 Welcome to ExchangeForMedia.com. With me today is one of the most accomplished digital minds of Indian, of digital industry, Mr. Harish Thibriwala, CEO Miram India. Thank you, Harish, for joining us. My pleasure. Harish, you have come out with this very interesting report on Martik, a much awaited report, because you know, Martik is the buzzword right now everyone is talking about. So, you know, I got to see the report and there were some questions I wanted to ask you in detail. Like your report says Indian marketers are still lagging behind global average figures when it comes to spending on Martik. So, you know, what are some of the roadblocks that you see? Yeah, I think the biggest roadblock we see is that we have been kind of behind the Martik curve, you know, compared to the US markets by at least a couple of years. And we are seeing that curve kind of getting bridged at this point of time. One challenge is being able to implement projects very, very successfully and show quick ROI, which becomes like a matter of concern for a whole bunch of marketers before they start making those investments. But over the last couple of years, you have seen lots of good cases, which are beginning to show marketers ROI and putting them on the track to kind of make more Martik investments. I won't say Indian Martik marketers are behind in terms of making investments. I see more of an opportunity, you know, if you look at global numbers, maybe 25% of all marketing expense go into Martik. In India, right now we are maybe around 15%. So to me, that is the kind of headroom for growth that the Martik industry has as far as India is concerned. It also says that, you know, 57% of companies as right now are Martik explorers. And what are these categories, you know, which have shown interest in market, which sectors were the first ones to come and adopt it? Yeah, yeah. So that's an interesting question, you know, when we started doing these reports a few years back, it was a question of, do you understand Martik or do you not understand Martik? That was like the first report that we did. And when we do the same report like a couple of years back, we started seeing people that become Martik heroes. There were people that adopted Martik, they were making a lot of investments, and they were seeing value of investments. Now when we are doing the report, we find one more cohort. This is a cohort that has taken up on Martik. They've made some investments, they're seeing value, and now they want to scale up the investments. So this really is the category of explorers. No, by category, I meant, which is it FMCG, is it coming from auto? Which sectors are more interested in exploring Martik? Yeah. So the sectors we are seeing right now, one is the retail sector, that is the real estate sector. These kind of sectors which have been little slow to take on Martik, but they're beginning to see benefit of the Martik investments, and these are going to be driving growth in the next few years to come. I think some of the sectors which are still not open to experimenting, which you have categorized as stagnants or laggards. Yeah. So we see CPG for example, that is that is way behind the curve. We see media as a sector which is way behind the curve. These guys have still not got on very, very actively to Martik. So your report also says that perhaps for the first time, sales too has become one of the key objectives achieved by Martik in last few years. So how do you explain that? Yeah. I think the role of a marketer is changing from being like a pure marketer, who could say that, you know, after every dollar I spend, I don't know which one creates value to which one doesn't create value, to actually becoming a, what shall I say, cost seller along with the sales person to be sure you can deliver value. And Martik in early days was purely about building customer experience and engagement. But now more and more investments are in the direction of how can I get value, how can I see ROI, how can I actually give an uplift on sales that is happening. So the conversation is changing from purely building the brand to actually generating sales for me. So you yourself mentioned, you know, for marketers every dollar matters. So, you know, one big challenge that we have heard of in last few years is that for marketers to prove the ROI of your tech staff internally because it's an expensive investment. How do you think they can overcome this? Yeah, yeah. So I think Martik fits in brilliantly to be able to answer an ROI question because you're able to track everything right from where the money was spent. And once the money was spent, what did the consumer do at an individual consumer level? How much time did the person spend on my website? Was a lead form filled? Was a purchase done? If a purchase was done, am I able to upsell? Am I able to cross sell? Am I able to sell something else? Or with the help of that customer, I'm able to get more customers. You can track this completely into an almost to a dollar value. Just to give an example, there's a very leading global shoe brand that we kind of work with. And we set up the solution for them a few months back. And in the last three months, we have shown them almost like a 30% uplift on sales, simply because of a Martik solution. And what does the Martik solution do? It allows you to understand past buying behavior. It allows you to create cohorts based on the behavior. It allows you to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. You just do that and you start seeing better response coming. What we need to realize is that just like as brands are looking for customers, customers are also looking for brands. We just need to get the right messaging to the right person at the right time, which Martik enables you to do. And once you do that, the marriage between the brand and the customer happens. What is your strategy to convert Martik's stagnants or laggards into explorers? I think more and more of thought leadership is required. More and more of conversation around ROI is required. They need to feel inspired by these kind of case studies, where they understand that the investment they are making is a positive ROI investment for them. Second, they need to understand the investment they are making will give them results in a quick timeframe. I mean, nobody has the patience to wait for three years to start seeing results. So we need to start creating smaller, minimum viable product, being able to implement it quickly, be able to show value, and keep moving up the curve. We need to get to the concept of agile marketing. And how soon do you think results can be noticed? For a whole lot of clients, from the day the stack goes live, we are able to actually start showing results maybe from the 4th or 5th month onwards. 4th and 5th month onwards. Now, why has Martik become even more important in a cookie-less world? In a cookie-less world, you don't have access to third-party cookies. Basically, you need to find a way to create your own data and create your own first-party cookies. That is where Martik starts becoming important. Brands who never bothered about capturing customer data, now are wondering how can we profile data, how can we capture data, how can we make sense of the data, and how can we personalize our communication. Not only communication that goes on email and SMS, but also communication on my website. If somebody has come to my website, engaged with me, done something, the same person comes back. Can I continue the journey with that person? It becomes very important for me to be able to drop cookies on the browser of the customer and to be able to use a Martik stack to be sure I can continue the conversation with the person. My own customers, my own data is becoming far more valuable and Martik helps you mine the data as well as use the data. Everyone is these days talking about Web 3. What in fact will advent of Web 3 have on Martik? Yeah, so Web 3 basically, Web 3s are very fancy word, but to me it's basically the web of identity. Web 1 was more in terms of the web of information where you would give information. Web 2 became a web of transaction, very good conduct transaction. Today, all of us are concerned about our identity. Web 3 actually allows you to control our own identity at a consumer level. And once that happened, Martik becomes even more important for you. We're able to speak to each customer one on one and be able to unlock the identity and be sure that you're able to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. So before I conclude, if I have to ask you one piece of advice that you would like to give a marketer who's already into technology, what will be that? I think we need to continue investing in technology in a big fashion. The days come where a good creative writing on top of a great technology actually creates the best message for a customer. B, we need to look at Martik's solution not purely from a communication perspective. You know, when people talk of advertising or marketing, they talk about what can I do on Facebook? What can I do on Twitter? But to me, it is really about identifying every single consumer touch point for that particular brand. And are you able to digitize the touch point to create a great consumer experience? You know, for example, I walk into a hotel, why is the reception required at all? Can I not just get a digital key on my phone and directly walk up to my room? Now, Martik can enable you to do that. If I'm in the hotel room and I've set the temperature to 25 degrees, how can I ensure that every time I check into the hotel, anywhere in the world, the temperature is still 25 degrees. Technology allows you to retain the information in the database. I think one of the hotels has already done it. Absolutely. Somebody cited this example. Absolutely. So the idea is that as a marketer, how can I identify every digital touch point and convert it into a great consumer experience? If the experience is good, that will create brand loyalty. It's not the big ads alone that create brand loyalty. It's actually the great experience and Martik plays a huge role in providing those consumer experiences. Harish, we wish you all the best and thank you so much for speaking to Exchange Familia. Thank you. Thanks, Nazia. Thanks for having me.