DMA Trailblazer Series with WION | S1E7 - Future Insights from Marketing Leaders

At the beginning of his totemic work, Khalil Gibran described the prophet trying to leave his hometown, but he was stopped by a priestess who asked him to describe the future. And today on Trailblazers, we're joined by our own panel of prophets. Meir Nosh from Godrej, Neelama from Luminous Power Technologies, Kevin from the Jamie Oliver Group, Shagata from Tata and Vatsal from Dm Asia. Here to talk about the future of marketing. I'm Jasper Reid, welcome to Trailblazers. And now we're joined first by Meir Nosh from the Godrej Group. You're a great person to start the show because if I'm not wrong, when we look backwards, Godrej recently celebrated its 125th anniversary, right? That's right.

Okay, so you're an interesting person to start with when we think about the future of marketing because you're kind of Janus facing, right? 125 years back. Shagata will get to you in a minute. You might trump that record. We want you in the context of that history, Meir Nosh, to talk about the future. You've had campaigns like Musibat Batake Nehi Ate. How's my Hindi? And the collective consciousness, which were a deliberate attempt by Godrej to take stock. Think about what you've got and think about the future. How do you think about the future, Meir Nosh? So when we did Musibat Batake Nehi Ate, that was around 10 years back. That was around the thought that, you know, trouble doesn't come announced. And it was around a camp.

It was a campaign around safes. The penetration of safes worldwide is very, very low. And to a large extent, Indians, you know, if you were to look at it, the core consumer insight was that, you know, things are not going to happen to me. It's going to happen to everyone else. You know, so that was the core insight. And therefore we had to shock and awe. That was the core essence of the entire campaign. And to a large extent, I think creative is still the king. This is something that is not going to change, whether it was the past or it is the current or the future. A lot of things have changed as far as marketing is concerned, like around eight or 10 years back, digital marketing hardly was there on the radar.

But digital marketing to a significant extent has increased right now. And almost 40 to 50% of our marketing spends right now are on digital. How institutionally does a huge group like Godrej even begin to conceive of the future? Do you employ futurologists? Do you forecast? How do you institutionally forecast the future? So the Godrej group is 126 years right now and we have close to around 14 businesses, which is a mix of B2C and B2B. So depending upon the business and the challenges that we have, as well as the marketing challenges that we have, the entire marketing strategy changes.

So like for instance, for instance, for B2C, there is some place where there is category development that needs to be done, like for instance, security solutions like safes, whereas in some cases like appliances, there is brand choice. And then there are very difficult businesses like B2B where the dynamics changes completely, where the consumer needs to know what you're manufacturing, what your manufacturing power is. And therefore digital marketing to a large extent plays a very important role, which includes AR and VR and having to ensure that a person sitting in the US is going to be able to see the factory based in Bombay as well through the walkthroughs that we have, etc. So a lot of these things changes.

Sustainability over the past few years has significantly gained importance, not only worldwide, but India as well. How hard was it to get people focused on that sustainable future? Was the legacy business a kind of impediment? So that's a very interesting question. As far as sustainability is concerned, it has gained a lot of importance worldwide. So for the B2B businesses, sustainability is very, very important. If you are sustainable, if you have good and green practices, you gain a lot of points with respect to brand choice. But for B2B businesses in India, even right now, especially among the older audiences, sustainability is not very important. Value for money is important.

We haven't really defined the future, but from a consumer perspective, their future may be this evening, right? And in the course of a day, they change all the time. So thinking about them 10 years hence, when they change so much in a day is an interesting thing actually. So the advice in a way you're giving is focus on the mother load is the consumer. You're absolutely right. And things are changing very, very fast. And therefore, we did an exercise right now, which included revisiting our purpose, vision and mission statements as well as our values. And there are three things that we included in our values, which were very important for all our employees.

