 She has more than three decades of experience with agency market here media organizations and in and around Southeast Southeast Asia London and Asia Pacific now More than 11 years of experience and she's right in front of me. She looks very beautiful And if she's all set, please put your hands together for Miss Divya Karani CEO South Asia media then sue On stage I'll request her to come So in the past 11 years she has led Then sue media to become number one agency Rekma February February 2021 scaling up business on a market beating trajectory year on a year Please put your hands together for thank you so much for being here. I'll hand it over to you. They are all yours So there it is complete acknowledgement building powerful brand stories. I'll begin with saying thank you All of y'all are here this morning. I'd like to share an actual anecdote or what happened a couple of years ago Early in the morning 8 a.m. Ish. I was in office and In into my room storm this colleague of mine. His name was babe. I Saw you coming into office So I said yes, I'm here You were driving So I said yes, I do that You were talking So I said yes, I do that as well. I am right now But you were alone I do that as well Now what did I just do? I shared a true story Which actually played itself out some years ago and What did it tell you? It told you I'm an early morning person It told you about the fact that I drive self-drive myself to office It did perhaps tell you a little more than my name and my designation It told you that I am a little idiosyncric And I have the ability to laugh at myself Perhaps this therefore will stick a little more than just the name and the designation Even after you've gone home. You may remember it and say back up But there it is Brands are living beings They do very much the same and your conversation Where despite all the pressure you state the course is When I wanted to applaud and applaud stories sell Powerful stories make brands They create value Intangible and tangible value The classic example that comes to my mind is Swizz watches And look at it despite the ubiquitous mobiles They are what they are the fact is behind many many in fact almost all successful brands Are the stories that are attached to each one of them? The second bit is We all know brands are built over a time One campaign one calm in one year Is just one piece Which joins the whole dot of a connected experience that consumers Interact and get from the brand sometimes it adds to their equity sometimes Unfortunately, it also detracts The third bit is as brand custodians. We know that brand narratives are not linear There is no beginning middle or an end It is a continuous dialogue that the brand stakeholders have with their consumers And this is a continuously evolving dialogue that brand stakeholders need to listen to It is between two communities and because it is between two communities It is not an output of marketing. It is actually an outcome and That innate realization in itself is profound and I find having worked with multiple marketeers But sometimes the cleverest of them Perhaps at times forget it and when we talk about customers You spoke about it Chandru customers internal constituents external constituents future Constituents and all the other B2B related constituents as well We spoke about two communities Like every story there are two sides to it and That I touched upon it briefly earlier. It needs to be constantly listened to understood So that you can have a meaningful relationship What is the and it's so so sad if I were to stand here in which is what I'm doing right now and Continue to have one monologue irrespective of the fact that you all are interested you are scrolling through your mobiles or God knows what How sad would that be and then brand stories stick only and only when substantiated and Today there is no place to hide you are what you are and it's there for everybody to see It requires attention to both the narratives because sometimes unwittingly What you say perhaps may get construed otherwise or an action you that and you may not have thought about it Right and we've all heard about trust and how every drop is you know gathered and then it goes out and therefore It needs to be there needs to be an honest transparent relationship Any mistake and we've had some clients do that Mea culpa And that in itself is respected. The last one is then an acknowledgement of the times we are living in and Without a shadow of doubt the last two years has Changed everything that we know. It's changed us as people It's changed us as people it's changed the way we work the way we live our values and our priorities and Therefore our accountability to each other as well No time for fluff no time for packaging say it as is Give it to me and if it is of interest to me, I will step forward period We today live in the age of an empowered consumer and this should not come as a surprise We all as practitioners do what we do with this in context a Study done some ten years ago Where there were two-thirds of our touch points were all brand-driven Advertising direct marketing promo in store, etc. Etc. The same study done today Has two-thirds of touch points which are consumer driven and think about it We even therefore then deploy and employ Influencers to talk the consumers speak just in case perhaps they may not be able to hear or more importantly They may not believe us as much That is because there is a fundamental shift that has happened from a brand-led world Where our consumers in very many ways were? captive audience sitting ducks to the You know the to the monologue that market here stood and gave them and All of them were marching to a market year's agenda It's now moved to a consumer led world Where it is with your permission? It is experience brand experience is the most important Forget of what you say. It is what you do and what they experience you as right and It is driving the consumers agenda understanding the consumer understanding their needs understanding their motivation and meeting them and Therefore all of us who have practiced for years It is moving from changing consumer behavior to now changing brand behavior And I saw that again Chandru in your journey You've actually said hey and then there's another one very interestingly you said we were putting out a brand story Three years later. We discovered that that brand story was not sticking and Then you discovered why? The fact is this