Nikhil Dhar on social media and innovation

And now we're delighted to be joined on Trailblazers by Nikhil, King Cobra of Digital Marketing at Indigo. Thank You Jasper. You've injected a kind of festive note into our show with your Christmasy attire so it's very timely but let's start you off in kind of a similar place to where we ended with Ashish which is the kind of physical and digital I mean there ain't nothing more physical than flying on an airline. How do you think about digital in that environment? So I think digital for us is sort of a fundamental enabler for everything we do so we are not looking at digital as separate I think even flying every physical aspect we're trying to sort of either improve our customer

experience through digital empower our employees by giving them assets which they can help to do their job better or just make everyone's life easy so we're looking at digital as a foundation for everything we do that's that's the whole way that we look at. I see so it's different threads in a single yes single strand fundamentally but let's get into the the social media side right I mean G2 and I were having this conversation before that these days particularly on certain channels if you don't entertain like no one's interested but you you're in a very functional environment particularly Indigo with its on time promises it's it's it's all that stuff how do you how do you entertain? I think I think it's very

interesting I think for us engagement is it's not equal into entertainment but I think what we do differently is that we want to sort of tell people how do we deliver on our core promises so we have four core promises we swear and live by them at all our channels one is affordability the second is on time performance making customers experience hassle free and courteous and our unparalleled network. How do you make being on time fun on on social media I mean I hear what you're saying about entertainment versus engagement but if I get an Instagram post that says you're on time again I don't you know how do we do it is we we sort of try to humanize it so we show you the behind the scenes of how do we make

sure that it's on time so for example when we talk about our unparalleled network we just don't showcase montage of cities we have just started doing something which we call it 60 tours what we did we took one cabin crew offers of a town and we took her to that town and she showcased the town to the entire world so this way now we have done 25 cities we'll continue to do more and more cities we have another series which is called how to become a pilot it's called license to fly so we do all of that stuff so that people know what is the back back side of it well it's very clever and actually listening to you realize that in the analog age that kind of BTS or under the hood yes is almost impossible right yeah

and you're making it you're making a dry topic interesting yes and and it does really well for us and people actually want to know what happens at the back back on back side of it rather than the functional side of it which everyone experiences any day okay pointed question right so you and everybody else in the airline industry has latched on to the idea that you have to engage right but why are it why is indigo any better or worse at it than the spice waller or or you know the tartar guys or or United or whoever see I think we very strongly feel two two reasons I think our brand in itself stands out because of how we build this brand so its brand is very much built on a tone of voice consistency and

simplicity I think that really helps when we distinguish and also what we have done is we have put really strict rules for ourselves right we won't do anything which because there is a trend we want to do it we really don't want to put a aircraft on our social media that's a very different very strict rule that we have tried to put to say how do you really engage customers without showing your product so that's which when we do all of this it sort of creates new ideas creativity which is as I said it led into ideas like license to fly 60 tours all of this new thing which creates which helps us differentiate significantly from any other brand okay if you're if you're if you're the witness and I'm the judge

let's put this to the jury so you were do see are you you know indigo is a brand do you do you have tons of clients to do that do you what's your what's your view on how indigo comes across from a social media perspective if you have one so for me if you look at indigo it's pretty consistent with you know what Nicole is saying I indigo is not a brand that is built or have promised something and then built backwards it's actually delivered for it's a classic thing of you know what they tell us in service branding under promise over deliver and pretty much the the social media is little little smart little witty it's the personality for yeah you know brand that I fly and it's the same language that I see on their tiffin box or

on the menu and therefore I see it a fairly consistent brand that I see in the digital world and enough is experiencing in a physical world yeah and it's I mean I agree with all that and it's interesting Nicole because do you think I mean both yourself in terms of your your your own demographic versus the old man sitting here and an indigo 17 years old do you think being a brand that's grown up in the digital age and not before doing that's helped you I definitely think so I think one of the most important thing that it has helped is on the mindset I think that really helps because because we we are a digital native brand in a sense the mindset was always that way so at least we didn't have any legacy etc so so that is

one of the most important things having said that the world of digital is evolving every day almost so so that we have to continue to be at pace with it but the fact that we were the organization's mindset is tuned to that really helps because then you're able to innovate much faster because people are tuned to it they understand that okay but before we get on to talk about the vast universe of customers that you have because you're a perfect for a bellwether for India but when do you not use social media when is it verboten to use social media oh honestly I think a lot of times we prefer not to latch on to trends etc I think moment marketing is something which which we don't prefer to do one let's very much on

point with a brand so we just don't want to do something which everyone is doing so that is one very important sort of thing that we sort of put on social media second thing we don't want to create content just for sake of creating content so so we believe in quality over quantity so that that's something that we very very strongly follow so there's kind of I mean we've heard this from a few people it's a bit of sort of less is more and and and staying your guide rails you guys are big into soccer right into football why is that why is that a moment oh so I just a moment yeah so I think we have recently done that we have sort of tied up with the Indian Football Association the whole idea was we have seen cricket I think we as

Indigo believe we have grown in the last 17 years India has grown along with us in the last 17 years very strongly believe it's time for soccer in India and we want to partner with them for the next whatever couple of years to take them there and this is all part of our India by Indigo strategy where we want to partner with right players with whom we believe it can help really grow India in future yeah it's sort of interesting it's metaphorically you've sort of grown up right and that thing is growing up and maybe you can maybe you can give a helping hand to to the football industry we're coming into the home straight Nikhil these customers how do you even begin to engage the vast I mean we

all we've all flown on Indigo Airlines the diversity of person you can sit next to is mind-blowing which is true so Jasper as I said I think we still very strongly believe in consistency we also believe that while we we cater to a very very vast demographic we necessarily don't need to talk to everyone the idea continues to be that we want to talk to the smartest 10% people across the demography because those are the ones who will what does that mean what does that mean people might pride look at that and so I'm now worried I'm not in the time no no so not not in that way I think it's it's primarily what we are saying is we very strongly feel that it's not tier one tier two tier three sort of a market

every market has a cohort of people who can who can afford air travel who are in that strata who want to move forward who believe they can they want to go out of their town for education for trade etc etc so so we don't want to say this is a metro people this is non metro people we feel across the India there is that percentage we want to talk to them we want to consistently make them believe that along with us your aspirational will will get and we want to give wings to okay so again you kind of know know your limits I'm gonna I'm gonna finish this off with some quick fire questions metaverse good or bad I think we still don't have a use case so it's too early to say fake news problem or not a problem massive

problem identity is that a real thing on the internet or not oh not yet but I think at least organizations are trying that so hopefully that will get solved because it's it's it's important and last question do you have more LinkedIn followers than Ashish I have I think I have 10,000 so at this point of time Ashish whereas we're establishing the packing order I'm I think I'm firmly at the bottom but we'll we'll we'll see if G2 or Lala Tendri can dethrone the current LinkedIn champ Nikol you've been a fantastic guest thank you for coming on I'm a places thank you thank you