The first one was consumer centricity, which evolved from being very close to the consumer or the customer. The second one was entrepreneurship. Now, you hit the nail on the head when you said about Godrej being 126 years old, being an old legacy company, and therefore entrepreneurship became very, very important. Being nimble on your feet, being able to take quick decisions, being able to own the business, etc. becomes very important. And third one is environment stewardship. That is a closeness to the environment. That is something that the Godrej Group always has been known for. So we revisited these values and we ingrained this in amongst all our consumers. Manosh, we wish you all the best of luck for 2024.

You've been a fantastic Trailblazers guest. Thank you very much Jasper. Neilima from Luminous Power Technologies. Luminous is a mere 35 years old, a spring chicken versus the 126 year old Godrej. Do you sort of say, well, the future is quite hard to judge? So you navigate it like Manosh through a series of institutional values? Or are you as as luminous and you've done you've done quite a few things in your career. Do you get into sort of future gazing, forecasting, all that kind of stuff? By nature of my job, since I lead strategy and transformation for Luminous along with marketing.

So to me, probably is a bit easier versus any other marketeer because to me, the beginning point was a five year strategy and a roadmap, which has the complete organization in terms of capability, talent, people, infrastructure, technology. And then there is business and the brand and the goal of the organization. It's much bigger than marketing. This is not just a marketing thing. So now, since you have that in place, marketing is a section to reaching to that goal and the most important function to actually lead to that goal. So basically with marketing, what you do is drive business growth, which is keeping it ahead of all the industry trends. You're also making sure that there is complete digital transformation.

You've had a trailblazing career, a multifaceted career, Whirlpool, Britannia, Oberoi. It's easier to name the companies you haven't worked for. Has that been helpful to you, that range of experience in thinking about the future? A lot actually. I would say one is I started my career with sales. So that has that's the foundation to marketing. To me, sales gives you the ability to understand customers and consumers better. They're the closest to the market, closest to the customers. It also enables you to understand what will drive growth from profit, from pricing, from revenues, everything you understand there. Let's talk a bit about inclusivity, because when you look at the future, I'm just picking a future topic. Inclusivity, it matters clearly.

Where are you on that? And how do you champion that item, which is so essential to the future? I would say, sadly mistaken, inclusivity people take men and women. But I always felt inclusivity is about younger and older audience, men and women. Then there is regional differences, multi country differences of culture and people and the nuances and the insights with it. And apart from that is even more important is technology savvy versus non technology savvy, because a lot of businesses are very traditional 35 year old business, 125 year old business. A lot of traditional distribution system and set up with people with the new age employees who are joining the organization with newer skill sets, which is more tech driven.

So having this new and old men and women, and then there is a diverse regional mix of it. And then the country mix of it is the inclusivity, which I would say will give more insights to the future in predicting better trends for the future. You've been a fantastic guest. Thank you, man. And now I'm welcoming Kevin Stiles, chief executive of the Jamie Oliver Group inaugural trip to India. How's it going? Amazing. I mean, I've never been to India. I've traveled the world over, but this has been a real eye opener. Kevin, you're you're at the helm of a business, the centerpiece of which is media. You know, it dominates your P&L. Jamie Oliver, most watch chef on Earth, most red chef on Earth, all of that.

But in terms of the future of media, it's changing fast, right? Tell us what you're seeing. Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly for us as a business media is multifaceted and you can think about traditional media, TV commissioning, production, airing, etc. But also social media, you know, digital marketing, those sorts of things. The combination is what's key. I'm not I don't subscribe to the view that it's all about social media, traditional media is dead. I think you need a combination. And here's why. So for us particularly, it's about using media for the purpose of driving reach, reputation, awareness, revenue.

It's about leveraging different social media platforms to be really relevant and show up with the right content for the right opportunity in the right customer audience and blending those two things together. How do you work with your partners and the broader media community, Kevin, to sort of forecast the future? How do you keep a weather eye on where all of this is going? I'm a big believer in fail fast. And what I mean by that, I mean, if you have an amazing idea, we have a perspective on what's coming. Try it. Just test it because you don't know the future. I don't know. You just don't know. And I think consumers throughout my whole career. Listen, I started in marketing a long, long time ago, 30 plus years ago.