fundamental shift that is happening that luxury of three years or perhaps even three months May not be there with us anymore The key challenges for mark challenges for market years are very very many and it's an unenviable position to be in currently There is increasing competition new startups the the category morphing the category disappearing or new ones getting created There isn't alongside that. There's an increasing intolerance of being lectured So it's not advertising that engages that they are rebelling against They are protesting loud and clearly to be given a passion. Thank you. Thank you, right and then There is that information overload that is it's like a barrage think about it They have so many options. What are consumers doing? Consumers are doing what they do. They're exercising their right to blank you out And therefore unless and until it is with each one of you in the room with your permission I'm speaking to you. Perhaps it is something that you want to listen to or perhaps you zoom me out And that's also fine. You guys are the consumers right now and therefore with that context and appreciation of our world of communication where there is complexity and contradictions abound So some marketeers will go after brand and swear that brand is the only way to go Whereas others may do espouse that but actually a performance performance performance Others delve deep into data Whereas on the other side, there is this huge belief and I can't say it's wrong that creativity is actually the multiplier Data can aid and a bet, but it is creativity that idea that is sent to stage And then there are all the physical experiences that brands want to impart and some brands you notice have Skip that rung and straight away Into virtual worlds meta versus and so on and some of them are quite successful at that and Then some uniquely you'll find are very much there in the physical space and I've stepped into the virtual or some who are in the virtual and this is where I laugh Some who are in the virtual have now stepped into the physical space Think about it, and I am challenging each and every one in this room. It is we practitioners who are guilty We are guilty of actually putting our craft in silos The consumer does not really distinguish between the physical and the virtual world anymore They are very quick and they seamlessly glide from one to the other It is we practitioners who decided offline online somewhere some and I hate the word somebody says traditional media really Really Talk to me What is traditional media so the moment in any conference room I hear offline and online and traditional media You earn no brownie points from me. Definitely. My team knows this It is actually we are as communicators need to be media agnostic Respect each media for what Intrinsic value it brings to the table and build that seamless experience Some clients listen to us Some don't but sooner or later they do and Then there are some who go for the long term But as I said the pressure is enormous So you can only if you survive today can you live for tomorrow? So there is that very very real pressure that they are under and then there is You you aim for growth and then sometimes you genuinely aim for good or sometimes you try to straddle both or Sometimes you only espouse good, but that is a very very short-term Huge implications of boomerang So there is huge contradiction that co-exist What do we do? We convert all these challenges into opportunities and again, this is another war cry from me as Practitioners of this craft there has never ever been a more exciting time than today. I Have been in this for the past over three decades And I will tell you as much as what we did and thought through and we did our craft and we practiced it bloody Well, even three decades ago But there were only those many avenues and like it or not. It was a monologue Today it is so exciting because there as adult and how many of us here in this room are parents Put up your hand, please So the large number and if you all are parents What happened you spoke to your two-year-old? You spoke in their language, right before you know it. We all lapse into baby language You don't know it, but your vocab changes your tone changes, right in trying to communicate with them and Then you speak to them and then they grow and then you speak with them That is what and where we are right now and how fruitful it is it where you have a one-on-one conversation with your child It's beautiful So as much as you love them when they were young But now that they are talking to you and I have a 25-year-old At times. I don't know who's a mother and who's the daughter because I get lectured to as well And I can see smiles, but anyone with a teenage child will smile as well because there it is So that is where we are we need to enjoy we need to convert all these challenges into an opportunity because it's priceless So coming back to our brand stories So building powerful brand stories It needs to be true. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be inside out Understanding consumers in depth. It's not just Demographics are long-passed. It's perhaps one of the variables because there are many things where women and men Defers you may have that as one of the variables, right? But it is Understanding consumers needs their motivation Meeting their needs even sometimes before they feel the need If I'm making sense to any one of you, right? Or almost creating Needs for them. How beautiful is that thought? Okay, and doing it with brand content commerce All brought together in one cohesive experience at Denso. What do we do? We pride ourselves. We are a network which actually Rather than just default we design for what's next so we address today and We look at very very very simply put at the horizon on what's next We don't ten out of ten get it right always, but with our marketeers Nine out of ten eight out of ten is a good enough thing Because we are because of this getting better and better We are getting better and braver and this is another walk right to all of y'all in the room We all need to step forward We can't hide we can't just be followers step forward Get better at recognizing. What is on the horizon be brave enough to commit yourself and Believe in yourself chances are you'll get it right and When you don't that in itself is a learning and what do we do then with that learning? We convert that into yet another opportunity How do we do this in