 The right use of robust data can well be the key to the most complex marketing problem. However, more platforms, more confusion. As they say, just accumulating data is not the difficult part. Breaking it down and using it to the brand's advantage definitely is. But what if marketers had a genie there who could help them sift that data, gather from multiple touchpoints, help identify their customer needs in order to make their brands available to them in a very much more relevant fashion. Could we then derive the highest possible return on investment? Well, let's find out. We are here to decode the top five strategies to maximize digital ROI and with me are some very knowledgeable leaders from the industry. An interesting mix of brands and digital experts. Let me introduce each one of them. Let's start with Savesh Kumar, Hedgefield Marketing India, UPL Limited. Hi, hi, Savesh. Hi, hi. We also have Mukesh Varaya, Chief Marketing Officer of Modi Naturals. Hi, Anita, happy to be here. Sneha, very well, is also joining us. She's the Chief Marketing Officer of Vadaam India, most loved tea brand. I say, I'm happy to be here. Rajdeep Singh, next, he's a Brand Marketing and Communication Leader at EYGDS Plain Services. Hi, everyone. Hi, Anita. Akash Bhattacharji, Head of Marketing and Partnership at VTale Store, Tata, 1MG. Hey, hi. Hi, everyone. We are KRN Chaubey, Head of Marketing, Metropolis Healthcare Limited. Hi, everyone. Hi, how are you? And Shreedhar Hari, Hari Subramanya, Senior Director at Salesforce. Hi, good day, everyone. Nice to be here. Thank you. And Deepak Sharma, Head of Marketing, LMB Pharmaceuticals Limited will be joining us in a bit. So let's get started. Gone are the days when advertising is based on cut feeling, especially digital marketing. It's highly, highly dependent on data-centric approaches. I want to understand from you, what are the big challenges that you face today while incorporating data into actionable strategies in your organization? Let's start with you, Ms. Vairiwal. Hi, thanks, Deepak. So I think one of the big challenges about using data is inconsistency across the kind of data that you get from different sources, different platforms, both in terms of output and the input in which a lot of platforms accept data. I mean, I may get it in X-format, but when you actually want to put it into let's say an analytics tool or a marketing tool, it needs to be converted. So of course, that makes life very, very difficult. I also feel the way how the whole cookie situation is evolving. The amount of extrapolation that we could do on data earlier, just looking at third-party data, overlaying it with publicly available data, all of that has gone for a toss, which means your actual access to real meaningful consumer data is actually much more limited today than it was a few years ago. So in a way, it seems like we are going a little backward in terms of the amount of data that's available to us. But I think this also then forces us to make sure that we learn to use tools and models and draw insights from what is available, which may seem like limited data, but actually is more authentic data that we can start using. So I just feel these are the two things. It's actually you have lesser data now and the whole digital, the data vocabulary is not yet consistent across all mediums. So I think those are sort of two things which make life difficult for us as digital marketers. Does anyone want to add to that? Does everybody agree that we are going backwards with regard to data today? No, I can just add something here from my perspective. Yes, I do believe that I'm not sure about going backward, but yes, this mountains of data. And I think the challenge that at least when I talk to various marketers, I think the big challenge that comes out is, how do you make sense of that? And yes, I think Sneha rightly identified the point about disparate data. You have to really put everything together, stitch it together so that you have some cohesiveness in what you're seeing. And then you're able to glean some useful insights that you can really act upon. While that sounds simple, but getting from one end of the raw data spectrum to the other end where you have this useful stuff, you can take action on it and customers feel like, okay, you recognize me as a customer and my needs and so on and so forth. That I think is sort of the holy grail. And I think while there are multiple steps involved in getting there, while it's not impossible to do it, yes, but I think it is quite difficult I think in today's world. You spoke about third party data and how it's not really available to us. I want to understand from you, how do you today as a marketer, treat first party, second party, third party data, whatever is available and in your entire marketing outreach to this kind of predict the consumer's needs, desires, their future behavior, all of that. Is Mr. Chaubey still here? I think, can we see Mr. Chaubey here? Okay, so Vish, would you like to take that? Yeah, so see, I mean rightly said by Sneha, you know, we are flooded with data, but the right use of data becomes the most important for all of us. And where it is relevant because without data, you cannot do anything. But when, where and which data to choose becomes most important. And if we see, I mean, the source of data has become our number one, I mean, business today, if you see, and from there are various sources from whichever sector, whichever segment you talk about. But now the data which you get in which perspective it's being used, which, which direction it's going. And again, as Sneha said, the data is again, is not a constant thing. It's a thing which is the most vulnerable, versatile, agile, because every day it's changing. The data which you get to get today might not be relevant tomorrow. So data is always a past, right? So we need to be little agile, we need to be little adaptive, we need to be little accommodative, we need to be having a clear understanding that what's happening in and around, because without having that understanding, whatever data you have, the data is in past and present, if it has changed, it will have no relevance for you. I think another big problem is silo data. That's always proved to be an impediment in adapting to the changing consumer demands. I'd like to understand from Mr. Guraya here, how does a marketer feel about this and you know, cross-channel personalization, how do you think businesses can kind of overcome that? Mr. Guraya? Yeah, so maybe just touching upon from the earlier discussion that we're having, then one of the challenges from my personal experience that I've also faced in the data is maybe Savesh also touched upon that. So usually what happens at a campaign, if it performance on a certain parameters in one go, it's not possible that if we take the same set of variables and continue to perform that game campaign, maybe after six months it will not perform pretty much the same, it will not deliver the same result. Same data set will not deliver the same result every point of time. And that's sometimes because we try to say, okay, this kind of audience is working for me, so let me continue to work on the same audience every month, every quarter or every six months, but we do not work. Because the underlying assumption here is, I mean, data invites just a number on the XLR spreadsheet, but there's a human behind that data. And that human is evolving, his preferences are changing, his journey is evolving, you don't know what's his mood today. Or at that point of time, when your earlier campaign ran, what was his state of mind and what is his state of mind right now. So just taking data as it is may not be the best answer. And we have faced that, and we have seen very, very different results that same data set delivering completely good results and the same data set that we did pretty much the same, but it still didn't work. So the idea is that we should go slightly more deeper in understanding the consumer insights. The old fashion, I would say reality of consumer insights will still hold true even in the generation of data world. Because those consumer insights, those pain points, those ambition, those aspiration of the consumer will still help you go that extra mile and make your campaign work. In terms of the multiple channel, and that's what's exactly happening right now, because now the consumer journeys are extremely nonlinear. Consumers interact with brands at different point of time across different channels. So it's very difficult to one collect all the data. And as Sneha mentioned, the form of data would be very different at different platforms in the way it's stored. So gathering that data and consolidating data to map those personalized experience across cross channel is extremely complicated, is extremely complex. Another challenge, which sometimes we all, I'm sure all of us would have fed any kind of time is the over personalization. Sometimes all the brand just to be part of that, build that personal experience, just go to little overboard. And I mean, we have seen maybe I'm discussing with my wife in my living room that let's plan our next holiday and as soon as I open my mobile phone next, I see a holiday package being sold to me. And you feel like, damn, what's happening to me? Sometimes those over personalization can be intimidating. Because maybe I've shared those experiences or shared that journey in another app, but I would be intimidated at how does this app knows what I was talking about or what I was doing in my offline or online space. So that nonlinear journey and when brand falls into your journey at extremely large stage, it gets a little complicated. And as you mentioned, in the cross or multiple channel platform stage, because the journeys are nonlinear, it's very difficult to create a linear experience or a better personalized experience in a real time, because digital is all about creating those real time experiences. So those can sometimes get in a wrong direction. And those are a couple of challenges which brands always faces. And hence, obviously you need to invest in terms of the technology, in terms of the how do you automate and not just automate, but sensibly automate so that you don't push back your consumers a bit and you have those privacy issues or whatever, because that's again one of the most sensitive issue is your data collection or in data usage. Practices are GDP are compliant or they fall as per the privacy rules and regulation of the law of the land. So these are a couple of the challenges that as a brand or as a marketer, we face when it comes to personalization of the data. Very interestingly, you mentioned that there was also the instance where sometimes you end up buying for people the opposite sex, like a cousin of mine was buying something for his wife, a lot of cosmetics. And for the next one week, he was flooded with ads of cosmetics, which he's not going to use obviously. So that can also go wrong completely in this case. But very, very interesting point that you made Mukesh also about how data can be outdated and how the same set of data cannot be useful for you in the going forward. Is there an example that we can maybe learn from? Is there something specific that happens to you where the usage of outdated data didn't really get the desire without you? I mean, a great example could be simple consumer experience post and pre-pandemic. The same set of campaign or same set of audience because the consumer journey or the consumer thought process evolved so much, people now suddenly more health conscious. So maybe if I was trying to sell my edible oil with the proposition of taste, if that is my communication, maybe that may not find so much resonance in a post-pandemic world because then people are saying, okay, I can still negotiate a taste with but health is more important to me or immunity is more important to me or I'm willing to pay an extra money is that products add value to me. So I would not remember exactly the message, but I've seen the same set of data and same set of communication not delivering it to various different points of time. And also if you look at philosophically, I mean, we all have heard the quote that what took you here will not take you in the next stage. So that apply for the data as well. So that data work in the past may not necessarily work in the future because consumers are changing, your environment surroundings are changing and similarly your thought process, your motivation, your life goals, everything is work in progress. I'd like to bring you in, tell us how, how important to you can provide that uniform experience and service to customers across channels and how are you at salesforce solving this particular problem for brands? