. Media planning became both complex and sophisticated. An art and a science. True to being the media pundits that we were, we began to make bold predictions for the future. Almost all of which never came true. Basically because we had no handle on the speed or the nature of the change that was to come. And we certainly couldn't have predicted where we are today. What we are seeing now is no less than a revolution of sorts.

With a mobile phone, connectivity and digital disruption have forever changed the nature and function of media as we knew. Two forces that perhaps have maximum role and quite obviously maximum role to play are the rapidly shifting consumer behavior and everyday. And the almost ubiquitous availability of data or at least so we believe. But thanks to digital marketeers, we certainly have more control on scale, speed, relevance of campaigns. There's certainly a lot more to measure. The question is, have you really mastered the connected world?

And what's the balance between the offline and the online? What does 2020 herald? I'll let my brand masters answer these questions. And on that note, I'd like to introduce my first guest, Archana Agrawal, VP Media, Airtel. Archana is a passionate media advocate with over 20 years of experience. Previous assignment was country manager for media at P&G, where she was instrumental in winning the first Khan in India in 2006. She also led the media for the high decibel launch of 4G and payments bank in India. Welcome back to the show, Archana.

You know, I know you were here on the show a few episodes ago and you told us media plannings actually become much tougher. Taking on from there, give us some brushstrokes. Tell us what's happening. What does the media landscape looks like? Are you going to stick your neck on the line and make some predictions? What's going on? Set us off for today's episode. So, I mean, the way I looked at it, in fact, I spoke about a lot of media stuff, things last time. But I just want to take a step back and look at what happened in the last decade.

And you talked about the fact that the pace of change was so fast. So, I actually call it the decade of disruption because the way technological changes happened, I think it was far faster and the adoption was far faster than any of us had anticipated. So, the way things have changed, television, you know, everything went in through a disruption. The way consumers consume not only media, but also the way they consume entertainment, the way they shop today, the way they today call for an Uber or the way they call for food, for example.

So, everything has changed and this has happened because of the, you know, the cheap data prices, the adoption of mobile internet has really exploded this whole piece. Right? And that disruption we've also seen in media. Now, you can look at the disruption from television when you see the fact that moving from analog to digital, then there was this whole piece of the measurement changes which happened, then there was the whole new tariff orders, 1.0 and now 2.0,

which has obviously led to a lot of disruption in the market, the rise of, you know, vernacular, voice, print, digital, really exploding, vernacular. I mean, regional print is actually today growing far faster than, you know, the erstwhile English and Hindi print for that matter. So, all of this has seen huge amount of change that I see in the last decade. And I think this decade, I don't want to make any predictions as such, but I think this decade is about unlocking the potential of what happened in the last few years.

Let's start with the first media thing, which is say TV. You know, I have been hearing about a death of television since last 20 years. I don't think it's ever going to die. It is the only medium which I see, believe has the scale to drive. Basically, it's the only medium which has the scale to drive large awareness, large reach at the most cost efficient levels, right? Second, if I come to digital today, you know, look at the social platforms have actually helped the rise of digital and obviously OTT platforms have helped digital grow.

Today, half the population of the countries on social media. Now, there are multiple social media, different sorts of audiences on different mediums, right? And from a brand standpoint, it becomes important to look at each of these mediums on social and on the other platforms like digital, live sports, live TV and various other things. And see what's relevant from your audience standpoint and beyond them. It's not that I can pick and choose. I need to pick and choose. It's very critical because I can't be everywhere.

I can't be spreading myself through things. Print and digital print, and I'll just call it digital now, have to complement each other. And they have to, you know, grow together hand in hand. If you're going to look at these two entities as separate things, it's not going to work. Voice, that's a prediction I'm going to make. Voice, I think, search, voice searches, we've all heard the numbers, so I'm not going to get into the stats. That's something which is, again, you know, people are saying growing.

But I think brands have not been able to look at how do we advertise using this whole piece. And I think that's the big unlock which will happen. I think the other big thing is measurement because I'm hoping that the next decade sees one unified view of the consumer. Because I think that's a big need of the industry today. I'm doing my television advertising separately. I'm doing digital advertising separately. I'm doing print advertising separately.

But at the end of it, I may be still talking to the same consumer and giving them multiple exposures to my communication. And maybe even being inefficient. How can I get one unified view of the consumer? And that's my ask literally of the whole consumer so that I can target them very efficiently. The other big thing that I see growing, you know, I was reading some numbers, some 350 million consumers are into gaming. And that's only growing.

