 So yeah, second last session of the day. Thank you so much audience I'd like to start quickly with just straight away going to the session topic, which is TV innovation What does TV innovation mean to each one of you quickly get your mindset and just one line not not not too long A new meaningful idea, which if implemented well builds the brand's core Okay, excellent To me it's experience along with the EQ the emotional quotient Okay, very very different and unique. Okay. I think For me it's aside to the novelty aspect It solves a very specific problem for a brand or For the for a stakeholder of the brand. Okay, that's Lakshmi. Yeah. Hi. Good evening Innovation to me is progress Innovation without a purpose has no meaning and it has to be looked from each one's point of view whether it's brand's point of view Whether what are they looking at in terms of progress? You can also lend me. Thank you, but progress. I take back I think what Pamit and Mohit spoke about I think all in the room innovation means newness Unique how many hands up for that? I think almost everybody right so that part was there. How many thought You know innovation means experience messaging Hardly just one or two right so Arjuna obviously you're the like the disruptor and innovative definition of innovation Why don't you just explain that a bit more to the audience? So yeah to begin with you have to stand out So if there are panelists you have to stand out as a disruptor That's the first lesson in branding and advertising whatever be the medium So when I say experience and when I say eq, which is emotional quotient I'll give you by way of example in 2017 when IPL was launched the whole ad campaign of Manu Ranjan ka Baap aara hai It resonated with with a lot of us and the way it was created That was an experience. No tool was used It was only content and I represent content and the imagination and innovation in content So one is that it it was an experience which was led by content and creativity So when we are talking about innovation and advertising in television It's very important to also talk about content creativity in the messaging So you mean creativity and messaging is innovation Yes, what you were saying Okay, so let's lead that to understand What really in today's day and age is very commonly known for ad content innovation in television What is it? What is it? I think it's It's the characters the influencer marketing piece. So I think we all know that Influencer marketing is becoming bigger and television protagonists are you know stand for something, right? So I think some of you can even share some examples, but what I'm what the question I'm posing to each one of you Is that and Lakshmi you can take that because you're from television How important is influencer marketing on television and what do you think is more important like in Bollywood It's very often seen that you know you use Salman Khan Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh, etc Not in their character avatars, but in their persona avatars But on television obviously most of the brands seem to obviously connect with their character because the characters what is known Not the person so your comments on it and others can then add on to me television is all about Plot and character and not so much of stories and purely because you see all the fictions running We have about 300 fiction shows running more than 500 episodes the storyline moves at a pace Which is pretty pretty slow, but characters resonate with these with the consumer and they you know look up to them There are communities being created basis love trust so on so forth and they believe in these characters They aspire they they are they're aspirational for them So hence for me characters work beautifully with in terms of innovation, but today's characters And they like in multiple serials, etc. Like most prominent season why I'm saying not the influencer But the character in their avatar, okay? Okay, so for example kumkum only protagonist in their avatar works beautiful with that audience set because they they look up to them They want to ape them. There is a community built around those Characters, do you see and if you see a con there that when you use a character and Suppose an audience who does not even watch that kumkum serial. Is it meant only for TV? Is it restrictive to TV's and largely TV audience set for example? I would give a case in point being L'Oreal want L'Oreal's total repair Aishwarya is their brand ambassador. Yes, but they still wanted to do something more in Maharashtra Because trust was an issue which they were facing and what we did with our characters Well, the five characters which resonated with that Maharashtrian household or Marathi speaking household You know we did not only the vineyards or store ads with them But also within the show and it their course moved Phenomenal this case right most of us have heard this case quite quite talked about and Like we rightly said that it's predominantly restricted to the audience which watches them for example It means nothing to me. I it means only all Today's yen world. It's not just about TV. It's an ant world So what we do is whatever is also there on TV We see that they are socially also relevant whether we take a bit of it on Instagram or Facebook and so on so Of the relevant serial So Mohit you can add but I think since you work on Swiggy. I think content and messaging Beyond character if you want to add on character you do but take on from there for your whole Context context and you know how Swiggy is really done a great job with cricket So one thing on the content piece. I'll just add many years back when Hyundai was launching Eon You know it was a category. It was a very unique car We had tied up with Sony and we had used 10 of their characters from different shows and we created a content for for Hyundai and as you said one of