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think Mukesh makes some really interesting points and that definitely resonates in our conversations that when we speak to a lot of customers and I'm not, I don't want to claim that we solve the problem, but I do think that we have the technology tools and the platforms in place that I think can address some of the things that Mukesh raised and rightly so. One is, again, in fact, I was on a panel a couple of days ago where we were talking about the so-called customer data platforms. This is a concept that has taken on a lot of interest in the last couple of years and sort of evolving into what we call as data clouds now and what it simply means is that companies are recognizing that they need a place in the enterprise to store all customer related information while that itself is not necessarily new. What is new in today's technology is the fact that it is able to actually ingest all kinds of data that we talked about from various sources, which could be in silos, which could be in different types of formats, our own social media identities, for example, on Twitter ID, my name is Rheather H, on LinkedIn, I'm somebody else and Facebook and a third person, but ultimately, I'm actually the same individual, but there is technology today that can actually through fuzzy logic and other mechanisms, it can identify that, hey, this is actually the exactly the same street. Just a simple example, but it can actually help you to figure out a unified profile of that customer, create what we call as a golden record, and then that golden record becomes the glue that ties in all the different behaviors that the customer is exhibiting not only on various channels, but also over time, which again, I think is an important point that I think Mukesh made. We have something called as a time series analysis, where again, the changing preferences and the behaviors of the customer, because their life situation may have changed, et cetera, et cetera, for whatever reason, and the data is able to actually give you clues into those changes. We may not know exactly what happened in the person's life, but definitely from the behavior that they are exhibiting, perhaps, for example, their past few purchases may have been, let's say an average of 10,000 rupees, but now they're looking for a bracelet, which is three times to four times that amount. So something has clearly changed. Maybe he got a job or she got a job. Maybe they got a promotion and they're able to afford more. So using this new behavioral information, we can almost in a real time say, okay, there is something that has changed. So why are we not able to go and position a bracelet in that new price range, rather than targeting them with some of the Bangal or something in the old price range, so to speak. This is just one example from the industry. Actually, we are working with a customer who's actually doing this right now. So once you do that, then I think from a technology perspective, there are a lot of capabilities to take that segment. In this case, it could be even as grander as a segment of one, which is I'm trying to target you individually, and then give you whatever I think is sort of completely relevant to your situation. I have the ability to do that. So what it really means is that I'm able to do it at scale. It doesn't matter whether you're trying to send this campaign for thousands of customers, but I'm still able to personalize it at that level. And this can happen almost without a lot of human intervention. You can describe the business rules and the criteria that you want to be put in. And with the help of big data technology and AI and so on and so forth, you're able to get to that in a relatively, I would say, easier and quicker fashion than what we used to do in the past. So that I would say technology has really played a big role in sort of getting us to this scale right now. Akash, would you like to add to that as a healthcare platform? What are the challenges that you face with regard to silo data? You're getting obviously a lot of it from your own websites. Yeah, definitely. I think what it comes into from our website, and there's a startup and MG has, I think, one of the biggest depository of the healthcare data. Now, the biggest challenge I think what we are facing because the new line of business, what we are trying to create is the offline stores. How to send data into an, because the overall user behavior of an online customer versus an offline customer is very different. And here's where the AI or let's say the automation starts helping us to identify that behavior. That's at a broad level. And even if you bifurcate the user purchase at, let's say a medicine level or a diagnostic level, the data helps us very like when we get into Excel's manual and then move into automation to understand what is the frequency of a user. While it is very easy to say that these are chronic people, they are repeat users, but it's very difficult to come to a point that what is the frequency at which a customer will come back and purchase to you. And that here is where the AI comes, where it helps us exactly pushes the customer or helps us reach out to the customer to purchase or to make them aware of maybe your medicine are running out of stock or maybe you need a health checkup or maybe you test 45 days back, why don't you come get a sugar test and as soon as you click, you also get to know that someone in his family is maybe a customer of Tata 1MG and is procuring medicines of thyroid and is where I think that overall intel which the data has to tell us becomes very important. In nutshell, I think how the overall experience of a customer, how you engage with the customer and at what point you have to engage with the customer becomes very important with the data sets what we have. While Mukesh rightly said that we don't want to overboat people with the data sets and get into their private lives, but that fine tuning where to enter the customer, how to tap the customer and what exactly the customer needs at what time becomes very, very crucially important in that journey. And I think I was discussing this previously also with someone that you missed that timing and a customer, you have lost a customer because you need it. It's not a impulse buy, but it's a schedule purchase. You have to be very cognizant of the fact that okay, at this day, he has purchased and these many number of steps or medicine he has purchased or at this point, he did a test and let's say by medical record, this is the number of weeks after this test has to be conducted. You have to circle back to that customer with that information, awareness and awareness is very important because if you start selling medicine, the trust is gone. You have to create awareness that awareness in form of how you communicate to the customer, what you communicate to the customer becomes very important. And we keep on debating about it, should we make a customer afraid or should we make them aware? And there's a very thin line when you deal with these medical, currently there's a lot of conjunctivitis happening, there's a lot of fever happening. The way you can communicate is oh, are you going to get fever? No. The other way is a lot of people are suffering from fever. Are you cautious enough for your family? Identify that person and data helps you do that. Identify that person, figure out that message to that person, deliver it and I think you are bang on. And another interesting thing about where you operate is I think health care and diseases is a very private affair. So you have to be really tactful about where to target your customer on what screen, how many people might be watching him at that particular time whenever you're at, might be shown eventually or those things are very, very important for you unlike a monolith or a category or a parlay. It's an impulse purchase, we can heart set. Here you have to be very tactful about your communication. I think there are very funny examples we encountered on a day-to-day basis. We have a weight management program and as soon as while determining the cohort of users you want to send it to, you have to be very cognizant. One person can think oh, why me? Am I fat? And they can sue you. Do I even require this? Correctly said, you have to be very, very cognizant on what set you are picking about, what is the communication line? Because it's a very thin line when you're dealing with health care between a trust and you getting into the courts. So yeah, I think data helps you a lot over there, even what the customer wants to read, what they want to click, see that really helps with automation I would say. You're speaking about marketing automation. They say it reduces the workload of marketers by automating repetitive, tedious tasks, but it's much, much more than that. Savish, I would like to bring you in and also Mr. Gureya, how can you, as a digital marketer, how can you boost engagement and growth with marketing automation? Can we start with you, Savish? Yeah, you're on mute. Yeah, so see, when it comes to marketing automation, it not only brings on efficiency, but also it brings on more on personalization and then lead nurturing data driven decisions, because I mean, you can't lead to any decision, right? I would say right decision without analyzing the right data. So automation does that. And then multi-level channel engagement, that is only and only possible with the current scenario where everything is so versatile when you do automation. And if I talk about multi-channel engagement, it facilitates consistent messaging across multiple channels, ensuring that the right message has gone at right time. So it reduces your dependency on many other things when it is automated. And then it is scalable. If it's not automated, I mean reaching out to many is not possible. So it's only and only possible to be at a scale if it's automated. And then ROI and revenue growth is only possible when it's automated campaigns you have, and it can lead to increased efficiency. Another important aspect becomes customer retention, which is the most important aspect in today's world, because it not only leads to the increased profitability, but also revenue stability. I mean, existing customers are more likely to do repeat purchases. So I mean, most of us have just cited various examples, like you cited example of cosmetics. So, you know, the repeat, repeat purchase is possible by most of the existing customers. So retaining those customers can be only be possible by when you have automation. So one side you are busy with acquiring new at the other end, the automation can lead to the lead to the existing customer optimization, then increase profitability because again, if you have retained customers, if you are in regular touch at the right time, loyal customer tend to spend more and at less sensitive to change in prices leading in higher profit margins. So obviously when you are into business, you need profits, right? And referrals and word of mouth. So satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your business to others. And driving business growth through word of mouth is the most effective way that means. So how to keep them in touch at a regular basis, at a frequent basis. So the solution, one and only solution is automation. Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, automation is extremely important for all the market to save that extra time in our, in our, in our life. I mean, all of us are more busy than we ever were in our, in our life. So any technology tool that saves us some precious time, it's not just good for us, but for the organization as a whole and we can all together contribute that to the increasing the productivity of the individual as well as the organization. Having said that one important aspect of automation is also that it takes the personal biases away from the decision making, because the decision making is completely data driven. I could love read someone go to write like blue, someone else write black. So how do you come to the decision? Typically in the old world scenario, it always the person with the highest salary in the room will make a decision. And it's like, okay, because I am the MD of the company, things should be read. But those kinds of personal biases are now taken out of the equation. All of us are not just marketed, but also say also the consumer. And hence those personal biases comes in the picture. We always think from our friends and family perspective. I always question in the meeting room sitting and say, who watches linear television these days, everyone is on OTT. But we feel to realize that I mean, what it is just 5% or 6% of the entire linear television. So we all are myopic in our, in our point of view, because there's only that much we can see around our friends and family. So that data led decision making which automation needs to do that is, is that takes the personal biases away from your decision making. And hence the decision that's happening is completely data driven. And that's, I would say the right way of also taking, taking those decisions, collecting data, running campaigns on those data, getting those data insights of the consumer cohorts, creating those cohorts and then then personalizing those communication and messaging. So all these, all these are tedious tasks. And all these in a, in our older scenario would have required some kind of more time consumption as well as personal advice would have come into play. So I think those two important factors to my mind has been completely eliminated and which gives us extra time to work more on understanding our consumer deeply, making our product more important, and also focusing on the after sale service. A lot of the time we market has spent so much time in just acquiring the consumer and he said, okay, once the transaction is done, I'm out, I don't care about you. But the important part is that you have to retain this time before I forward the name one of the gentlemen mentioned here. The consumer retention is, I mean, more important than customer acquisition. I mean, if you, if you don't have a customer retention strategy and you're completely focused on consumer acquisition, it's a leaking bucket. You can keep the tap on all night, but your bucket will never be full. So I think automation gives you that extra time to focus on your product, your consumer experience and bettering that. And that's a great space for marketer to play. So both you and Savish agree on the consumer retention part of it. Peter, if I may just comment here on a small point, right? I think there's two things that make that right. And I've been thinking about it, which is both personalization and automation, right? See, I'll tell you why, of course, these are great tools at the hand of a marketer. And I'm also actually building on something that he said that at times it can get intimidating, right? Like when you, when you personalize too much or even when you automate too much. See, ultimately, marketing is art and science, right? If you just make it to science and forget the layer of art. And I think that's where at least I always feel that how do you strike the balance of personalize? See, ultimately, if you could automate everything, right? Especially the kind of personalization and automation that's happening. We have all had cases where we're borderline irritated with how much automation has happened in marketing, right? So are you then taking the core of marketing and changing it from pull marketing to push marketing, right? I think that's one pitfall that I am always trying to watch out for. Again, this is all evolving so quickly, there is no playbook, right? So we're all figuring things out for ourselves. But I see a lot of brands where because you have the power to personalize and automate, you can't suddenly say that I'll be so in your face that, you know, I mean, you either die or buy my product, right? It doesn't work like that. You actually end up alienating the customer way more than you end up engaging with them. So I think the fundamental principles of creating the pull, the brand needs to have a certain kind of allure, right? I mean, it can't be something that's just nagging in my ear all the time, right? I mean, there it loses the charm that a brand is supposed to have. So I think totally agree with everything that Mukesh said. But I think that's one pitfall that in my head, I'm constantly thinking about that what is too much, right? And what is not enough? And I think that balance is so important because sometimes, you know, technology is so powerful, all of us are guilty of going overboard once in a while. And I think those pitfalls are very, very important to our shortfall. It just reminds me of, sorry, I'll just quickly share that. So one of the very fundamental thing that we use in digital marketing is remarketing. Like if someone visits my website, I'll just remarket that guy. Now as a marketer, because I'm utterly optimistic, I think that because he came to my website, he's interested in my product and I'll continue to chase him. Well, the background story could be that he came to my product and said, no, it's a shitty product. I don't want this. And as he moved out, but still I'm chasing him because as a marketer, I'm saying, okay, he showed interest, but it's like, no, rejected. It was a left swipe on me. But yeah, we're habitual to that optimism. Do we have a thought for that? Shreena Raj, you can let us know. I mean, going back to what Sneha was saying, and I think that problem of this too much technology, et cetera, I think it's about to actually get worse. And of course, I'm referring to the G word, which is generative AI, and people can't just stop talking about it. While it is phenomenal technology, there is enormous potential. There's absolutely no doubt about all of that. This is really going to be life changing, game changing, whatever you want to call it. But again, it has to be used and applied in the right context in the right way. And the fears given that we are still in a very nascent stage are already out there in terms of toxicity, bias, et cetera, et cetera. We from a Salesforce perspective, one of the design points that we have put in place with all the solutions that are coming out is what we call as human in the loop. Ultimately, as marketers, I'm sure we all want to put a human face to the brand. We want to treat our customers with empathy and so on and so forth. And automation, all of this is really going to make it even worse. And with generative AI, it's no different. You can have a bot or a GPT tool, which can spit out responses. And in fact, the responses also are going to be very human-like. That's what makes it very different from the previous technologies. But what we've decided to do as a company is to do what is called as human in the loop, which means that any response before it goes to the customer, a human will be in the middle and they will have to look at the response and see if it is appropriate or not for that customer and then only approve it and then send it. So we're not going to give that level of automation where the GPT tool is just going to automatically spit out responses and whatnot. But we will always have somebody in the middle taking a look at it, changing the tone, adjusting the formality of the response, making sure that the message has empathy built in, especially if you're denying a loan or whatever the situation may be, and treat that person ultimately like a human being. And I think that's important to keep in mind as we use more and more technology tools we need to recognize this problem as well. Raj, do you want to comment? I think that you're really interested in this. So Nita, I think I want to give away a different perspective to this conversation. I come from B2B marketing and I've got this opportunity to implement marketing automation, full stack technology for three big IT companies in my life. So I want to take you back to 2007 when I was working with a big product company. And at that time, the customer journey was very limited for a product IT company. Most of the leads were coming from the websites, events, inside sales, sales person calling, email was a big thing for B2B market is still is a big thing and cut to 2023. Now customer is leaving a lot of footprints. I mean, social media on there's so many B2B in B2B also, there's so many channels which have come in. Now, what marketers are doing with marketing automation by implementing is they are balancing the power now, because the customer is leaving a lot of digital footprints, we need to balance it. And that is where marketing automation, especially for B2B folks, really helps. So for us, if you look at a lead for us, let's say an opportunity or what B2B we call lead is a very important term is right from capturing a lead to nurturing it, scoring it, assigning to a sales rep. Marketing automation has done a great job. I know a lot of companies that once a person comes on the website and fills, let's form and goes and read a lot of stuff, within let's say 30 minutes, lead is properly stored, prioritize and goes to the sales, sits with the sales rep. And that is where you can, as Sridhar was talking about that human intervention can come in. But after implementing marketing automation for companies and also been using, I also want to say this as a lot of the panelists were saying that in the end, the trust is built with a handshake. So that is very important. And your, the sign that you do on a contract is based on a lot of data and also the gut feeling. So that is something which you can, at present, I would say the technology cannot take away where human intervention is. Since we're talking about technology and Sridhar also touched upon AI, I want to elaborate a little bit on that and get into marketers as well. AI is obviously a tool which is kind of linked up to all that hype, unlike Metaverse, which died down in a very big way. What according to the marketers today, I mean, my present here is a role of AI power tools like chat box, virtual assistants and enhancing customer