Look, today gaming and both e-sports and fantasy gaming is actually emerging as alternate careers for a lot of young people. How do you unlock the potential of gaming as a medium to use from an advertising? Because there are enough and more casual gamers. And it's not only about the hardcore gamers, but a lot of casual gamers who are playing games, who are wanting freebies and are looking for stuff. And there's huge ways.

There have been some examples of brands using gaming to drive awareness and to drive certain sales and stuff like that also for certain. And I'm not talking. I'm talking about FMCG brands also. So I talked about digital print. I talked about the fact that measurement is something which I'm looking at one unified view of the consumer. Gaming is one thing. I think that's the way I'm looking at my media going forward. Do marketers need to be risk takers, innovators? Do they need to give their agencies and their media teams more leeway to innovate and learn?

I mean, is there an innovation budget in media anymore, in media investments anymore? I can't talk about other brands, but I can talk about Airtel. And we've always innovated or we've always experimented. Let me say, I've said that I think in one of the earlier episodes that we continuously experiment. You know, if you want to be ahead of the curve, you need to start experimenting now. In fact, maybe it's already too late, but it's never too late to start. But when we experiment, I think it's very critical.

Many times we're not really clear about what we want from an outcome. I think it's very clear, important to be clear about what the objective is and why are we doing this experiment? You know, today voice. I don't know how many, how many advertisers have experimented from an advertising standpoint on voice. So I'm saying so that's why. But again, as I said, it's important for us to take a step back and see where do we want to experiment?

If today I know that I don't have a role to play in voice, for example, or I don't have a vernacular regional website, then I just can't keep experimenting on vernacular just so that I've learned something. So it's important to have the whole consumer journey mapped out before you start the experimentation. And which is why we wouldn't have experimented on certain things, but we're experimenting on other things. Fantastic. Thank you for setting up this episode and setting us up on lots of conversation.

I have a feeling many of these themes are going to continue. Thank you so much. Yes. My next guest is Anand Chakravarti, Managing Director, India Essence. Anand has over 20 years of experience in media marketing and advertising. He started his career at Research International India before moving to Lowe. He also worked at Maxis and he's worked at Reliance Broadcast Network. Welcome to Brand Studio Live, Anand. Thanks, Amr. You know, planning in this very mobile first digital world is deceptively complex.

There are all these consumer segments that overlap. There are very few black and white decisions. The whole there is India, there is Bharat, doesn't happen anymore. And then there are all the ecosystems and I dare say world ecosystems that don't even always talk to each other. Exciting, very dynamic, but very, very challenging planning in a world which is connected, but not connected. So, look absolutely, I think it's a really exciting time to be in media and marketing. It's exciting and scary as well, right. You spoke about India and Bharat, right.

And I think that's the old way of looking at India because I don't think India is about just an India and a Bharat. There are probably six different Indias, especially if you look at it through a digital lens. So, if you look at audiences today, there's the top end of digital natives, affluent consumers who are probably on platforms like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Tinder. And then you go to the middle class of India and then you see other platforms starting to come in. WhatsApp plays a much, much bigger role.

You still have platforms like Google, Facebook there, but Instagram starts making an entrance and Facebook probably takes precedence. And then if you go one level lower, this is where you start seeing new ecosystems starting to emerge in terms of usage, right. So, you have Shareit, Sharechat, TikTok. Then you have a whole ecosystem of fundamentally new to internet and these consumers could be across town classes, but they're still entering the internet through very, very different touch points.

At one point of time, everybody got onto internet through WhatsApp and Facebook and YouTube. Now, the entry point for a lot of new to internet consumers is very different. Then you have the Jio phones ecosystem and we know that iOS is a completely different operating system. And finally, you also have feature phones in India, right. So, when you talk about mobile, we still have about 200 feature phone consumers who still haven't made the transition to data. And talking to them is equally important.

And I think this is one of the few markets in the world because if you look at China, it's only the Chinese tribe. If you look at the US, it's predominantly still US and of course TikTok is making an impact in that market. But it's here where we are grappling with these wall gardens and they all don't talk to each other. And I think today as a marketeer, the biggest challenge from a media plan 2020 is, you know, how do you really look at these platforms and how do you integrate them?

So, the integration, the story that we've been talking about, I think today platform expertise on all these emerging platforms, you know, is what we really need to educate ourselves on. And I'll be the first to admit that we know very little about it. Hazard against even sales team of some of these platforms really don't understand what their consumers are doing on these platforms. Then the second thing is that I think engagement trumps reach. I think reach today is a given because in India you have multiple platforms reaching millions of consumers.