a? structured Coherent way because every brand story differs We do this with full acknowledgment that brands have our living beings which actually have to be experienced and In that with the consumer at the center Content commerce experience and the brand have to be meshed together And as an agency communication agency, we are the multiplier for all our marketeers and our brands We bring this together where every media encounter is a favorable experience Needless to say embedded in that statement is there is an engagement that we are affecting right? with the most advanced technology and I'll give you an example understanding people Which sit in the center because if you do not have that innate understanding all this comes to naught and Then you connect the brand With the content with commerce with culture all together. I'm going to share Two powerful brand stories right now. I've handpicked two out of a repository Take a look at it each work speaks for itself The first one actually meshes brand content commerce and experience and When you see the piece of work, you will see all this play out and come to life Instagram have come out with the best feature OJ messages big daddy of internet challenges It's called Swiggy's voice of hunger challenge Voice of hunger if you can get the waveform on Instagram DM to look like a food item Kind of looks like a nacho, right? One kabab, two kabab, three kabab, four kabab To win a year's worth of food vouchers from Swiggy Free food tastes better Hashtag Swiggy voice of hunger challenge They were multiple entries. They were entries on pressure cookers on whistles on cats and so on According to the brand. They've been receiving an average of over 50 dm's per minute So Swiggy evidently hit 10,000 entries on day one and I think that soon became 20,000 30,000 and 150,000 They are enacting the brand for you and it has all the brand values embedded within that story The next example is equally powerful What it does is it brings together Powerful storytelling it harnesses tech and it brings about Societal change Take a look and some of you may have seen this. I don't know how many have unfiltered history Okay, a couple of hands are going up and I can see some of my team members as well The British Museum is a public institution dedicated to human history art and culture Come discover over 80,000 works from around the world here in London You are now viewing the gregal shield Captain James Cook was a British It's getting a run for now looking at the wiggle shield which was taken from our people Elections in the British museums are premised on a simple idea I'm proud of what my grandfather stole from yours. There's a stone was not a discovery neither of the French neither of the British It was already discovered and reused in Egypt multiple times for us. It's not just our well-carved rock It is a living ancestor. This very important statue is on display in a museum Thousands of miles away say the British Museum is the world's largest receiver of stolen goods We're launching an interactive tour of some of its most contested artifacts Every object that was made in the kingdom and that is how we told our history There were two foreign powers in rivaly over Egypt One of them won over the other and they took the worst points of the other For many a series was maybe the last time we could really stand up to people who were trying to bully us And it's I made me feel a big level of shame Museums around Europe are slowly realizing the exhibiting items taken by force hundreds of years ago from other countries is Kind of gross and it's about time We can't change the past, but we can change how we engage with it in the present When something is so clear it cuts through jury after jury after jury. I Was part of the can jury this year And let me tell you the when we come and we gather together and we are across the geographies the jurors across networks But cream that like they say the old saying always floats to the top this unequivocal Communication which is clear in its design and thought and articulation always comes to the top and when I say this piece one Jury after jury this doesn't even capture. I've just given the great finale, right? There is another piece that I haven't got here for paucity of time That was actually a seven minute video it was Pooja didi and it was not this year, but last year I don't know how many in this room have seen Pooja didi It was done for Facebook Go back and take a look seven minutes and You will That in very many ways also encapsulates the power of stories The powerful stories move They move consumers. They move business. They move brands and Therefore we and then so practice what we call horizontal creativity and what is horizontal creativity? It is taking into account the consumer experience Which is actually now enacted live in the media space and bringing it together in the brand world It it's a philosophy. It's it's something that we craft that we practice where this Creativity permeates across the rank and file across the functions and it goes back to a Threat of mind that I have always given my creative Champions I would often tell them because media is full of numbers, right? I would often threaten them you guys go to sleep in a media presentation. Be careful. I Will start writing copy that kept them awake But today and in a recent symposium I attended I Asked the audience because this was a question from the audience Where does media begin and creativity end or where does creative begin and media end? Like I said we practitioners perhaps are guilty of putting it in silos So this is a call to arm This is a call to arm for everybody in this room. We need to be creative We need to be strong powerful brand storytellers including your own one life So with that, thank you My call to arm. I have already spoken about please Embrace change Do not be a laggard Be better at identifying what that change is step forward bravely Almost ensure there's a constant state of disruption Rather that than be disrupted. So thank you very much. Thank you so much, ma'am and So gracefully have decoded every mantra of marketing. I hope they have got it. They will get it if not in your synchronicities will Please put your hands together for her it was very insightful and I'm still in the story a lovely storyteller. Thank you so much and I request your friend your dear friend Chandra sir to come up on stage and Thank you. Please bring the momentum. Thank you, sir