engagement and overall improving the customer experience. Akash, would you like to talk about this? Yeah, I think it's a very, very, very important thing when we are talking about and we know part of few startups now where this important getting the new users and the repeat users becomes very important. So and then there comes a point where you need to understand how do you engage any customer. And that engagement starts with acquiring a new user their overall journey purchase and then retaining once the purchase is done to retain that customer to your overall funnel or overall product is the overall cycle what everyone is aware about. But how does these automations in chat board or let's say a virtual assistance helps you is it one helps you to identify which set of users you need to acquire and what is the experience you need to deliver to the new users who have been onboarded. The second is as soon as a customer purchases and I'm talking about basic in a very basic language as soon as a customer has transacted with you, what are the line of engagement you need to do with that customer to retain him back and this happens where a lot of chatbot previously it was being said that human touch is very important for that overall experience to be made but I think eventually everyone has realized that a chatbot is much more efficient and can answer almost everything and even give that touch of humanly touch and hence there are various fancy names coming to all the chatbots like a ZRTI everything Tata when it is a tier name chatbot which has been introduced just to give that personalized feeling and the last part where I feel chatbots three buckets one is how do you acquire a new user via chatbot it can be just sending a whatsapp and then start talking to that user what exactly is that requirement whether it can be a push or a pull the user can come to your flow the second is once you have made that user believe that they want to purchase a product the product the transaction happens and then you keep on chatting with that user in a very systematic way and not in an ad hoc way the last part is the overall experience of escalations how do you handle that so there are multiple funny instances I come prior to this I was in a food industry and 25th of December 31st of December are the peak days and those chats were hilarious for us to read about everyone is talking about everything someone is talking about whereas my pizza and the reply is this is your chola vatura and this is how all the all the like this is how the shit hits the fan like the fan and you don't even know how to control that and then we got to okay there is a AI tool there is a chatbot which can handle all your responses it can give you the exact answer the exact experience even if your systems are working at a 20x capacity is where I think that overall chatbot mechanism helps you to retain the customer even when you are flooded with a lot of orders even when your systems are breaking but if your responses are very much defined the experience the experience increases and hence the customer will come back to you is where the automation comes into the picture the chatbot comes into the picture helps you discover order and retain by the customer you know as a marketer I'm sure chatbot works but as a customer I must say lots it's there's still a lot left to be desired I mean I literally banned brands because their chatbots were so intimidating and they did not answer any question that I asked yeah so I think this is the good side of it the the if I want to be a devil's advocate I think there because of automation the chat gets abruptly ended you don't even know what to do next there is no call there is no CTR there is no call and you don't even you just feel helpless like you're chatting chatting and then then there comes a message automated message okay we didn't find the response so okay thank you I think your experience was great so I think those are the points where we need to get those manual intervention the data sets to look at understand keep okay this is where this is the pain point and it has broken the overall funnel the amount of money and time invested in acquiring retaining a customer exactly breaks from here and you will never go back to that brand again you know I was going to add to what you said your frustration with chatbots etc and and this is again something that we see quite a bit and I think one of the ways to address that potentially is to ensure that you know the chatbot application or that solution whatever it is you know that needs to talk to let's say you know the backend customer service console or you know whatever software that let's say a contact center agent is using right because there are going to be certain issues where a chatbot simply will not be able to solve the problem because it is just so complex there are probably lots of permutations and combinations to consider before I give you a response and this is typically something that you know chatbots are still not able to do very well today right and therefore it's important to ensure that that entire you know transcript or the history of what you've been sharing with that chatbot is something that you know you're able to save and then transfer it back to a human agent so that the human agent is you know able to look at that history that you just had over the past five minutes and they don't start from scratch and say okay tell me what the problem is right that will frustrate you even more you know and I think that's where technology can help with you know integration making sure that the data is there you know those kinds of automations are you know available today you know but but I do find that you know a lot of customers you know do not have even I would what I would call is you know fairly basic capability here right either it just abruptly ends as I think Akash was saying because it can't go any further but the right thing would be to say sorry I'm not able to help you let me transfer to a human agent you know and then the human agent sees the transcript they know exactly what the problem is they kind of understand what it is and then you know they're able to have a conversation and help you with that right so I think you know there are ways to address it but but but you're right that the level that we are rich on an average I'm not saying there are some very good chatbots out there but I think the average is still you know the bar is very low right now I think we go back to that middle ground wherein you know you need to have a little bit of both technology and human intelligence yeah I use a very simple rule when I think about any of these right it's a two-hour rule is there elements and are you ready okay I think just because everybody has a chatbot do I really need a chatbot I think a lot of times and partly marketers are guilty of that because we sort of you know doing the next cool thing a lot of us are chasing that right I remember when Metaverse came it was almost a PR worthy headline that if a brand launched something on Metaverse right but to what why are you doing it just a mental question right so is it relevant to you and I think that's the first question you should ask whenever a new technology whether it's chatbot I mean today everybody's going gungo about generative AI but how does it really fit into my business right I don't have to use everything that AI is offering if I just it's helping me out in content generation then only use for that right it's absolutely fine and the second is like I think everybody's saying I think a half big job when you're not ready will actually alienate customers more than help your brand like you said right you're talking to a chatbot and then they're gone like what do you do now right you and imagine as a customer you're so so frustrated with that situation so have I done enough use case thinking have I done enough journey testing before putting it in front of my customer so I always feel that as long as you stay true to these two principles and work with that so maybe use fewer technologies that are there but whatever you're doing has to have a meaningful impact to your business and to your customer right I think getting confused with everything that's out there is very easy but I think that's also where we need to stop giving into the temptation and saying that oh it's working for them which means it should work for me it unfortunately life doesn't work like that right and businesses also don't work like that so I always every time I look at a new technology I force myself to answer these two questions is it relevant and as an organization it's not about whether I have the marketing intent to do it right do I have developers to integrate it right do I have is my CRM trainable to take over from when a chatbot conversation ends abruptly right so there's a lot of capability building that you need to do to work with new technology and I think those are the two principles that I think I try to think through I'm happy to hear if somebody else is using another principle and you know helps me also assess these things in a better way but yes it's a struggle with the amount of technology that's out there it's very tempting to get caught up in saying but it's it's difficult Josh leave I mean you obviously are more into B2B is there any way this is also addressing the problems of B2B customers and chatbots I you know completely agree with Sneha I think it's a lovely point I just wanted to come in after you know what she said I think you know we all marketers also need to you know think in terms of design thinking and in terms of UX that you know if you have a chatbot right on here that's here on the website is it really adding value right to your you know overall design you know to audience at second point I think what she was also making is that your chatbot needs to connect with your contact database it needs to pick information from there so before you know if someone thinks the chatbot should know it actually that you know what exactly is this person should know the 360 degree you know view of that person and then be able to recommend you know a personalized context I think that is very important especially in B2B because you know for our customers can be from any industry right it can be a healthcare it can be you know from the telcos who come and you cannot just give one statement right or you know let's say a selling point you need to know the differentiator for that person and then you need to be able to talk in human language I think we are not yet there when it comes to you know having chatbots both in terms of UX but I think the future is bright especially with the I am very excited that it will bring in you know new kind of technology for B2B marketable as well you know now I'd like to go back to personalization because I thought that was the most interesting part of the discussion so far I want to understand from each of you some winning practices with regard to personalization what are the things that you keep in mind what are the things that you avoid completely and yeah what works and what doesn't can we can we start with you Akash sorry I think there was a lag you have to repeat yourself I said I want to know some winning practices with regard to personalization how do you really go about it no let me just rejoin I think there is a lag oh okay do Shah Mukesh can we maybe start with you then and then we'll come back to Akash if you could hear my question the first and basic start of any personalization is understanding your consumer same product can have different set of consumer at different life stages with different