Saugata Bagchi on AI and automation and brand trust

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 inspiration. Myself and my Jamie's colleagues here are relatively young business, but we aspire to be 150 years old. Shikhar, before we get into all of this, 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? Actually, it's quite a lot of things. They do keep changing in priority and the order of importance every year. I heard you speaking about gazing into the crystal ball over the last few years and so on. 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've 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 why they want it, right? 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. I'm just very curious though, right? So as Kevin said, we all used to guzzle up Kellogg's Corn Flakes, not thinking about this and that. Nothing wrong with Kellogg's Corn Flakes. What has changed? 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, right? 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, 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, right? 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, right? 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. Yeah, they're blowing that up now. They're blowing that up. And so in that sense, talk to us about this customization, right? 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, right? Don't try to get too invasive, 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, right? 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 have given you, you will have a positive association with my brand and you will come back to me more often. So it's not about thrusting a kind of brand story in a push way. It's about information to pull people in.

Let me, let me push back on you slightly because the modern consumer skepticism is very often that this newly sincere brand giving you bits of information to make your own mind up is still driven by a fundamental profit motive. So there's an implicit insincerity in that. What do you say to that? Right? This is the argument that, you know, you don't believe a word they're saying. See, that's a very fair point. The fact is every organization is in business to make money, right? It's a route to make the money, which I think is going to decide the longevity of the business. So as long as the route is, is, is defined by sensitivity, honesty and integrity, and letting the customer make the decision, basis information that will help them make

the right decision. Like I said, I think the businesses will be far more sensitive. The business will have far more longevity. And the group that I represent, the organization that I represent, I think is a, is a very good example of that. Yeah, you're very values led, right? So you're not here for 135 years for no reason. 50 plus, 150 plus. 150, excuse me. So I think fundamentally those core values haven't changed. What has evolved or what has changed is the way we're interpreting and acting upon those values. Let's, let's try and connect this on a practical level. So it's more about in the future and now, frankly, it's more about the individual and how you gain their trust.

But is there something in this about if you get really good at it, it makes marketing more cost effective? Absolutely. Because that was always the argument. We're always chucking money. Half of it doesn't work. And I get beaten up a lot for this, but I'm still going to say it. If you have the right content, talking to the right audience, you don't need media budgets and millions and billions of dollars. You can make your dollar go much, much farther with the right content, with for the right audience, being delivered to them through the right channels and your job is done. So it's a virtuous circle in that regard. And do you think we're I mean, we have a lot of people to represent advertising agencies here. Are you sounding the death knell for them?

These mass market guys? No, no, not at all. It's in fact, it's the I myself come with an agency background. We were discussing the the Alamators a few times a few minutes back. I very firmly believe that the role of agencies is going to get even more stronger. Whether together with technology or agnostic of technology. But the whole idea of creating the right content comes from consumer insights. And while I may know my consumer the best as far as my organization is concerned, the agency has a worldview of the same consumer behaving differently in different scenarios.

And the moment I'm able to put these different behavioral traits into one box and create that profile that I spoke about a few minutes back, my content will be far more relevant, far more targeted and far more personalized, which hopefully will lead to the right kind of decision that I'm hoping them to make. I see. So the very fact that agencies is a one to many relationship will will continue to benefit. Well, the channel might be different. Let's get into a super hot topic. And now in 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 prompt 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.

And the thought processes that come out of these conversations need to get into AI as prompting as prompts, if I may. And content content comes out at a faster speed, at a faster turnaround times, at a more cost efficient manner. And it's a win-win situation for everybody. So in a word, as we wrap up and we don't have enough time on the show, we never have enough time, Shugasa. We never have enough future. But on AI, future good or future bad? Great. Future great. 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, Shugasa from Tars Communications. Thank you so much for being on AI. Thank you Jasper. Thanks for having me.