the con is that if one specific character is not being Watched or show is not being watched by somebody then they will not associate Which is why a wider character set is required for you to manage the entire That's a nice thought. I think some brands have focused on one character But I hear you say that even Loreal has taken five which is a good tip for the audience. I think so very nice and you know on the In innovation any innovation context is very important as we discussed and that's where I'll give the example of Swiggy Where you know Context can also be driven by tech technology today because especially for brands like Swiggy Which are technology driven context becomes very important. So last year while they do a lot of Regular innovations on cricket. We did a tech integration on hot star where the you know the app was embedded in the in the hot star App itself and it was very meaningful for the consumers because they did not have to go out of the Out of the cricket viewing environment to order Swiggy So they could just order Swiggy on the side That's where context becomes very important and technology is driving and and helping you with you know, driving the context Take it from the whole he spoke about the journey of an influencer from just being the face of the brand to actually Delivering the brand values and that's what we did at Upgrad where Vicky Kaushal was our face of the brand He was a brand ambassador in 2019 and in 2020 We've kind of gone ahead and made him the person who's delivering the value as he delivers something called a standard book Which is from the upgrades point of view It is about making sure that you are learning making learning a habit by reading a book So we nobody these days brands are not just using influencers just to be the face But also making them deliver the brand positioning also somewhere this whole debate about authenticity of celebrities is a big thing That's happening. You know today. So how does that solve for this? Does that solve for this? What's your view permit? I mean, does it solve for this using micro influencers? Actually, they're not micro. They're very mass But still they're not like as big as the you know a plus celebs that we talk about in terms of all you Yeah, in fact, I I'd venture to say that the a plus celebs are Increasingly harder to associate your brand with because they're associated to so many brands So there's just so much of confusion in the mind the consumers that unless you're really pumping in a lot of money The chances of people associating Your brand to the values that the that that an a plus celebrity I like the idea of of what you were calling micro. Let's call them micro celebrities or television You know leads and all of that because there are a lot more There are a lot closer to home. There are a lot more girl next to a boy next to a kind of thing And and yeah, they do lend authenticity my only my only concern You know to kind of spin this conversation a little bit is you need to be doing this for not the purpose of just you know Novelty, I mean if novelty is the objective then there are a hundred a hundred things you can do Success measurement and stuff like that Let's now move on to talking about, you know What's really the gamut of innovation on television as per us and some of you can Talk about how you see that moving towards future and the question is around the spin that you know more and more we see that When we look at TV innovation cases, are we really looking at television in isolation or it's also an and medium today? So is Notization really coming across so much into the television world is all at all also And how do we see that you know being so important that television actually is no longer television innovation So your views Lakshmi TV advertising is Energized by tech actually if you look at whatever the innovation today is happening is also energized largely by tech Case in point being it was considered a passive medium today We're looking at making it an offline to an online medium So we recently did a QR code led activity with flip card wherein The protagonist whatever they were wearing or whatever the kitchen scenes where if you wanted to order you just click on the QR code It took you to the micro site of flip card Technology as of now, yes, it's an in-house technology which we have built in which Maybe anybody and everybody can do it But that's how but more important is what is adding is it's allowing you to do call-to-action a response led Which TV was not known for for example currently all most of the real estate clients have started coming on to TV Which was not TV's photo at some point? So that's something you also solve for another problem not just these some other networks Which again would be TV innovation for solving for a marketer's problem of geo targeting. Yes Somehow it hasn't clicked to my well, right? What would you call that a success in why not largely concerns is again, you know You could call it. There is no measurement in place a Measurement to that extent and which is where the marketeers are marketeers are used to End of the day numbers to the types and that's something which is not taken off to that extent But there are it's still working for certain clients and they are there is repeat purchase on with those Thanks, Lakshmi. So while this tech innovation that is why I was talking about success and not so much success of Amagi and stuff the way y'all deal with geo targeting was that is this new thing that you're talking about also Is it restricted to just tactical innovations or is there some strategic? Intent there you see and is there a framework that Mohiti would like to talk about when when you look at it from a Client side what is strategic innovation and what is tactical long-term versus short-term? Yeah, I think you know a long-term innovation is always Something that builds the core of the