motivation so segregating or building those cohorts of consumers where the first principle of marketing will start so the idea is to that you deeply understand your consumer you break your consumer set into multiple cohorts and then you address each of those those objectives their pain points or need gaps and individually address through communication in personalization so I think everything starts from understanding your consumer deep down and don't try to pocket everyone in the same bracket sorry that's where that it start from Savish yeah I mean I mean rightly said so what I would like to say is you know there are certain things certain principles which we must follow or any kind of personalization I mean what I feel that we must invest in data management focus on data security and adopt real-time data processing which becomes most important and to manage all this establishing a single customer view create a unified customer profile that tracks interaction across channels that becomes most important and implement adaptive content strategy use AI machine and optimize it continuously so prioritizing mobile personalization because that also has to prioritize when what has to be gone becomes most important so these are the few points which I would like to highlight which is most important which I feel Akash can we come to you now yeah yeah yeah I think there was a lag extremely regretful for that please tell me yeah yeah so tell me about your willing practices with regard to personalization you spoke about how you have to be very active with regard to data yeah I think I think when it comes to personalization medicine as a category or diagnostic as a category needs the while all the segments require personalization and reaching out to the customer but when it comes to medicine you need the minutest of detail to reach out to the customer because it's all a category play which category you want to tap at what time as I said previously also and in which period of the month or the year you want to tap them becomes very very essential with gender you want to tap which age you want to tap so if you have that level of cohorting present with you and if you can add it on with the right level of communication I think that's the winning strategy what even we are trying to build and any any market year or any business who was trying to build I think that cohorted approach at what what is the purchase power what is the the pricing power whether a customer is discount centric not discount centric whether he is looking for the service whether he's looking for the experience or whether he's looking at a quick delivery accessibility quality affordability what you want to push across bifurcated user over there get the right timing and the message to roll out to the customer and I think that's the winning strategy and you know Sinha with regard to you I think as a tea brand timing mood weather conditions etc everything makes a word of a difference in your communication I'm sure how do you go about personalizing your marketing efforts it does but you know I mean these are still personalization from a brand perspective I think if you really want to personalize things from a consumer perspective customer journey continuity is to me a very basic hygiene principle right first time visitor repeat visitor purchasers non-purchasers right and crafting your message according to their journey and where they are with you as a brand I think that becomes more critical because you know a lot of these are assumptions I mean don't people have tea in summer they do right they might have it a little more in winters but ultimately these things are such a personal choice that as long as I'm able to understand things like what did they order last when did they order it would they have run out of their store so hence is now the right time to remark it rather than doing a weekly blast which makes no sense to a customer if they are a black tea consumer then what's the point of sending them green tea message right for example maybe they're a customer but they're actually not a tea customer maybe they're buying one of the ancillary products from the brand right so I think understanding personalizing through the stage of the customer journey if I really had to pick one principle on personalization I think it would be that everything else just sort of is brand speak right that I think you should have more tea in winter and I think you should do this but that's actually not what the customer does okay I'd like to ask you how according to you can do better the brand metrics through personalization really yeah no I think some great points have already been made I'm so I'm just thinking what can I add further to this but I'm also reminded of a quote by one of my favorite authors you know Seth Gordon I'm sure in the marketing community he's a sort of a legend and an icon what Seth said is you know marketing is a generous act of you know solving you know someone's problem their problem right you're solving their problem so if you look at marketing almost as a service and you're putting your marketing efforts to address the issue that you have at hand you meaning the customer then I think that is personalization to me right so if you keep that in mind then so how do I know what your problem is right if I have to address the problem I need to know first of all know what your problem is right which again goes back to everything that has been said about this topic which is to really you know develop a foundation of that customer right creating a rich profile enriching that profile through constant you know collection of you know the digital breadcrumbs that they leave on social media on all the channels that they interact with when they call you on the phone you know any psychographic information you know I think we have to move towards psychographics from demographics you know for example right so the more I know about who you are as an individual and of course you know recognizing where you are in that journey right are you still evaluating are you comparing are you about to make a decision to buy or have you already bought something and now there is a problem at what stage of that journey are you in and if you're able to understand that very clearly then I think you know there are very simple things that you can do to you know address the problem right but I think personalization from a technology perspective I think what it does really well is again what we talked about earlier which is the automation and scale part right you know you can be a little mom and pop shop somewhere and you can greet customers with a smile and baby you even know their names you greet them you exactly know what they're buying and that's what happens in Kirana stores even to this day right you get a personalized service because they they know everything about you almost but but what happens when you're a thousand stores across the country it's it's very difficult to do that you know keep that same level of personalization you know with the human touch but I think you know with the collection of data and with technology tools I think personalization can be achieved at that scale but I think we have to keep in mind all the pitfalls that I think you know we spoke we discussed you know a lot about you know in the past a few minutes but but personalization at scale can be achieved with the technology and I think you know that's where it really makes a difference in terms of making it more consumer centric rather than being very brand centric right because I now have the ability to mine you know large volumes of data that I've collected and and then you know drill that down down to the level of a individual customer's information look at their past behavior their purchases the preferences likes dislikes a lot of these parameters can be captured today and hopefully with that you have a reasonably good understanding of who that individual is and then you're able to cater to their needs right so that that's what I would say you know in terms of that yeah yeah of course I think you know as she was also saying that you know customers actually giving us a lot of data right so it is our now it is important for us to you know personalize but I think personally that you know if you have the power to personalize that does not mean that you have to personalize every touch point right there has to be a sense to it but you know when we when I talk about my industry or you know for a tech and when we talk to customers right our customer can be a CTO who is probably a decision maker CMO who is probably has a budget and then there are a lot of influencers so I am actually reaching out to an organization right in that organization there are people from different functions and you know what I also need to understand that you know we talk about business to business or business to customer but in the end I am talking to someone is probably with the name pistol for Nigel or Raj right so that is very important for us to understand and you know when we talk about let's say a lead life cycle so we have to see that where exactly we need to personalize for example if you know my sales guy is doing a social selling and when it's reaching out to let's say you know a banking customer or a telco telco customer they need to 100% know the problem of the industry they need to know the problem of the company and also the particular function they are targeting right and then they need to personalize that conversation then only they'll be able to build that trust right so personalization is important but depends upon where exactly the touch point you're doing it and do it with us they're very interesting point I like the part but don't personalize just because you have the power to do that okay and you know next I want to do a touch up one this you know sometimes marketers kind of get tempted to focus on vanity metrics like flights comments etc which is this statistic that looks spectacular on the surface but don't necessarily translate into any meaningful business results how do you avoid this trap and focus on the metrics that actually get over and what are the what are some of the mandatory vanity metrics that you feel should be completely avoid it can we start with Mravish yeah so for everything you know I mean as rightly said by Sneha the being the two are principle you know you need to find that what is relevant for you and what is not that becomes most important because I mean many statements you find if you go to the social media site and whether liking it has any meaning or not but the option only you have is the like you don't have I mean option to dislike in most of the social media platforms so the only option you have is like so even if you are liking it or not and if you have to react the option available with you is like so we need to make a choice whether it's relevant for us and what sense it's making to us if you don't it doesn't make sense there's no point in giving any reaction so relevance of the thing becomes most important and the first thing which we need to analyze what makes sense for us and what doesn't and that's where the decision lies and we take a call based on that platform like social media facebook twitter what would be that one metric that would really value value will say for me it's all I mean it's not that one gives makes a sense or give a value it's all it's a mix of things but it depends so I mean for one set of thing it could be linked in from one set of thing it could be twitter or one one thing it could be facebook but it depends it's a situational thing which situational which sort of