But the challenge is with so many platforms available to audiences, this increasing amount of Hode Kalu's attention deficit. And therefore you have to look at engagement more than just reach. I think the third area which I think is super important for media plan 2020 is the whole conversation around brand safety, ad fraud and viewability. Because as you get into new ecosystems, there are much more chances of fraud happening. Brand safety starts becoming a real issue.

And I think now the debate that does brand safety or advertising in a brand unsafe environment affect brand equity. I think that debate is pretty much put to rest. Yes, it does. And it affects sales. I think viewability starts becoming important. And that's why I think some of the things that Arjuna spoke about which is measurement starts taking precedence and becomes really center of plate for media 2020.

In this very digital first planning environment, in this very mobile centric planning environment, do we sometimes tend to forget that there is a world outside the internet that needs to be integrated which is offline? I mean there is what we call the traditional media, the conventional media. So I think look, I don't think that we have anybody call a digital first media planner. And I don't think you should have. I think you have to have a consumer first media planner who starts looking at the audience and segment you are talking to.

And then decides where does the journey begin. So look, integrated planning, I don't think it's a new conversation. It's been around for quite a while. And I think the industry has been able to make decent amount of progress. The challenges remain like forget about India. If you look at even more evolved ecosystems like the US and the UK, where the share of adx or the quantum of digital spends is still. You still don't have what you call as a single panel which measures both TV and digital.

There are ways to get around that which may not be 100% accurate. But at least start giving you a view of how integration is going to help you get to more consumers while using multiple touch points. Interesting. I just get the sense that given there is no measurement which puts all of this together, there is no metric which puts all of this together. And given the fact that we still seem to be getting more and more and more data, data seems to almost be flooding out of the computers.

Is it true or am I sensing wrongly that marketers and media planners are feeling the need to get or to be more qualitative, to be more creative in their media thinking almost as an antithesis to all the hard-nosed measurement that's happening? I think data can be a bone, it can be a bane also. Too much of data can kind of confuse you and send you in the wrong direction and not looking at data I think is sacrilege today. I think I've always felt that media is part science and part creative.

Look, we are in a creative business, you're talking to human beings at the end of the day. Right? And you're never going to have enough of data that suggests that doing A versus B is always going to be the right way to do it. And I'd like to believe that media agencies don't, or media professionals are not starting to become geeks only dependent on data, but also keep the creative part of their brain open. Because it's always going to be a combination of the two to get the right answer.

But that said, I think today measurement and the kind of, the kind of let's say statistical modeling, attribution modeling that's available out there, is starting to throw more light on what are the right outcomes one must chase. So Anand you spoke about ecosystems, which is a great thing. What I want to understand is what is the kind of brief that you would expect from a client, keeping such a complicated system in mind and therefore,

you know, is the client focused enough to give you a brief that discusses all these aspects of the ecosystem that you talked about? So firstly, let's say that firstly, all clients don't write briefs really well. That's the fact, right? And I'm sure there can be a debate on that separately. But that said, I think, I think partly of the onus lies on us. Because I think, look, the other clients are running a business, right? Media is one very small part of their larger ecosystem.

So I think it starts with us. It starts with how much effort partners take to educate clients about what's happening in the world. So I think that's the kind of the ecosystem and throwing light on it. I think the briefs that I love to look at is moving away from this demographic definition of consumers to more consumption, stroke, habit led consumer definitions. So am I talking to, I would call, let's say India three audiences. These are audiences who are more likely to be on ShareChat and TikTok and less likely to be on Facebook and Insta.

Right? And I think that level of, let's say, expectation also requires us like to say to help educate clients better. Because it's a partnership at the end of the day and it's not easy for them to change the way they think until, unless we facilitate it. On that note, thank you so much, Anand. Thank you. Cheers. My next guest is Rajul Kulshreshta, CEO of Madison Media. Rajul has over 20 years of experience with advertisers such as CNBC Asia and agencies such as Universal McCann, Zenith OptiMedia and Groupim.

He's been an integral part of the media story in India and fancies himself as a builder of business. Welcome to the show, Rajul. Thank you. You know, everybody is talking about digital media planning. In fact, and I'm being provocative here, but it's very difficult to have a conversation with marketeers or media planners without spending a considerable amount of time talking about digital. But the truth is that there is a task of managing media choices which are both offline and online. Yes. And it's a complicated task, more complicated with everyday.