brand as I was talking about and builds meaningfulness So we have our own research which can actually track meaningfulness of a brand over years and if If the meaningfulness scores go up then I can clearly say that an innovation has worked in delivering that But most of the time you know where where the objective is to deliver results then in at the end of the campaign you tend to You know deviate and and do Things which are very tactical in nature which are giving you results then in there Maybe not building the the core of the brand which I feel is not innovation in in the core in the true sense But then again, it is being qualified as an innovation today. Yeah, because I think innovation changes with time, right? So today what you're talking about? I don't know how long this will last the law life cycle I probably will be very very slow and very very fast rather because Doing QR code or even without a QR code trying to make it. It's almost like digital banners and ads having a buy button So if that starts then does that remain innovation is the question? What's your view? Yeah, so I'll take up from what you said And what Lakshmi said that is it television alone and actually what is television? It's just a screen Because you have connected televisions also, which is a different ballgame all together So it has to be a competitive collaboration and collaborative partnership kind of a stance that Agencies clients and people who are creating should have that means I'll have to blend it and bundle it the way it is most Experiential again. I'm coming to that because at the end of the day. I have to if Zee is doing this whole Element of five where the sense of smell the sense of touch the sense of if there's a chef Who's cooking and I can smell the food and that's where technology is going to lead us to That means it's going to really take a lot of leap and that's only just three or four years from here onwards So innovation has to be really put on Made to stand on its head if we have to really wow the audience And it has to be collaborative. It has to be experiential is this Work in progress at Zee's and yeah, it should take us some time But we are in the testing phase and is this like already there in the US or what? I mean this whole five senses piece verse touch smell, etc. No, it's not there It's we're working with the US partner. So hopefully we should be able to file the IP Yeah, the file that means it's there very nice very interesting so TV TV being how important other than this is take any other examples Would you like to share anything that Moethi you guys have done on tech-led stuff or mainly Swiggy? We've done it across for quicker also. We had done tech innovations. So again tech innovations have to be done for tech Clients because you end of the day And and I think you're you know It's also a function of whether the client buys into the into the that innovation or not. So I think That's a very important debate. I think we should throw that up to how many agencies sitting here and how many clients agencies hands up besides me very cute client Good and Channels super so I'll throw the throw the question first to the audience that do you think Agencies have the capability and good they're not Do you think agencies have the ability and the power to sell innovation to clients and I want it I want hands up from the clients Just two of you out of many more hands that were there earlier What about channels? What's the answer? Do agencies have the power and? Ability to sell it your innovation or you have to do it yourself Nobody's talking nobody's No hands up. No What do you want to talk about it? Yeah, so I think it is and an end So it's a you know agency and And as a channel partner and the client all three of them any one of them is not Able to sell and the whole thing falls flat, you know people can make so much of a difference I've seen it in our own agency the same client one team There was a set of innovations that were happening another team Which is more aggressive and the innovations or the level of innovation suddenly changes So at the same that the client was the same but the people at the agency and had changed and hence the output had changed So all three of them work very closely one is it's a client specific It is also people specific and I think people specific. What's interesting is it's also the client I think in the agency we all always say In co-inco innovation beach night, which kill a little innovation. I know there are certain clients are known for yes. No I mean Known for wanting innovation that brings me to the next question that why does that happen one is personality But I think we can't be at the quirks of though sometimes we are but we shouldn't be at least the quirks or of Personality I think there's a way to solve for that and I think that's On KPI setting you want to take that up that how does KPI setting Become so important that if the clients KPIs and agency KPIs what what do you say like innovation needs to be Is it there on a client KPI first? Good question. I think it depends on how much Relevance of course, I don't mean for the sake of innovation, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. I see the simple thing as far as I am concerned is Failure is important to be able to innovate successfully So someone mentioned I think you were talking about the QR code thing not Kicking off that's good that that means there's something that we're probably missing in some part of the journey Either maybe maybe the messaging wasn't wasn't right. Maybe The particular problem that was being sought to be solved was not right So coming to client this whole client versus agency, you know, let's figure out who's Whether it's their fault or our fault I think the the the truth of the matter is a lot of clients are answerable to VCs and and there's a lot of performance pressure Especially in