What Venkat Mallik teaches about brand purpose

The thing is it is very very difficult for intrusive advertising to live and grow into the future. How has brand communication changed in the digital era? There are three fundamental ways in which brand communication has changed in the digital era and it needs to change further towards this direction. The first is how brands get defined. Earlier brands could be defined at the attribute of the functional level, now they need to be defined compulsorily almost at a purpose or a life role level. So that's one

fundamental change. The second fundamental change is the opportunity of actually using what are called mini insights, right, and what we refer to as strategic mass communication which digital allows and you know other media are not necessarily capable of allowing. And the third and the most important one, the one which is going to actually have the largest impact over the next few years is personalization. That through data and insight about individual consumers, brands are able to create

more and more personalization and will be able to create more and more of it as time passes. So do you think that marketers are not being innovative enough with digital because there's so much room to play with and they're still doing the kind of the tried and tested things? There is a tendency for marketers to apply what is called the lazy system one way of thinking which is by which I mean applying the rules of television and print and other sort of media that have been

around for a longer period of time applying the same rules to digital to some extent. There is some amount of that kind of thinking. Digital does require a completely new set of constructs from a thinking perspective. Digital strategy needs to be evolved slightly differently from the way strategy for other media has been evolved historically. And therefore while it's not as if you can sort of make a sweeping statement saying people are not being innovative enough, there is more room for growth and

improvement in that area. So if you look at like globally, FMCG giants such as PNG and Unilever are spending not as much on social media platforms and say companies such as Google and Facebook because they think that their content is basically either getting lost or they're not very sure about the measurability. Do you think that it will bring kind of more business to the publishers?

Actually, there has been a move by PNG and Unilever to cut back money on some of these channels. That money has gone back to television. That money has gone back to e-commerce players. That money has gone back to audio. So there are a lot of other people who are competing. And also media publishers, online media publishers because they offer more credibility. Yeah, online media publishers do offer more credibility. But like I was saying, you know, when you have Google, for example, and sort of allows you to not be present on particular,

you know, channel, particular channels or on specific next to specific kinds of content and so on and so forth. That gets kind of taken care of. So if you talk to media planners, they are constantly saying it's all right to work with Google and Facebook, right? At this particular point of time. Of course, PNG and Unilever have taken that move because of the fact that they weren't getting impact. Brand safety was also an issue. I mean, if when brand safety becomes an issue, publishers will stand to benefit, right?

And in the case of PNG and Unilever, there was brand safety at the bottom of the pyramid of the issue. The bigger issue was really what they were getting out of digital, right? But there may be other circumstances when brand safety actually is very, very important, where then working directly with a publisher may actually become significantly more important. There are a few brands that we've dealt with in the past, for example, public sector companies,

companies, right, who do find that, you know, the risk of digital, as you call it, being a very important criterion. And they would, for example, tend to prefer working directly with publishers because of the fact that there is a safety net and they know exactly where their ads are going to feature and so on and so forth. So will you call digital the nucleus of marketing and advertising in next year? It definitely is going to be, you know, it has to be because that's the way the world is moving.

You know, television through digital will also be a very significant reality of that kind of thing, right? And therefore, it's sort of the marketplace sort of gets, it's a bit like moving from analog to digital. You know, it's actually a fairly fundamental kind of shift in that sense of the word, right? And digital from the point of view of communication, from a channel perspective, which is in the context of what we're discussing, definitely, definitely has already become a very significant part of it in most countries,

in many developed countries, it's become bigger than television, right? And print. And print, of course, right? Print is an easier battle to fight than television for digital, right? But that's happened in some countries as well. And therefore, it's obviously becoming a very, very highly influential medium. When you look at digital from the native advertising point of view, what kind of a growth do you see? Native advertising is, I mean, one of the fastest growing ways of actually using digital,

but then many, many aspects of digital are growing pretty quickly. Native is growing very quickly as well. It will continue to grow because the thing is, it is very, very difficult for intrusive advertising to live and grow into the future, right? Right. And therefore, native by virtue of being in the middle of what the consumer is seeking, will always tend to have a stronger role to play, I think, as time passes. So it is a very consuming business. What do you do to relax? So advertising digital is actually like a first love for me, forever I'm in.

But there are lots of other things. We socialize a lot. We spend family time, a lot of time on sport and health, and of course, you know, professional reading and so on and so forth.