What's your philosophy? Where do you stand on managing these many realities? See, times change, okay? I started, as you said, I started my career 20 years ago. 20 years ago, our focus was print. And it was the most important thing to get a front page in the Times of India. It was the most important thing to understand the Times of India rate card. Then we moved on television, moved on to a whole bunch of things. Then there was an explosion of television. Times change. Brands change. We're now in a digital world. The brand needs change.

So, the marketers change. However, at the end of the day, they all have a goal to chase. And either it could be a sales objective, it could be an awareness objective, it could be whatever. And in this, I think the media person has to be far more integrated in his approach. He needs to look at life from a media agnostic perspective and more from a brand perspective. So, what he's trying to look at is what are the needs of the brand in this changing environment. And what media perhaps works best for the brand, even the objectives that the brand has.

That's the way I look at life. I'm actually beginning as I'm growing older in the business, I'm becoming more and more media agnostic. So, I wouldn't go, I would rather still call myself that I'm moving towards becoming more of an integrated person than just a digital person. Or a TV person or a, you know, whatever person you wish to call me. So, I think that is the way that I would see things now. I know Madison does lots of work in projecting media investment. What is the state of the media? They do an annual report. Yes.

Does that report also reflect, reflect integrated thinking investments across mediums? What's happening? Yeah, the share of television hasn't fallen. So, there's the good news. It's still at about 27%, still at about 36%. It was last year, it was 37%. There is a 1% share drip. There is a huge surge in digital. But that is naturally so given the number of ecosystems that do exist. There is no doubt about that and it's the new medium. Print is stagnated. Radio is just about there. Cinema, not much growth. So, it's practically status quo.

As an integrated planner, and I assume that means that you're building a culture of integrated planning in the agency. Yes, absolutely. What's the success metric? That's what I was asking earlier. What is it? Whenever I get a brief from a client, my one question is, what are you chasing? It has to be very, very clear. So, for example, I have a client who said, I'm chasing search queries. The brand has to respond to a certain number on search. Fine. So, you've got to understand that. And it's very important for a media person.

And I like what Anand said earlier, that it's incumbent upon us also to educate the client to a large extent about what the trends that are taking place, what's happening. But at the end of the day, it's not my business. I'm a partner to my client. The client has to understand his business. If the client doesn't know what he's going to do, guess what? I don't know what I'm going to do. I can go back and say, listen, I think your brand needs awareness. The client says, no, I don't think my brand needs awareness. I need more engagement.

And like he said, engagement trumps reach. This is what he said. And I agree with that. Totally agree with that. What are you chasing? So, I think that's where I would see the measurement matrix that I would look for. The fact that clients are asking given the plethora of choices available on the what's the right mediums and what's, what is the right ROI from each of the mediums and hence what's the money. How do you go about doing, answering this kind of question for clients?

Because I think all clients, the budgets are, you know, remaining more or less flat while plethora of choices are increasing. So, how, and you think agencies are equipped to help answer this question? Or is there something that we should do internally? I'm going to answer the second question first. Agencies are not equipped to answer this question. Some agencies are. Most of them are not. So, what we do, and I'm only going to give you my own experience at Madison. What we do is we try and answer that question via business analytics, via media modeling.

There's a market modeling mix that you work on. To understand what is the interplay between objective and media and the kind of money that you spend. So, there will be a lot of instances where you realize that using an only digital-only strategy only works to a certain extent and cannot work beyond that. Similar is the case with television. Is television only going to be a top of the funnel game? Or is it going to act like a medium at the bottom of the funnel? So, you've got to understand those interplays between television and business objectives.

So, we do that. We have that capability. Are we damn good at it? No, we're not. We're learning. We're getting there. Okay, but are we trying to make a difference? Yes, we are. And I think the onus is on us to skill people. I mean, whatever training sessions we have, and I've worked in large agencies as well. Our training sessions have to include that business angle to media. Right now, we're just talking reach frequency. Reach frequency drives something. We need to understand what that something is. Hi, Raju. Hi.

My question is, you work with both B2B and B2C brands. Yeah. Where do you see the risk appetite as more to try new things? B2B. B2B. Because they've been able to do that because they've changed the way that they look at business. It's no longer on a, I mean, the matrices that they used to look at earlier does not exist anymore. So, they've obviously, they're willing to experiment more. Right. So, I'll take that note. Thank you for a lovely cat-fake chat. Thank you, guys. Thank you. My next guest is Mohit Joshi, Managing Director India, Havas Media Group.