today's economic climate. It's not necessarily the You know the right thing to ask or expect off clients to get to start getting innovative all the time And you need to be able to I mean that's where agencies You know so-called partner capabilities come into picture. There is a timing for things. You can't be Expecting clients to shell out, but I'd expect that like what I used to try and do for example at shadi.com Was that we tried to keep about 10 to 20 percent of our overall media budgets? separately for Experimentation a lot of the experimentation was not necessarily on television. It was BTL or whatever. So the end of the point you mentioned on the VC answerability, etc We are Is this because of innovation? Is it always because of corner room attention? Is it when the top management really wants it? Is that it's a very big factor? I mean the top management has obviously got a much more strategic view of things I mean, I wouldn't expect that it happens without top management consent. I Have a different take on it in today's day and age Everybody there is too much of clutter and everybody wants to you know Come out and you know make a stand out stand out and in this scenario I would say if I am the broadcaster, I know my products well And I know what I if I know what clients issues are and then you know then showcase whatever I have in my kitty and say okay this matches well, and this is what the brand should do I guess the brand is open to and maybe the agency comes on board if there is a If he sees merit and value in it So for me value is the critical word which applies for the brand as well as value to the organization Let me just give it put some flesh to this right? Let's just discuss this one level deeper Let's say for example. My problem is that I don't want to Advert I don't have excessive outlets. I don't want to outlay more than let's say a crore Very very, you know cash trap kind of budget, and I'm saying that I just have one crore Now figure out. How do I advertise? Amagi could have been a good innovation for me. I was discussing before coming exactly I mean that that's why I asked you the question about you know, so I could simply say that okay fine Let me now innovate because I I'll target only Mumbai because Mumbai isn't big enough market And although my cost per reach and and some of the other metrics are good or completely here via my outlay is actually much lower So innovation is not necessarily about the message or the or the or the format It could be simply in terms of how you do media selection or media buying itself Add one thing to it I think why innovations why we are why we fail to sell elevations to clients most of time is because objectives are different The client has a very different objective. The client has an ROI objective My agency is trying to do an innovation to get an award, right? And a channel is trying to do an innovation because they want revenue out of it So many times our objectives are very different and hence we are not able to bring it together That you said awards because I mean while we would all like awards I mean clients love awards the day you get an award client themselves go berserk, right? They write internally externally, so it's a great motivator awards is a great motivator for everybody But somehow, you know, it's just looked at that. Okay, don't do it for that Which is not the point We never gonna be doing something just for the sake of it, but I think what is a great motivator, right? We all would agree to that. I'm sure so I want to add to this and this whole client agency ecosystem Where is the customer in this and who owns the customer and who owns and who decides and who knows what the customers want In this whole hyper dynamic state where the consumers are spoiled for choices So I've seen a lot of discussions going about who decides what is an innovation by the way innovation for some is Is incremental change? No, that's what that's why it's a cuss word also sometimes So who's deciding and who knows what the customers want and who's tapping the Daily changed needs of the customer and the behavior Is a very very interesting element with a lot of us forget most of the times Yeah, sure. So I think tapping into it and finally it's all about ROI and whichever way now ROI can be measured in various ways Right from even an award could be an ROI like, you know, I did this and I did I get an award Did I get, you know, noticed by people or did I get, you know, X number of calls or did I get So many website visits, etc. So that brings us to the last question that I'm going to pose which is on measurability Now what are some of the common ways and I think each one of you could talk about how in your experience What are some measurable outcomes that TV innovation has driven through examples if possible? That'll be great. I think anyone can start For us the recent example being byjuice when the the need was Downloads because they're very clear that they don't want to do advertising for the sake of advertising It's pure play downloads And that's where we did a lot of deep integration within the content and across And there was huge number of downloads in repeating that exercise across so for them, it's like clear So every client has a different us, you know, there is some some who wants to look at the score in terms of trust Question or for that matter Retention In terms of measurability, I guess somewhere it's You are in a better of position if you're a digital product like ours was a digital product even One assist is a digital insurance service provider. So If it's a digital product measurability becomes very easy I think Absolutely with shadi.com every time, you know, you do In terms of whether the innovation is driving it or not is a slightly more nuanced question But there are analytical tools available to figure that out. So it's it's it's easy to measure I don't know