What Siddharth Banerjee teaches about brand purpose

Context is important because it means that you have spent time understanding the consumer or the audience, their needs, their aspirations, what they value and what vocabulary you could potentially speak in. Let's start with your life as a marketeer and you yourself. I mean you're a master at standing out in the crowd and you've dealt with brands that have done it quite masterfully over the years. Tell us what's happening in Facebook, what's the big news, what's happened in the last year, what marketeers can look forward to.

It's an exciting time to be at Facebook and it's an exciting time for consumers to use our family of apps, whether it is Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp. And India, I think we are privileged that we have millions and millions of people who are using our family of apps. And that, like you correctly said, gives us a sense into their behaviors, into what they are appreciating, how they are using our platforms for communication at one end, to connect at the other end or for commerce at the third end.

What's of specific interest this year, since you asked about what's new, is Instagram. Very rapidly growing, being embraced by a large population. And what is interesting is that we've put out three things that are really resonating with both consumers as well as advertisers. And the three things are described, and since we are all marketing folk, it's described as the three eyes of Instagram. Impact, interactivity and influencers. And those are the three consumer behavior shifts that are happening on our platform of Instagram.

Again, WhatsApp, we spoke about the access that it gives, not only to big business, but more importantly to all the SMEs and the MSMEs. And then Facebook overall, as an ecosystem where people come and share, connect with their friends and family, build communities and groups. I think overall, a very exciting picture, a thriving picture of what's happening on our family of apps this year and going into 2020. Are marketers now able to connect this family of apps into a connected program?

There are various ways in which marketers are able to use Facebook and Instagram together, from creative assets to optimization. There are very nascent and new ways that we have launched of connecting a Facebook ad and linking it to an action, a consumer-generated action on WhatsApp. And which is why I say that the possibilities are immense for consumers, for advertisers, the entire ecosystem. Tell us in this cluttered, completely commoditized world sometimes with lots of choices, what are the mantras for standing out in a crowd?

I know you've written a book on this, which is called Speechless. That's right. But give us some contours. I think the two worlds kind of collide. Understanding consumer behavior, understanding how brands can be built with love, care, measurement, passion, all of that and the principles of effective communication, which is the book Speechless that you spoke about, which I co-authored with a friend and an inspiration, Roshan Abbas. I think the principles of the two are literally from a foundation lens the same. The first is great insights.

So whether you are building a brand, trying to stand out in a crowded shelf in a Kirana shop or whether you are a public speaker, speaking to an auditorium full of 200 people, trying to make your idea come alive in the minds of those 200 people, who by the way, have their smartphones in their hands and therefore can be easily distracted. The challenge therefore remains the same. And the two principles that I have found useful for both these contexts are two principles, namely context and authenticity.

As we describe in the book Speechless, context is important because it means that you have spent time understanding the consumer or the audience, their needs, their aspirations, what they value and what vocabulary you could potentially speak in. Authenticity is about having your unique take, your unique point of view, what brands call their differentiation. So I feel speakers need to have their unique voice. And that I believe helps brands or people stand out in a crowded world. And that hasn't changed much in many, many, many years.

Brings me to a second book that you've written. And you know, you're an author with more than one narrow having been short. And that's a book you've written with your wife. That's right. And it's called 52 Red Pills. Is that right? 52 Red Pills? That's right. And it's really a book about how the old meets the new and the point of inflection for hyperlearning and lots of wisdom, if I may put it like that. Tell us a little bit about that. That's fairly recent. That's fairly recent. In fact, the book is just about to get launched.

52 Red Pills essentially is about a hyperlearning journey that my wife and I undertook last year. As you know, every year has 52 weeks. And we decided to delve into topics which potentially could make us healthy, wealthy and wise. So from good sleep to eating organic to mindfulness and meditation to resilience to creativity. And we went and met experts in various fields to try and hack into their learnings and their journeys while doing a lot of research ourselves.

And the third part of that process of hyperlearning was about the debate and the discussion, which resulted in distillation of three or four nuggets that we started implementing and integrating back into our lives. It dwells upon the need for us to continuously replenish ourselves with knowledge, with insights, with inspiration. And that's what we have tried to do in this journey last year. This year, we were approached to turn it into a book. So hence the book. Wonderful. I want to get to know you a little better. What is Siddharth outside of work?

I know you write, but and I'm assuming you read a lot. But what are your other motivations? Where do you get your energy from? I get a lot of my energy. My meditation is actually long distance running. So between reading, writing and running, apart from spending time with my two teenage daughters and my wife, who's my partner, both in life and in recent times on the book 52 Red Pills. That kind of keeps up with any and any and available leisure time that I have, apart from a very, very hectic day job.