Mohit started his advertising career with Mindshare before moving to Universal McCann. He's managed brands such as Pepsi, Darbar, Hero Honda, Breckhead Benkeezer, and Hyundai. The World Federation of Marketing Professionals has recognized Mohit as one of the greatest marketing influencers of 2018. Remarkable. Welcome to Brand Studio Live Mohit. It's lovely to have you here. You know, there's been a considerable emphasis coming out of your agency in your group on meaningful brands and we've all heard about it.

But, where does meaningful media choices fit into that discussion on meaningful brands and is that a natural corollary? What's the 2020 mantra? So, in my view, 2020 or this decade will be M3 approach. M3 approach is basically meaningful, moment, media plan. And these three, at least the first two are very, very critical. I'll specify what meaningful means. We have something called meaningful brands as a study. And according to this study that we've been doing over the last 10 years, 80% of the brands

could disappear tomorrow and consumers would not even care. Finally, the consumer connect is missing. And that's where meaningful media comes into play. If you are connecting with the consumer in a very meaningful way, in the right context, in the right media, that the consumer feels is meaningful for him, then you will be able to make the right connect. When you talk about content today, meaningful content. Meaningful content can be created by a creative agency. It can be created by a media agency.

And all the media agencies sitting over here will vouch for it that they have enough creative sitting in their side of the business. And as somebody very rightfully said, we are finally, we are a creative industry. So, no matter how much data we get, finally, it's the creative that drives our business. And hence, the integration with creative and media will be the key for this decade in my view. A little challenging in today's day. I mean, there's been considerable effort.

There's a whole media agency ecosystem that has developed, which in many ways exists as a bit of a silo. And there's a whole creative agency ecosystem, which is its own silo. There's a marketeer in the middle. Time for media agencies and creative agencies to start working more closely together. I completely agree with that. In fact, we don't have mandates which are integrated mandates, but still we try to be the integrated agency for them. Try to bring the creative, the media, the digital, the PR agencies together.

Because see, what is happening is the consumer is not bothered about which media ad is finally going to come. The consumer is only bothered about the content that he or she is consuming. So, our plans in 2020 have to be content driven and not media driven. So, the fundamentals of planning in my view are changing significantly. From a media led approach, we are going to content led approach. So, you talked about content being decided first and then medium coming. What dissemination points will it be? Where does the consumer fit in that kind of a plan?

And if you start pulling in content, then media, then consumer, if you do it sequentially, do you think that reaction to market, time to react to market becomes longer? A very good question. In fact, I missed this part when I was talking. How do we decide what content should we be in? Right? It cannot be decided basis bar. I was talking about meaningful brands as a study and what we do in that study is for at least about 25-30 categories, we ask the consumer. For you, what is the most meaningful content where you want to see this category?

The consumer is telling us that this is the content that I would want this category to be associated with. And the inputs are coming from there which are being fed into the media plan or the content plan as I call it. Leaving out the new age brands, which traditional brand in your mind has done a great job of building its brand on digital, as with a digital first approach? Sure.

You know, I wouldn't say they have done a great job because end of the day, scale comes with, as you expand, you'll need more and more touch points to create the top of the funnel. But Forest Essentials is one brand that I have seen which has over a period of time built its entire ecosystem through digital and has become a good brand today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Lovely having you here. I'd like to welcome my next guest, Ashish Tiwari, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Digital Future, Generally India Life Insurance.

Ashish is a marketing professional with over 16 years of experience. He's worked for brands like Hero, Vodafone, HCL, Nokia and eBay. Welcome to the show, Ashish. Thank you. Thanks. You know, as a marketer, I'd like to hear your approach on media planning. Is it all hard nosed or is there a softer side to media planning? Is there a more creative side to media planning? What is your expectation from the way money is invested into media from where you sit? Okay, so I'll take a step back. Media planning is execution at the end of the day.

What takes a center stage for me is the consumer. Today we are talking about data. We are talking about these new avenues which are coming up. And in all amidst of all of it, what we are missing out is that there is a carbon fiber made human in between somewhere. And we are looking at everything from a silicon based angle. We are talking about data, zero ones which are black and white. Humans are not black and white. They are all grey. Okay, they are anything but black and white.

What you need to look at as a brand, you need to look at, take a pause back and look at what is the itch your consumer has. Put that consumer in the center stage. What is that itch your consumer has? What are you going to do to solve that itch? Where all that consumer goes to figure out either how can he scratch that itch or what all possible solutions for solving his itch. And then put your message across in those mediums. It's all about owning that consumer and consumer journey.