campaigns which sort of activity which sort of program we are running at what point of time and what type of customer category we are targeting so if I talk about the industry in which I am in so for me if I'm targeting a farmer for me for me facebook makes more facebook or youtube makes more relevance as compared to linkedin because you won't find a farmer going on linkedin and searching for a molecule that I have got a white fly in cotton and and which molecule to be sprayed so there it becomes facebook but if I talk about if I'm going to talk about the industry if I'm going to put something in the forum for the industry like sustainability and they are linkedin becomes most important for me and if I'm going to talk about some policy matter or something so they are even twitter players are one of the most important role so it's a situational thing that we sort of campaign we sort of target customers you are targeting so based on that you need to select for the social media okay can we come to you kesh next yeah sure so clearly yes there are a couple of vanity mattresses mattress that comes into play when we are doing a digital marketing because as you discussed in the past a lot of publisher I will call it a lot of public shares media houses try to try to sell their own inventory in a certain form and try to make your campaign is works best when they throw some certain kind of numbers which they said is a success but eventually if you are trying to make a sense out of those numbers it may not lead or the journey journey usually is very broken I would not say all these metrics are wrong or incomplete because as Savage mentioned this also depends on the objective if my objective is lead generation or conversion or specifically business ROI sales then yes maybe something like an impressions or ad views may not be a very relevant because I don't want to build a top funnel but I'm optimizing for the bottom funnel but if I'm a newly launched product newly launched brand and just trying to get some awareness and top of the mind recall then maybe an impression kind of metric is also relevant however I would say maybe there are some certain things which usually are maybe I have come across are not done in a proper way and can be considered vanity like something for example like I'll say CTR now what happens typically in CTR that at a publisher and they'll say okay there is a CTR of 2.7 but if I go to my landing page none of this traffic showed up because those are accidental clicks so while the click is happening and not typically for example if I do a say interstitial ad on our app and they will make that cross sign so small in the corner that people are actually trying to cross that ad but it's getting a click so the I mean the publisher will come and say see we got you say CTR 3% CTR but actually people are trying to cross that mark and they were just because we all are have it's the same logic that you said maybe people want to run away from and you're trying to close that ad but accidentally I just put it somewhere and it's a click so CTR somewhere sometimes is used in a negative way traffic on the website again sometimes you suddenly see there's enough traffic on the website but then later you realize 85% of bounced off in say 5 seconds or whatever so I mean again in numbers those traffic looks really well but if we didn't factor into the consideration there was a 85% bounce rate how many people actually spend time on the website how many page views happened did they go to any specific product page and read about that so maybe those kind of engagement maybe where I'm doing a time spent on the website or a page view or visiting any particular section of my website which is like for example they checked on the price or they check on where is my store I can still attribute that maybe that guy was interested in my product and he's trying to find the price or the where I'm available so those kinds of metrics would be more important than the regular traffic on the website similarly for the impression maybe if there's a more engagement on my ad maybe that would be more relevant so people liking sharing commenting I still feel that maybe he has seen my ad because again sometimes what happens is that I'm reading a content and the ad is just running on the side I would have never seen that ad but it's shown as an impression because it's just loaded on the page as soon as the home page is loaded the ad goes and it counted as an impression but I've never seen that ad or maybe I just scrolled so quickly video views again very notoriously that a lot of publishers media house you said two or three percent two or three second you are into the video it's counted as a view but two three second I was just trying to scroll through that and two three second happened because they are autoplayed it's not that I purposely went there and played for it it was an autoplay format I was just going through a scrolling through the website two three second happened and they say see we generated a view so again the through play kind of a matrix which Facebook has implemented is only if it's a 15 second into the videos then only it will be considered as a view so there are a couple of metrics which are at the first level are notoriously used sometimes which I mean as a marketer we have to slightly go deeper into that and say three second video views is a no for me as long as it's a 15 second of video is worth for me CTR doesn't work for me as long as it's a completely bouncing off my website traffic on the website doesn't make sense so engagement I think is largely the metrics which I mean as a marketer we love to follow that if there's a communication are people liking sharing commenting communicating is there a is there a query answer so those kind of things are taken into consideration but as I said every brand would have their separate objective so I will not completely discard the impression as a matrix is complete vanity maybe for someone in paper okay and your response is brought a big smile to Sneha's face I'm going to learn this see I also agree right see I mean ultimately if you think about it as marketer there's there's there's only so many levers and tools that is available to us right I mean ultimately I agree that engagement is the holy grail right if people are taking out the time and putting in the effort to engage with you you've done something right but how do you get engagement if you don't get rich right I mean I at least have to it's like even in a forget forget digital right in any in an offline environment if I don't tell hundred people who I am how will I make two friends right so I think engagement becomes a subset of how many people you reach so even if it's impressions reach etc etc I think people have they're forced to chase it as long as they know that they're chasing it to ultimately drive the engagement tool and yes I mean those notorious crosses that are difficult to spot I mean you know although you know I think those kind of practices just makes the job difficult and then that just makes the industry infamous right which I think as as collectively not just as us but also as ad sale property providers affiliates you know property owners I think there has to be a collective effort to not do those things because those few then just sort of end up killing the joy of actually getting impressions in reach right because then you're also always questioning key oh I'm sure it is a wrong click right you know even if you have rightfully gotten a two and a half percent CTR first instance whether internally or somebody in the team will say oh you know how it is right it's mostly 90 percent is just people trying to get rid of the ad and doing that so I think there will I hope there will come a time where all of us will grow above these practices but yeah I think engagement is the holy grail but you can't get engagement if you don't have reach right so it's an unfortunate truth but that's the truth the way I look at it no engagement without reach I also see I think Deepak has joined us Alembic firms tools Deepak are you there okay he can't hear us no problem let's move on to Akash I think while I agree to others what they have said but I think for me and I know I'll get a lot of eyes right now when I say this but when I when I as a marketer when I look into one metric what I need to chase and while there are multiple metrics there is CTR there is views reach and obviously there are hypotheses are rational we need to increase the reach we need to increase the engagement but the only metric but what I keep on looking every day and I keep on asking myself is my one dollar value or one rupee value if I spend a rupee how much can I get out of it and then I think it becomes very simple for me to answer a lot of things so if I'm investing a rupee in let's say reaching out to x number of people or engaging y number of people how many of them will come and actually transact on me and what is that value what is that ticket size or what is the final price what I am getting by spending that one dollar or one rupee is I keep on asking myself and whenever we do a lot of whenever we do any pilot whenever we explore a channel whenever we want to expand it is the only metric I keep on pulling back my mind or I think the entire team to answer this thing and automatically everything becomes very clear because when you work in a high growing fast startup your rupee value is the major key metric what people want to look at everyone tends to forget what is the reach what is the view ultimately is boils down to the business what you are trying to generate from that one rupee what you are investing and then it is just the matter of scale how you want to reach so if that basic metric is in place I think a lot of answers you get a lot of answers to the overall direction where you want to go and will helps you to build any channel any whether it is you want to increase the likes you want to increase the views you want to increase inorganic traffic in some various affiliate I think that really helps and then I just keep on asking myself did that one rupee make sense to me or should I have not spend it or how do I get a better ROI or a OTR order through rate I think this this is how it has been building engagement then there was reach and then there is OTR which is your order through rate what is the final order through rate with that one rupees what you have invested is I think the metric which drives me in a pretty straightforward actually I see that we agree and you have anything else to add to that because you're on the other side of this page yeah I mean you know the way I'm looking at this is again you know I think all relevant points and I think this debate about which metric is important I think you know this is going to be an ever ending debate right because different people have different tactics and different problems to solve and different metrics may you know help address those challenges or problems but for me from a technology perspective you know if I if I were to use you know e-commerce or DTC as an example rate the two big metrics that stand out on one hand you have customer acquisition cost right which of course you can break it down into a lot of things you know traffic conversion etc etc but the overall level you have a CAC or customer acquisition cost on the other hand what I would call as customer lifetime value right or CLB and you need to have some kind of a healthy ratio and in fact I think there is a McKinsey study where they recommend that CLB should be at least you know two times you know CAC before you start you know scaling up