And the one thing I've learned is either they don't know what they want or they can't forecast what they want and neither can you. And actually, no amount of research is actually going to tell you accurately what the future is going to do. And I think therefore, you have to have a real kind of perspective on testing stuff and keeping on testing stuff and thinking about, well, how could that be useful? How can I show up here? What might the customer do with that? How are they going to react? Testing is the best way of doing that. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? So there's a kind of handsome is as handsome does trumps the future. The future is not known.

And the customer almost needs to be told the future on a kind of build and they will come principle. They often don't know. They don't know. But I think if you think about early adopters, they're a great group to test the future with. So people who are always ready, open to something new, something different, different way of doing something, using that group to test for the future is always quite interesting because you're going to get a bunch of customers who are much more conservative or reticent to do things or don't change very quickly. But the early adopters, I think, are always interesting because they are a litmus test for what will be in demand in the future.

Let's stay on these consumers, Kevin, because you can't help but feel we're drowning in a world of information, data, etc. How do you how do you think about cutting through that to appeal to to me, Jasper, this this consumer, not some other consumer? I think it's a really good point because I think over the last five, ten years, most consumers because of mobile phones really have been bombarded with messages, with marketing, with, you know, just constant waves of communication and promotion by businesses. And I actually think the biggest trend over the next ten years is going to be this thing around data and personalization. So make it relevant to me. Stop firing all this stuff at me that may not be relevant to me.

And act in a way that's much more responsible, much more kind of relevant, much more personalized by using data to understand Jasper and to understand what's right for you, what products, what services, what how do we show up and be relevant for you and be useful for you. That requires data, requires technology. Technology doesn't date, technology that updates constantly. And insight to understand what it is about you and what you like that makes what we do useful and relevant to you. Thank you so much for being on the show. But my next guest, Shagata from Tata Communications. We're delighted to have you on the show, sir. Before we get into the future, let's do a fact check on the past. How old is Tata Group? More than 150 years.

You're an experienced marketeer. With all of your experience and when you think of the future, what are the two or three key things you're seeing in that future as a marketeer? If you're asking me specifically for trends, if I may, I think the consumer has become far more cognizant of what they want. They have become far more demanding of how they want it. And they've also become very demanding of and unclear, rather, I should say, about why they want it. And this is Kevin's point, right? Especially the Gen Z community. They know what they want. They know what they are. And why they want it, right? And why they want it. And to add to what Kevin said, it's not only the Gen Z,

it's even the earlier generations who are getting more perspective and clarity in perspective in terms of why they want what they want. And, you know, if you see the trends around the whole Marie Kondo's of the world and so on, repurposing stuff, not buying new stuff and so on and so forth. The whole object, the whole approach to consumerism, materialism is actually evolving. Why are these younger generations more insightful? What's going on before we get to the future? Sure. I think it's a function of the degree of exposure that they have and the understanding of the impact of what's happening around them.

And also because of the exposure, the betterment in the quality of education, at least to a larger part of the population as compared to previous years, their ability to analyze the fact that where we are headed may not be the best of places in many cases, is what is getting them to do or prompting them to think through things that probably when you and I were growing up, we didn't do or we didn't have to. So this higher degree of awareness, this higher degree of sensitivity to the world around them, I think is in a large factor, in a large manner driving these cognizant choices. And a certain dissatisfaction, right, because all of us as marketeers have been complicit in building these images, these brands.

And this younger generation are busy tearing them down in lots of ways. So see, brands have always had a way of, if I may say so myself, and you said I'm an experienced marketeer. If I may say so myself, brands have always had a way of talking about as if everything is about them. And that's not necessarily sitting right with consumers anymore. They're blowing that up now. They're blowing that up. And so in that sense, talk to us about this, this customization. How are you doing that? How are you thinking about that? Conceptually, it's now more about me than you. How do you make that real? So the first thing that I do, Jasper, is respect the individual, respect their intelligence. Don't try to get too invasive.