And today media planning itself has to become an integrated part of overall marketer's journey. It cannot be that a brand planner will plan a brand, then a marketing manager will plan a campaign and media planner will carry that campaign out to the market and then there will be somebody who will be spraying and praying that somebody will respond. In your overall media plan coming back to the basics, put your consumer in center, decide what itch you are going to solve. Decide where your consumer is looking out to solve for his itch.

Where is he looking to be scratched? How is his entire, it's a physical word. Your media plan has to become physical. Your communication plan has to become physical. And media plan needs to get integrated in your overall consumer journey. In essentially, to summarize, put your customer in center, plot his journey, look at where all he connects to solve the itch which your brand is trying to solve. Put your communication which the customer is already consuming otherwise. And I think that should work.

At a very fundamental level, Ashish, media planning is about consumers. So how is it that you are saying that media is only execution. The whole existence of media planning is to first understand the consumer. So I am not very clear on what are the differentiation you are trying to make between execution and the planning process. So what essentially I am trying to say is and that's what I have seen over a period of time. What you are saying is very essential to business that media planning is about customer.

But the moment you break this customer over multiple people, the essential question is who owns the customer. Who owns that customer and who owns that customer experience in that organization or in that brand. The moment you have more than one owners and putting their own perspective on the same customer is where you get that fragmented view of customer.

There has to be one central owner of the customer and the whether it is media planner, whether it is the putting out to the communication or whether it is the creative planner or whether it is the story planner. All of these need to get together to own that customer. And I think with the current with the current book of world as a again acronym, which is like volatile uncertain word, which is currently happening. What I am seeing more and more happening is people are looking at medium first consumer later. I am I am a digital first organization.

No, you are. There is nothing called as a digital first organization organization will should and will always remain. If you want to succeed, you need to remain a consumers first. It is where your consumer is going. If he is connecting back to you in digital, you can plan your communication on digital. But if he is connecting back to you in physical world, you need to plan there. And that's what my point at that point, what I was trying to make.

You're saying that it is it is imperative that both the marketer and the media person drive an integrated view of the consumer, right? Yes, very much. Consumer first, then you pick your media choices. What happens to the central narrative of the brand copy the creative construct of your advertising? Does it follow media choices as it get customized? Is it one narrative across mediums? How do you how do you marry media and creative in this today?

If you look at the customer earlier, we were it's what you are essentially asking is personalizing your messaging to the customer. Earlier it was a mass mass messaging became personalized to customer. Today is the time when you have to personalize your message not only to the customer, but to the medium and to the movement. It is not the same message which you can carry a splash across all the media choices.

Your narrative will remain same. The execution of that narrative needs to be customized to the movement in which consumption movement a customer is consuming your message. If it is not customized to movement, you have you probably have a chance that it will not be consumed. I think as a brand, we cannot make that mistake any further that we can have same message being splashed across. You need to customize it to the medium. Alright. On that note, thank you, Ashish. Thank you. It's been lovely. Thank you. Thank you.

My next guest is Geetu Bhatnagar, Head of Marketing, Oracle India. Geetu is a business strategist and transformation leader with more than two decades of experience. In the past, she's worked with organizations such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Compaq. Welcome to the show, Geetu. Thank you. You know, we've made a conscious effort across episodes to have the B2B voice in all our conversations. And even though a lot of people will tell you that media planning is a very B2C construct, that's not really true.

So I'd like to start off by asking you, what does media investment or media choices look like from where you sit as a B2B market? Great. So I've heard the co-panelists talk about media and they've talked about TV and radio and outdoor and how the last decade has really spanned out. But when I look at a B2B space, especially the 2020 plan clearly looking ahead, our media plan is, I would say, trending completely towards digital. It trends towards social, I would say, for brand empathy and brand soul building.

When it comes to demand, you know, thought leadership, putting in the perception change, competitive positioning and creating that demand, we actually still work very clearly on our targeted B2B frame. If you look at a 2020, I just have a small acronym. We look at creating 20% pipe for the business. You know, that's a co-mandate as a B2B marketeer. And that 20% pipe can actually come from the top 20 enterprise accounts. So we look at a very account based marketing approach. And when we look at an ABM approach, it's an infinite loop.

So you carve out the journey, start from customer obsession, as he talked about, get to know where your customer is consuming content, hyper personalize that content for the consumer clearly, and then make your media choices accordingly. So as a classic example, we started working with Live Mint last year. And we've created this site, which is a plethora of content. We have gone from white papers to blogs to articles to, you know, Gartner studies, IDC research reports, positioning and pegging our products out there.