you know for example right which again you know may not be a universal formula it's going to depend on the brand what stage of growth you are in etc etc but I think at a very fundamental level you know like I think you know even Mukesh was saying you have some you know sort of a higher order metrics rather than you know getting mired into the very tactical impressions reaches clicks etc etc right at the end of the day I think you were able to follow the money trail then I think you know a lot of things will fall into place and that is where you know from a technology perspective in fact we have a solution which is sort of a marketing intelligence tool which essentially helps you to pull all your marketing spends from various channels right it could be Facebook, Insta, Twitter etc etc and then pull all of that in and these metrics again that these platforms are providing which are again world gardens they do it specifically in a way that you know it might be the same thing but they just call it differently right that attribute is called X and the same attribute here is called Y and therefore one of the big challenges that we are trying to solve for market is to make sense of all of that and create some kind of a dashboard which is very easy to visualize how is your marketing dollars you know performing right which is getting you a better rate of return so to speak right and once you have that then you are in a position to optimize you know rebalance your portfolio, pull some money off of this, reallocate it there etc but it looks at it from a money perspective you know so that I think is the sort of the switch or the flip I guess and not saying that again you know all the other metrics are not important but if you follow the money trail then I think you know it will kind of you know make sense and then you know we have tools to do that actually right and that's one of our most sought after tools is that because everybody think look I'm spending so much of money on all these platforms but I'm not really able to make sense of which is giving me better return than the other and how should I re-optimize how should I re-balance my portfolio of spend and I think that's an important question that I think marketers are really you know grappled with you know because the plethora of channels that are coming up you know it is just burgeoning and it's just going up and up all the time and you know with a lot of budget constraints you know in today's environment you have to stretch that rupee and dollar even further right so how do you do more with less is a big question mark I see a lot of smiles and laughs here I mean you know these guys are you know actually the practitioners you know I'm on the other side but I think you know again you know technology I think can help to make some sense out of it okay all right you know let me let me ask another expert and then find the last thing you think so I think see everyone has covered I don't think that there is any KPI which is left but let me let me go back to your question on you know one metric which I would avoid and I think that matrix is going to be a number of people attended the event right I think if you know someone tells me that hey you know this is the KPI that you know these many people turned up on online or offline even for B2B guys we are events of big size events right we spend a lot of money and then we don't expect a lot of people to turn up but someone says yeah this is what but I think what we want from the event is that you know how many beads qualified right with the marketing qualified beads how many relationships we built right in that event I think that's how we want to you know measure the performance of an event and not how many people turned up so that needs to be outdated but I think all the metrics are relevant I would do yeah I'm just thinking of parallel to that in in the online space and if I have to give that one answer what metrics I think follower base is completely redundant how many followers I have on my Facebook Instagram because that's a dead real estate right Mr. Dhokavar guys very smartly killed that real estate for the longest time we are just trying to build our follower base and then suddenly it's like no organic reach so I think that's that's the most redundant information that what the follower base you have because anyways I'm not reaching them organically okay so now I'm going to come to you first Rajdeep give you that advantage what strategy according to you is the one that should be followed to create a higher value content to be attracted to more leads and more customers what should work oh that's interesting question right high value content for us see we you know me to be marketers we create a lot of content what I have understood is that you know one you know you should not try to sell anything in your content right to your people once you start try to just do that on the face of the content then it just backfires second thing which I understand is that you know people don't like to read right that is what you know if you're going to have a big white paper if you're going to have you know a lot of content for people to read unless and until that person is really interested to qualify you as a vendor and has to do a research and go to the boss and say that hey this is my analysis on the vendor the person would not be interested right to you know read a lot of stuff so it is very important for you know marketers to come up with snackable content right which can be consumed really fast and for us in B2B you know the video is something which is very important and then we you know obviously have a lot of tactics which we use but then you know one thing another thing you know I really believe and I always tell you know my colleagues is that when you're creating content you're not actually competing with you know our competition or you know I'm not competing with a professional service firm or an IT company I am competing with Netflix and Amazon Prime right because that is what my you know customer in the end also goes back home and looks at the content and if I have a video which is a very long video and just you know some fancy graphics and just talking about that hey this is the problem which you have right so let me just tell you the customer already knows the problem you know the customer is going through what you need to do is that how you want to solve that problem and you know how are you different than others I think that kind of a personalization for B2B marketers is very important so snackable content easy to consume right I think that is what which we are experimenting on. Momokesh do you want to talk about this? Yes I mean content clearly it's the holy grail of marketing these days and because we are practically living in a digital or screen world creating content because we are now everything is held the entire media is held in our hands we have all the more power to skip the advertising as much as possible so the only way to engage when female is to reach it through the content route and certainly give your messaging or the product out. Couple of things that could be very important so while I would say in terms of the form factor I will not comment on that because that keeps changing keeps evolving maybe it would have been a block couple of years back then maybe it would have been an image maybe right now it's video I don't know what it would be three years down the line it could be something else so that I think marketers we have to keep our eyes and ears open to two screens that what is the form factor maybe right now we can easily say that maybe it's the video which has the highest engagement but in terms of a couple of things that we can look at which we can only try to do that because again that's also one of the challenges all marketers you want to create viral videos right our first wave to the agencies that we need a video that should go viral every consumer to share should share that is different in family but that doesn't easily happen one of the things that should be is that there has to be actionable insights sometime what happened that those those insights or those lessons in those videos sometimes get slightly more preachy which I think okay okay this is not for me so if I'm able to have those practical actionable insights in the video consumer there's a greater likelihood of provenance that I'll relate to it or maybe I try to implement it in my own personal life to this is again my theory is that the other approach of making it practical is using the right side of people in the videos and that is I believe essentially the reason why this entire influence of marketing exists I mean Shah Rukh Khan still exists Salman Khan still agrees why do I need a guy next door selling a face cream or a or a live voice hope is that I relate to their lifestyle more than what I relate to Shah Rukh Khan if tomorrow a celebrity will come and sell me something I can see through that that maybe his lifestyle is different this product will not work for me because my lifestyle is different but when I see certain guy who's my age who belongs to my city who wears clothes like me who has my skin tone and if he's saying that this works for me I might feel it more relatable so the content has to be more relatable as well it will look more closer and say okay yeah maybe work on Shah Rukh's skin but may not work on my skin but here if I think that this guy is same guy he works his lifestyle is same as me he works his sun exposure is same as me so maybe this sunscreen can work on his skin it may also work on my skin so having those actionable insights as well as those practical more relatable approach in through content I think those those two factors will maybe is the next leg of content creation and that's where my I think that why the celebrities may be lost some of their sponsored money to the to the influencer have their head start because they are able to work very closely to the consumer. You know also I think because their celebrities they are much more understand I think that Alia for this episode explains pretty well where she obviously endorses through D and then she came on record saying that sugar is a strict no no so that just was like everybody calling her out and for the influencers I think why are they also becoming big stars now. Also because I mean what social media has also done is that unlike earlier when I would know about a celebrity only through his movies I would not know what Amitabh Bachchan or Ranveer Singh is in his personal life but now through social media I know what his lifestyle is so I can clearly find out that he may not be using the Lal Dhan's Manjan tale or whatever Colgate or whatever so I can see through that but if tomorrow he comes on the screen and sells me Dabar Lal toothpaste I can see that he's taking so I mean now the consumer are more aware because your personal life is also out on the screen so it's also very difficult to have both personality at the same time. Sneha how do you what according to you what how do you create that higher value content is it big investment for you or is it just smart investment there? Actually it's a mix of both but actually you know one point that I want to address from what Mukesh said I can feel that influencers are also now headed the celebrity way because my life is nothing like Masoom Mina's well as life right so then where is the relatability and I think that's why one of the new terms which I absolutely sort of live by is the difference between a creator and an influencer right I think if you really want to create relatable content then I think it's