What Pallavi Singh teaches about brand purpose

I am a big believer of learning. We have to learn, unlearn and then move on because what was great yesterday may not be best tomorrow. With the brand launch in India, we were just discussing that. What has been your marketing strategy behind this? I mean, how are you looking to position MG in India? So our brand purpose is to enable exciting experiences every time. So whether it is at the store or it's a digital medium or even with print and TV, it has to be exciting.

That's number one. And then we have four pillars of the brand purpose, which is innovation, community, experiences and diversity. So everything has to revolve around it. And set that, these four pillars are not existing anywhere else in the world. This is only for India because India is a different market. You have to look at the segment very differently and you have to kind of apply those things in a different way. So we said, look, it's a legacy brand. And every single time we went to UK to understand what the brand really stood for, we looked at the

heritage and we looked at how heritage can actually understand modern philosophy of how customers looking at new brands entering into the market. So we did something like stories of MG with old classic owners. We did in innovation. So that was community and experiences. Then we looked at innovation. So we did hackathons. We did Thai Summit. We tied up with IIT Delhi to understand what's happening in the innovation space. And then we looked at diversity. So with diversity, with better India, we did MG

changemakers. So that's another piece of content. So it's always been about content commerce and conversation. That's how we've looked at our strategy. Within diversity, women is a major focus area for the company. Absolutely. So we are 32% women for workforce. And I feel so happy about it, you know, as a woman, but I also feel it's not just about hiring women. It's also hiring women who are talented in their own space. Right. And at the manufacturing level, you know, right now we are building our cars and, you know, every single

time you see women building that building those cars, you just feel a sense of immense gratitude. But also you feel a sense of belonging because you see the companies actually looking at being future forward. So you've been doing a lot of content recently with Tripurto, with Better India, you mentioned Better India, especially the native advertising segment. How does content marketing help a new brand, you know, cover relationship with the future customer?

I think content marketing today is hygiene. You have to do it. But how you do it is a question. So... Few do's and don'ts. Yeah, I think the do's of doing content marketing is really finding what is the purpose, why are you doing it. And I think it's a lot of And secondly, it's really tying up with the right partner who understands it because ultimately it's all about amplification. You have to gamify it. If you don't gamify it and if you don't amplify it, then it's in a little circle and you feel good about it.

But you have to measure it if it's really working for you or not. And I think the don'ts is just don't do it because it's a good thing to do. And it makes you look, wow, I'm talking about content marketing and content is good. But if it is not driving conversation and if it does not drive engagement, then I think it falls flat. So that's why for us Better India because it marries with the brand purpose, it marries with the pillar. And then Tripoto, of course, we want to show people don't didn't know MG for a long time.

So it's a lifestyle part of it. Yeah, it's a lifestyle. And you know, we want to show the world of MG and Indian abroad. And Amol Parashar is also somebody who is unique in his own space. You know, a boy who has grown up and done his own stuff with TVF and stuff like that. So we wanted to take a character who has his own following or her following in the future maybe. In your opinion, what should be the right media mix for for a automotive brand that is looking to tap the millennial and the Gen Z crowd?

And are there any memorable campaigns in the sector that you'd like to maybe recall? Yeah, I think it depends from brand to brand and what your target is and what do you want to do and what is your long horizon in the market, short term, long term, how do you look at it? But I would really say I think when a brand is entering into the market, of course, print, I won't say print that much print to some degree, but television and print together is a great combination to make an entry.

It creates impact for sure. But it has to be married with the right dynamic mix of digital for sure 100%. But for us, digital has worked really well because today we're in the age of digital, you have to have to and YouTube and Facebook are hygiene, but content to us really means how are you and Instagram, you know, it's just a year and we're 100k on Instagram.

So for us, Instagram is actually driving a lot of conversation and we see people shifting, right? Facebook audiences become a little more older Instagram audience is still the Gen Z, you know, so I think one has to have a different strategy for all. It's not one fit all YouTube works differently Facebook works absolutely differently. And of course, Instagram is something I think you can play with with the kind of features they have the security they have.

It's a very interesting medium and has a long way to go in terms of I think how brands can use this. I still think that brands have a long way to go to understand how to use social for real. But we've kind of little bit cracked it because of the right people in the team. So we don't have in my team, I don't have anybody from automotive, I have people from agency backgrounds. So they understand why and how to do it. But as you launch, as you expand your portfolio, where will the brand go in the next four or five years maybe if that's not too far.

Yeah, it's very exciting. It's adventurous but yet very challenging because the way the market is moving, I think the great challenge and the phase we see is that how the brand evolves, understands and commits itself to the market is very, very important. We have to evolve. What we do today may not be relevant tomorrow. So and I am a big believer of learning. We have to learn, unlearn and then move on. Because what was great yesterday may not be best tomorrow. Wonderful. And tell us a bit about Pallavi Singh outside of the workplace.

So there are two things, you know, I practice Buddhism. So I think that kind of channelizes my energy and it's Buddhism from Japan. It's called Nichiren Daishan's Buddhism. That's something which really gives me a larger perspective of how you should really lead your life. And second is of course, I like to travel a lot, which most people do. But me and my husband, we both travel a lot on motorcycles. So I have customized bikes for him together. So it's a passion. I really believe work hard, party harder.