how it would play out in an offline kind of a let's say a retail I'm guessing measurability in terms of walk-ins for retail would be something that What I know from Friends in FMCG is that they kind of try and measure primary and and secondary sales With some kind of a time lag kind of built into it Pre and post but these pre and post analysis are very the problem with it and you know with with pre and post is that There's this macro seasonality Associated to it which you have to kind of count. So you you know those analysis tend to be a little looser So yeah in terms of measurability depending on the kind of category you are in it's easier or harder So since we are talking about measurability I think the language of business is revenue So if whatever innovation you are doing by view of brand messaging Innovation experience if it is leading to more business more revenue. That's where the Buck stops and ends right So while we have like at upgrade also we have this whole data analytics and loads and loads of data being crunched And massaged to know what's working. What's not working But the proof to the pudding is that if I did this messaging and what was the impact on the revenue That's the only measurability Trust was another soft factor. But I think buzz is also another one. Yeah, I agree with them While you know in an ideal situation trust meaningfulness should go up over a period of time But then you don't have that time End of the day the innovation happens and they want to look at the business results Even for swiggy for that matter the tech innovation the final result was how many orders were being driven out of that Engagement so maybe that's that's the way the language is changing Which is why I have to ask you what the tv innovation of swiggy versus the tech innovation of swiggy Probably the tech innovation would have scored equal or higher, right? So because of the business So I think we have just three three more minutes or so Can we throw the house open for questions if any and then there's none So I will just want to since we are kind of in a concluding stance Television advertising and the fact that we are talking about television first Means that there is a need to reinvent ourselves And hence this community is meeting Hence there is a need to think of innovation think of Relevance in future So that is a very big message that how are we evolving staying relevant and earning our relevance every day For and employing all kinds of mediums tools technology Creativity and everything else that makes for the magic portion. And that's what is important right now The tv and like I said Great. Yeah, you have a mic there you can yeah, no problem Any any particular person you want to? There has to be a buy-in from like you mentioned the client side the other agency side as well If all of them are let's say convinced on the idea I think what also happens is there's a certain ba you or there's a certain way of Functioning that is already in place a lot of times innovation has to perhaps take out a certain buy from what has been happening And still deliver the certain business metrics that the original plan was delivering So a certain x plan delivering y results now x may say 10 percent has to come out or 50 percent has to come out And then still you know the expectation from the client is that the y delivery will still be maintained How can this gap be bridged Whenever you're selling the idea or what kind of innovation Should should y be changed should the expectation be lower or higher And how should this be pitched when the entire selling of innovation proposition is happening I think we should start with the y so in the sense that you know We have to start bottoms up unfortunately. We go top down. We have something and we start Pushing it down clients and and you know, that's how it happens But if we do bottoms up if we know the y and then recreate the entire customize the entire innovation for delivering that y I think we'll have we'll we'll do our job. So we have to reinvent ourselves that that's essentially What we have to do we have to change the selling certainly the y should be bigger I mean Innovation means itself a buy else but somebody buy it if it has to give a similar yield to the x Then you want buy you can't sell it the selling point is always that it will deliver the point is that it's always a risk Nobody can promise and guarantee and that's where the trick is that how do you quantify that? Gap of whatever I don't even call it a gap That's the plus that I would call it because gap would be negative It's never going to be a gap. Hopefully when you have a good idea, which is relevant But how much of it is there and how do you kind of really get on the same page to Your expectations being so what is success which is why we spoke about analytics and bars and awards and all of that You know these things help because these are the success metrics Yeah My question is like you said carrying it forward that there's a risk and there is difficulty in measuring if you're an online client if you're a tech client Then maybe you can measure before offline. It's a problem If that risk doesn't work for the client Then the ability to take these kind of innovation based risks decreases So my question is there a way can we get more creative in way of Ensuring that if those kps are not met then there will be a mutual You know you're talking about mitigating risks Mitigating risk and if in case client is agreeing to do something which is not tried and tested and There money being put on the table and if that doesn't work then there is some kind of a resurance from the other side I think that can help Certainly it can I think chance sitting here would know that there are a lot of times they hand holding happens and you know There are understandings and stuff like that Certainly it helps I think we'll conclude. Thank you so much