What Lloyd Mathias teaches about B2B marketing

So it's really about customer immersion, understanding your consumer, and then everything from marketing springs from that. So hi Lloyd. So you are a corporate leader, you've been a marketer and now you're an angel investor. So how has the journey been? Interesting. I think each was a different phase. So I enjoyed the corporate world, it was good. Worked with some exciting brands, PepsiCo, Motorola, Tata, HP. I think this is a new phase. It's always good to reinvent and do new things.

So I'm quite enjoying this phase. Now I work with very different people, startups, early stage, younger people, entrepreneurs. So this is an exciting phase and I'm quite enjoying it. So in your experience, if you had to evaluate the success potential of a startup, what would that be? I'd look at primarily three things. I think first is how strong is the product idea or the product or the service idea. So I think it's really the uniqueness. Can you give us an example?

I think the uniqueness, you know, there are a lot of startups that pretty much say that, okay, so-and-so is a big idea working. Globally, let's do an Indian version. That doesn't work. Whereas the moment we have something that breaks through a new model, a new format, I think uniqueness is critical. And uniqueness has one more dimension is that can that be wall-fenced? Is that patentable? Is that something that's, you know, different that let's say a larger investor who can put twice the money on the money can't overrun?

So I think one is the uniqueness of the idea. Second is what difference does that product or that service make to the consumer's lives? I think very often, you know, we get excited by the technology, but we've got to see the role in a consumer's life. Will consumers, will it make things easier from what you're doing? I think that's the second aspect of a startup. The third part is really having a vision. I mean, I always would look at companies that typically look at 5-10 years, that they really want to grow and become the next big thing.

Not startups that are looking, you know, to hopefully be acquired in, you know, 12-18 months. I think that's always a weak start. So I therefore look at the quality of the idea, whether it's got some IP attached to it. And third is the vision of the founders and what is the length. The other part that I would look at always is to actually judge the founders. Very often it's the people who make a great organization.

So are they committed people, people who really believe strongly in the idea and do they have, like I said, a long-term vision for the business? So you have worked, you know, both in the technology space and the FMCG space. So is there a fundamental difference in the way they approach customers? There is. I think FMCG, you know, in the FMCG business, you can see marketing at the center of the universe because the product doesn't change very often. You've got to go to consumers with new ideas, new packaging, new innovations, something interesting.

And therefore, it's very often the marketing story you tell them and make them, you know, excited about your brand. In the technology world, the focus is more on the product, right? So let's say in categories I've worked with, mobile phones, PCs, printers. I think it's, you know, every time you do a change in the product, then you go out and communicate to it. The product per se doesn't change so often. It's really, you know, every time it changes, you make a big announcement.

Whereas at FMCG, it's pretty much, you know, I worked with Pepsi for a long time and the core of Cola hasn't changed for more than 100 years. So you always have to go to consumers with new interesting stories. And therefore, FMCG marketing has its own share of challenges. Whereas technology marketing is really kind of, you know, supporting the product and really building business. Okay. So going forward, do you think there are going to be more unicorns in the B2B space or the B2C? What is it? I think difficult to say.

But India being a large consumer market, 1.3 billion Indians, I think consumer is always going to be a challenge. But India is also going to be the holy grail where great consumer companies can grow. Because today, even a mid-sized startup in India that's catering to 20 million consumers, it's larger than the size of, you know, a lot of companies. Right. So I work with one company that has about 25 million consumers. And the way I look at it, it's the combined population of Australia and New Zealand.

So, you know, just the scale of our population, you know, makes B2C startups challenging. But also the fact that what you can learn with the large population is good enough to go elsewhere in the world. So I think the skew long term from Indian startups will be slightly B2C skewed. Okay. So what is your view on the, you know, rapid growth of digital marketing in India? I mean, do you think that it has reached its full potential? If not, what can be done further? Oh, actually, I think digital marketing has a long way to go.

I think what we're seeing is really very, very early stages. I think the potential for digital is immense in the time to come for two reasons. I think one is, you know, just the near spread of the internet. Right. Today, we already have a large amount of smartphone users and internet, but it's only going to grow with time. Two is the fact that with digital marketing, you can do a lot of things on the fly, real time. Right. In the old days, you kind of created a campaign and then rolled it out.

Today, you can personalize the campaign down to an individual consumer and you can make changes literally by the second. So I think that really is opening up the whole world. So I think digital marketing is early stage, but as, you know, analytics get deeper, as brands get smarter, I think, you know, it's set for a sea change. And I think over the next three or four years, one will see the whole power of digital marketing. The second aspect is a couple of the new trends coming in. You know, voice-based commands are going to become popular.

I mean, you know, people are not just talking to Alexa to play music, but you can do a whole lot of things. Your Alexa is your Siri. So I think voice navigation is big. And then, of course, the whole play of what is called AI, ML, artificial intelligence and machine learning. I think that's set to change how we interact with our entire surroundings, not just machines, but with our families and friends. Suddenly, there's so much of stuff that can be done automatically thanks to machines getting smarter and being connected.

So do you think marketing can build companies? I mean, we have seen brands like Red Bull being built entirely on marketing. So do you see that, you know, more such Indian brands being built entirely on marketing? Oh, absolutely. But I would say I would not look at the narrow definition of marketing as purely communication. I would look at the fact that marketing actually is the voice of the customer. So marketing can build businesses and marketing can also actually help create new products.

Because once you listen to the consumer and you create a product that answers the consumer's needs, that in a sense is marketing, right? So product marketing is also in a sense part of marketing. So I do believe marketing has to remain the center of the business. The consumer has to, you know, always be the focus of what a business is all about. So I absolutely think that marketing, you know, can certainly, certainly build businesses, not just in, you know, categories like beverages, but even in mainstream technology and other business categories.

So last question. So what would be your advice to young marketers? I think two is A, have a passion. Two is go and understand your consumer. The more time you spend understanding your consumer, what are his pain points, how your product has got a part in his life, I think the better. So it's really about customer immersion, understanding your consumer, and then everything from marketing springs from that. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion.

So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion. So it's really about customer immersion.