Define, understand the boundaries that they've defined with respect to the data that they want them of theirs. They want them to use. So I would, and like you and Kevin were talking a few minutes back. I don't want to know you, Jasper. I want to know the profile that you represent. I want to, I want to let you make that final decision whether you choose a Jamie Olivier pizza versus some other brand. But what I definitely want to do is give you the right information to help you make the decision that you would hopefully enjoy. And once you consume my brand on the back of the information that I've given you, you will have a positive association with my brand and you will come back to me more often.

Let's get into a super hot topic and now and future topic artificial intelligence. In a couple of years time, am I going to have no guests and be talking to a bunch of machines? Why not? What's going on with AI? Do a bit of future forecasting. Because the machine is as intelligent as the kind of prompts you feed into it. I've been in digital marketing for close to about two decades now. At the beginning of my career, we used to ask intelligent questions to Google and Google used to give us intelligent answers. Somewhere down the road, we lost the plot. We started asking stupid questions and Google started responding in kind.

So till the time human intelligence is around, the ability to think like an individual, as a friend of mine says, the ability to think like an individual and create like artificial intelligence will never go away. So it is important for these conversations to happen so that it prompts us to think. Based on this conversation, I think your future is great. I hope your CFO has been listening. I hope so too. As he sees your budget cut in half. Shagata from Tartar Communications. Thank you so much for being on. Thank you, Jasper. Vatsal Asha, we're delighted to have you on the show, sir. How do you define the future? I mean, people naturally gravitate towards the idea that we're talking 50 years ago.

But when you as a marketeer think about it, what's your kind of span, if you like? The awareness to look beyond, look further enhances. And that's when you readjust or realign your horizon for the future. We keep constantly thinking about the future. I could be when I was coming over here. I could be thinking of the lovely breakfast that I could get from Jamie's kitchen. And that's my future for the moment. Being on this hot street is the future. Getting out from here and going somewhere else is the future that I'm thinking of. So we constantly thinking of the future always. Well, it's interesting because just sort of related to this, we've talked on the show before about philosophies like the inner game of tennis,

where the more you know tennis, the less you know tennis and the key is to unlearn. Is there a contradictory argument that says that the more experienced you are, the less able you are to forecast the future because the more you're set in your ways? Sometimes, yes, it does work as a blinder because you start believing that history will repeat itself. The only thing, there is one thing certain about the future. And that's an absolute certain, that the future is uncertain. You cannot forecast the future ever with 100% accuracy. Because you're sort of a lynchpin in the Indian CMO community. Have you found just by being that community, that gives you a bit of an advantage when you look forward? Yes, absolutely. That's been my love.

So when I was with the Reliance Hypermarkets business, it was 52 categories. And I could be a jack of all trades in a manner of speaking, switching from one category to another. So it could be beverages in the summer season and it could be air conditioners in the winters. It could be geezers. And yes, that's the pleasure that I have. And therefore, I am in this profession. But 20 years ago, when there were one or two campaigns, today we have all gotten onto this itch of experimenting. So we watered down our budget into 20 smaller experiments of 5%. Okay, let's try it. Tap on, tap off. Today's Zen Z comes with a mind of their own. They want to experiment. Some experiments also lead into success.

So it's all about the process that is laid out in the company to fail and fail fast, but not continuously keep failing. So as long as the learnings are documented, they are ensured that the failures are not repeated. There is a higher probability of success in the future. Vavatsal Asha, an honor to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us on Trailblazers. As the 1932 Nobel Prize winner John Galsworthy said, if you do not think about your future, you cannot have one. Enormous thanks to our guests today. You've been watching Trailblazers, a joint DMA Asia. We on initiative. We'll see you next time.