But at the same time, taken a shift towards storytelling, because storytelling brings out the empathy, brings out the brand, brings out the customer need. And as my CEO says, Larry Allison, he wants customers, customer stories coming out in our discussions. So we just in fact today, launched a video with OYO Rooms, where with Live Mint, where Gaurav Ajmera is talking about his business model, his disruptive business model. And we're talking about how Oracle technologies have helped him steer through this digital world and, you know, be ahead in the game.

So there are multiple levels that we play with. But if I look at my 2020, it is truly, you know, that 20% pie with the top 20 customers through an ABM to answer the first part of your question clearly. Marketing through relevant content and marketing to the right audiences through the relevant content strategically is clearly par for the core. In your case, how do you manage the efficacy or how do you measure the efficacy of content? So we are a data company. We everybody talked about data being the prime driver of digital businesses. I have my database.

We are in fact going, you know, to every country and opening a data center. Every 30 days, there is a new data center coming, you know, to keep the compliance, regulatory, security, all those elements in check clearly. Oracle is one company which is in a very strong position with because we have multiple tools and technologies which cater to businesses to use really and measure and manage. The content that you have. So I will give you a classic example. Super Bowl is not big here. But if you look at US, Super Bowl is really big.

So two weeks back when the Super Bowl happened, there is one of the Kansas City Chiefs basically. They were playing this year in the finals after 50 years. 50 years it took them to come to this game. But two years back, the Chief Digital Officer invested in a digital strategy. How do I change the game? How do I change the perception? How do I put them out there as a solid brand? What he did was invested in technology. So Oracle CX technologies were leveraged.

And what they did was they increased their fan base internationally, you know, because the world is getting flat. So they actually could move out to followers on the internet. And they have 5 million subscribers, you know, and a 200% engagement rate, I would say increase. What else did they do? They created these long form contents because they realized that the back end story of the players was important to build that brand equity and the soul that I mentioned.

And they created content where the players were seen dreaming, doing barbecue, serving, volunteering to bring that human to human connect. And when they put that on TV, that's where, you know, the connect started building. They actually played with Snapchat and TikTok in a big way. And they created very hyper personalized content for that age group. And then when the game actually happened, they took the whole digital experience away and brought it to the stadium that day.

And ticket holders using Eloqua CX were given very personalized experience at the stadium. So that's just an example of how multiple technologies, today there are black boxes and softwares available where you know you can actually through social listening, through SEO, through multiple digital body language readings, you can actually know who the customer is, what does he want, where is he consuming content, so you can personalize and give it to him where he consumes it.

And clearly you are not reaching the masses. So it was easy choice for you to make. Right? But the moment that you expand your choice of who you want to reach, would your thinking change? No, totally. So if you see, it is not that I am not reaching the masses. But when I do the media planning split, the customers are there, the awareness is there, the perception change is there and the create demand is there. So those are my four buckets and I plan my media plan accordingly, content accordingly.

As I was just talking earlier, if you look at my competitive brands, you know, you look at Amazon or you look at Google, you look at Microsoft, they are largely B2C organizations. So they are able to pump in their marketing dollars into a brand positioning and dovetail the cloud business under it. With Oracle as a cloud provider and a pure B2B, we definitely target our demand in a certain way. But we still, if you, the small medium businesses, the developers, the developers are individuals who actually are developing coding and building on our platform.

So we need to still target them. So it is, it is just that the marketing dollar mix and the medium tactics become very varied and spread out. So the content of education, research, analysis goes in a certain way. We often confuse media planning with planning large conventional media and planning for large masses of customers. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My next guest is the head of consumer communication, Uber India. Ashrem Gupta has 24 years of experience in the field of communication, banking and PR.

Prior to Uber, he was with brands like Samsung, Volvo, Aysher and General Motors. Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to have you here. Ashrem here. How is the role of mass media, and I say mass media, I mean conventional media, print, TV, radio, changed in the last decade in the media mix, the way you've seen it across various organizations? Thanks for the question. I'd just like to take you through my career. Yeah, sure. It was an interesting start. I started off in 96 and I used to run a magazine on interiors and lifestyle for good living.

I didn't know that. So that was my first rush of media planning. At that time I did an exhibition called Solid Air. And the first mandate was to get a front page in Times of India and HD. That is all that mattered. So that was in 99. I moved into auto components. Again, print was the main media of communication. Moved into Times of India. I used to head brand communications for the treaty clients. So there we had a very simple rule of media planning. It was just used to be 80-20.

