What Sabyasachi Mitter teaches about brand purpose

Digital is becoming a significant part of a brand success. Hi, you left Asian Pains to start your own venture which is Fulcro. How has this journey been and what are some of the entrepreneurial truths that will continue to be relevant to you? You see, when you have been in a job for a certain period of time, I have came out of IAM Calcutta, so I had a fairly successful career with Asian Pains and then when I quit and I started, the first thing which happens is that you believe that you are the same person in the same job,

now you are an entrepreneur. So, you treat life in the same way that you did in a job. So, the first thing which happened is that all the security went away, you were all alone and fear takes over. So, I think the perseverance is the first lesson that you learn as an entrepreneur not to give up. You know, I have learned as an entrepreneur is never get married to your own idea. I would believe that every successful entrepreneur has changed or adapted his line of business to suit the realities of the market.

The third thing is the people that you surround yourself with. As an entrepreneur, because you are insecure, you try to build these walls around you where you want to be the boss, you want to control everything. I think hiring better people, encouraging people to do the job while you look at how the business can grow is the third lesson that I have learned. So, Fulcro has different verticals that cater to the different needs of the brand. Tell us a little bit about that and most importantly, how do these verticals all come together? Sure.

See, when we started off, we were like any other digital agency, we were just one agency. And we used to go to clients and say that, you know, everything you get under the same brand and the same agency structure. So, that's why you should deal with us. And it worked. But then about three, four years back, I realized that that model was actually crumbling. And what changed was that, say, about six, seven years back, digital had a very small share of the marketing budget. Right? So, companies could not afford the best.

But in the last three years, digital is becoming a significant part of a brand success. And therefore, the budgets are also increasing. We were, like many other agencies at that time, the jack-of-all-trade agencies. We would do a bit of everything. So, that's when we went into this entire transformation of the company. We have five verticals or literally five profit centers who operate independent of each other. And there are digital and creative agencies compete against their respective digital and creative agencies.

A media agency competes against media agencies. And data is a fledgling fifth company, which reports them to me. But, you know, that's really too small. Where it all comes together is the parent company, which is Fulcro Consulting, which is where I work along with some other ex-CMOs or industry veterans. And we work with brands to put their entire digital strategy together. A recent study said that people feel interrupted or stalked by bad digital ads, but they don't really mind the good ones. Is that good news for marketers?

And if yes, then how can brands give consumers a better browsing experience without making them feel overwhelmed? Having said that, I think there are two problems today. Let's address the problem of too much ads being shown to a person, whether it's good or bad. Then you show too much advertising, that is itself an irritant, even if it's a good ad or a bad ad. I mean, I'm watching, let's say, a piece of content and you show me 10 ads in the middle. I'm not going to like it, right?

That's the first part of the problem that publishers need to moderate the amount of advertising that is shown to users. The second thing, I think people who are willing to pay for an ads-free environment. So, more and more opportunities should be made available to let the user choose whether he wants a free ad-filled environment or a paid ad-free environment. That option is not there in many cases. Today, advertising is far more subtle. It's far more in context, far more in the life of. They don't like product windows anymore.

They don't like my three blades are the sharpest in the world. Honestly, the millennials don't care and that's really the reason why such traditionally good advertising is now considered bad advertising because you're trying to sell to me and I don't want to buy you. I want to know why I should buy you. As we step into 2020, what are some of those digital marketing trends that brands can no longer ignore? I think the first one that I would like to talk about is new because we didn't know it was going to happen last year.

What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world?

What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? What are some of those digital marketing trends that we have done in the world? ! So can the internet go to them through conversations? That is where voice recognition, NLP, a whole bunch of native Indian language NLP and voice

recognition technologies will probably evolve. It's a very difficult space. The third is that personalization which we have talked about for the last two or three years will hopefully start getting more effective with more machine learning and AI going into the back end. But if you ask me what's going to be the one which is really new and really getting the maximum interest this year and going forward into next year, I think that's going to be