So you spend 80% of money in print and remaining 20% used to be in outdoors, radio, television and also digital. So I'm talking about the year 2006-07. So digital used to be the dhaniya that you generally go to buy in a vegetable mind. Chalo digital bhi kar late hai. So that was 2006. Then we moved to work with a truck company. Again, print was the main media or platform to reach the consumers. Then we moved to a mobile company. That is when the entire gamut of platforms were used. It was print. It was digital. It was outdoors. It was cinema.

But still print had a very predominant role to play. Because of the reach. It had the kind of audiences that we were targeting. The kind of regions we had to target. The tier 2 towns as well. So print always played an important role. Now suddenly I've joined a company. It's all about digital. So everything is built around digital now. So what used to be the predominant thing about 22 years back. There's now a very small component of the entire media mix now.

And if you look at the consumers, they have to be internet savvy. They have to actually understand internet. They have to be very digital savvy. So for us, media mix revolves around digital. But we have other medias like print, outdoors, to some extent social media channels to complement what we're doing in digital. So that's been a journey so far in 24 years. Interesting. And have you seen the media landscape change dramatically in the last couple of years? Last few years?

Well, from a media buying perspective or from a company perspective, it's the entire thought process internally in the company is also digital led now. We don't talk about print to that extent that we used to do it earlier. We do talk about radio. We do talk about women centric channels because Uber has now launched some products and mobility solutions which is targeting women. And we've also launched some mobility solutions which is targeting entry level working professionals.

So looking at the customer base that we're now targeting with our products, we do look into other media as well. But primarily our thought process is all digital driven right now. Interesting. And there is the end consumer which is of course all of these audiences. But there's also a very important consumer which is the drivers. And as you expand across the country, recruiting drivers and building that brand is as important if not more important than the end consumer brand.

It is but just to give an example, we did a driver motion series with some drivers just about a few weeks back. And really found that they're actually digital savvy. Everybody's on a mobile these days. So even if our driver community, for them the first consumption of content is on digital as well. If you talk to a panwala or if you talk to anybody, person working in your house as well, they consume content on their mobile phones. That the online video consumption for Indians has moved from 2 minutes to 52 minutes in the past couple of years.

So we find that the audience might be different. Drivers are different from different main drivers. But I think the focus of consumption primarily would be digital there as well. Would you think that when you go to B and C class towns or probably deeper to the rural India at some point in time or if you diversify businesses, so Uber is looking at autos or something like that. Do you think traditional media will work better there than the digital medium for the first cut outreach?

Traditional media will complement our digital initiatives. Like even if you go to a town say Jamshedpur or Raipur or Rudrapur or Patna for that matter, we will find a lot of consumers still on the digital media there. So primarily aim would be to target the digital media, but we're going to complement that with say print media as well and outdoor advertising as well. But still the focus is going to be digital there. I have a question for you. There is so much focus on digital, rightly so. I mean you're obviously dealing with paid media,

but you're also dealing with media that you've neither earned nor want, which is media being generated most often by consumers, by customers, maybe by the drivers, which is, you know, on social media, which is the reviews, the feedback. Is that all par for the course? Do you think of it when you measure, you know, what your presence in media or effectiveness in media is or? Naturally, naturally now we don't have to be now confronting with one HD. We've got thousands of HDs on the platform.

And each one is as powerful. You've got millions of followers, say X has one million followers, Y having two million followers. So now as a communication professional, as a marketing professional, I think our challenges have become many, many fold. So we don't have to now just deal with the HDs of the world. We have to deal with multiple HDs. I think that's that's your role as a communication professional has actually suddenly become much bigger. Yes, and more important and relevant for the company. More important and relevant and more challenging.

Yes, it is. What would be your measurement metrics to drive awareness? And how are you looking at measuring awareness from a digital standpoint? Well, you have the normal parameters that you generally have for digital parameter measurements. So that's already there. But ultimately it boils down to what is the end benefit of the business as such? Are we getting more riders on the platform? Are we getting more drivers on the platform? So ultimately it boils down to those two parameters.

You might be doing all the CTRs and CPR analysis. All those graphs are nice to see. Ultimately the boss and the CEO or the marketing heads or whoever was making actually spending the money. The only question that he wants a relevant answers to is, is it helping my business to grow? On that note, thank you so much. Lovely I have with you guys. Thanks. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on this episode of Brand Studio Live. Co-hosted by HD Brand Studio and DMA Asia.

A heartfelt thanks to our friends from DMA Asia and Vatsal for powering this event. A big round of applause for our Brand Masters. Who took out the time to be with us, share their insights and their experience in the newsroom. Thank you to our radio partner, Fever FM, who helps evangelize the program. We'll be back soon with a new episode. Do keep watching.