the creator that you need to go to but then be mindful of the fact that if you're going to a creator whose expertise is creating content and not influencing people right you will have to spend the media dollars behind it right wherein an influencer gives you the content plus also gives you a certain reach and similarly if you go to a celebrity they give you the content plus they also give you more reach. I'd love to have examples of creator, your influencer and a celebrity. A celebrity would be an Alia Bhatt a large influencer would be a Masoom Mina and right now I'm talking fashion and a creator would be a girl living in my building who just loves to put looks together or a stylist on like a junior stylist on a movie set right who's great at putting looks together can source the right things put them together tell you how to pair a jeans with a certain shirt but she may not have a million followers right she'll probably have five ten thousand followers on Instagram so you're not going to her to just get to those five thousand you're going to her so she can create the right looks for you that how to create 10 looks from three garments for example let's say if you're a fashion brand right how do you then use that content which is very much authentic because she'll use things that people like you know like I would be buying not designer wares not things that are sponsored for me right and yet I'm taking three pieces of garments and able to put 10 looks together right style it differently and then I'm willing to put the media money or the reach money behind it from my platform right so I think that's how I differentiate between a creator and an influencer so I think coming back to that so I do feel influencer marketing at some stage is getting very mixed with celebrity marketing and we need to be a little bit of a little bit careful there but coming to what format works for me uh see I think it depends on the stage of the funnel I think big announces in my view still work better with big format content right if you are a brand and if you're launching a new category a new market doing 10 influencer videos is not going to cut it right I mean you have to do justice because if you've put in so much effort into developing a product packaging launching supply chain blocking your working capital then give it the due marketing effort that it needs so I know that can be a celebrity non-celebrity I mean see we talk about digital content but of the most viral things on digital ever was the matto billboards sorry I cancelled the matto billboards of course not digital content right there's static content that just went viral on digital they were not designed to go viral on digital right so I think just because you are seeing it on digital it's not digital content right but I do think that big announcements big launches do deserve big ticket contents platforms when it's your day today I think doing more authentic content doing more testimonials answering the questions that your customer are actually asking you for me that works you can use simple text you can use animation you can you know you and I can sit in front of a camera and say here are the five questions about the brand that I'm answering it can be as authentic as that so I feel those are the those are the two buckets that I would look at that was very interesting I think we have a small babe back with us yeah I'm sorry I had to refer an important call it was unavoidable I'm here back for you guys and I really missed a lot I'm sure I'll have a recording session of this to learn a lot I was I was really impressed by the talk just Sneha did and it was really impressive you know what is really important is authenticity you know market is all about superficial I mean we are here you know sometimes if there's a you know I remember a BBC interview of Amitabh Bachchan and the question was asked to him you know tell me how real when you how real are you when you act I have fathers figures I have fathers in most of my movies and at time they have to die and I'm not sure you know the way I cry in the movie I'll cry in the same way when my father will die so you know so the kind of see digital I always believe you know it's like human beings are always meant to talk what they are not and on top of that when you give a virtual platform it becomes so very easy for create things superficially misguide the you know the communication the effort the the communication and it's trained so very fast it is so very difficult to control that involvement so you know I I would like to answer the very same question which was I was been asked you know the question to me was that how do the personalization works here you know that was a question please help me with understanding my questions probably I would be if you have time I would like to address or say a few words could you please repeat my question just a second yeah so how how has personalization you know emerged as a critical strategy for you today and how do you leverage the targeted strategies in your organization to improve metrics so you know when it is a first time configuration let's say you know when you're launching your product first time it is definitely your intellectual you know your intellect intellect your experience which will help you configure the campaign and what then happens next is that the data keep pumping in you have today data coming in in terms of what time in a day what screen size what medium what channel and you know it keeps floating the data comes either in structured format or it comes in unstructured format we have mechanisms which actually helps us to understand you know how exactly your campaign is being consumed across different set of people segments and tgs and hence you know in a very fast track I personally believe maybe when when you're three days down the line or maybe two days or 48 hours down the line you have relevant data to personalize for example you know I can very well customize and personalize that you see my content on facebook on your tablet or macbook or ipad between 9 30 to 7 30 p.m and that's what the customization or personalization happens so I have a rule base which is associated to either a product or a consumer and that rule base has been captured very well with you know automations tools like this these are very simple rules which are being created which can be created and and and then hence start building up and kind of and personalize recommendation engines how does it happens to you you know like you are there today very simple example I was really I mean people could talk like this this think about this as a fiction we are with sitting with Alexa Alexa is doing nothing and we are talking about let's say a new sofa and you have an amazon ad coming to your mobile you know 30% discount or 50% discount so you know the customization and personalization is happening from different source of data which has been cumulative from different sources in a course of time definitely first time it has to be configuration but moving forward the data is cumulative and it get associated with individual or a product which can be used in the next communication for highly customized and personalized communication and that is how we do the strategy in terms of you know in promoting right product to the right person in in a very very right format by very personalizing it that is how we practice it here in Metro Police it's a continuous process obviously thank you thank you for those points I know what I really want to touch upon is this you know last year we saw this modelist ad Good Luck Girls which was very the brand upcycled one of its most loved ads from the past where kuch kha says in the you know while that was an expensive proposition where you recycled upcycled an old ad I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives eco villains on digital you know one of the like just to break it down with these strategies nowadays is to scale digital marketing ROI by upcycling which is also known as creatively reusing your older pieces of content and then re promoting it to the audience I'd like to understand from each of you how much are you using it and what challenges are you facing you know while upcycling this content and you know how what is the way to go about it can we start with you Sneha Yes so I'll tell you Neeta in reality I mean we do upcycle recycle a lot of content I think we can do a lot more and I'll tell you the real challenge is actually not external it's internal okay right because as a brand you are living breathing seeing your content 24-7 right and you feel that oh my god yeah so like this is a month old right how can I reuse it again the customer has forgotten you right 30 days is too much in a customer's life to really be bothered and say oh my god you know I saw the same social post from this brand a month ago doesn't happen so I think most of the times it's the team's hesitance to say that oh no no you know we must create new content so that we remain fresh in the eyes of the customer and I keep telling them that we give ourselves way more importance than the customer does right I mean they're not their life is not revolving around our content presence correct one thing that I've realized is sometimes repurposing a lot of written content into animated videos or some smart snackable format is a great way right because so much customer testimonial is coming your way editorial headlines right I mean they make for great performance ads right if I can really capture X publication wrote this Y line about absolutely right and you know Anita from Impact reviewed my brand and said wow it's the only tea brand I ever want to drink right I mean that makes for great ad content for me so I think it's not just about old on your content it's about looking at everything that the customer is saying about you just keep reusing it see I think in the old kind a brand would typically make one or two films in a year right and they would keep putting TV money behind it and there was a concept of frequency and GRPs that you were driving the principles still work thinking that you have to put out one new post every day sometimes actually question why aren't you driving frequency why aren't you taking the same post and saying I'll put it on social I'll put it on performance I'll put it on YouTube I'll make it my e-mailer copy I mean if I have a summer recipe right it should go on every medium that I have it should go on my e-mailer it should be a download option on my website I should print it and put it in my you know dispatch packages and do everything right so I think it's it's just about if you go back to the frequency principle which is so critical in marketing I think you'll be forced to recycle and upcycle your content and I think that's one way that I sort of try to tell my team on how to think about it rather than get caught up in this see it's not outfit of the day so don't get caught in that metric that I have to create something new every day if you have a strong message say it a hundred times right because if it's a relevant one the customer will relate to it more. So with thumbs up from you for upcycling and let's get to Mukesh what are the challenges that you face while upcycling content? Yes I mean I completely agree with Sneha there are honestly no challenges as long as we are not a cult brand see I mean someone like a Cadbury who did that 90s we created that video and all that because they have to live up to those expectations because maybe it was a cult advertising everyone seen about that but if you're advertising are only seen by a million people on the digital actually it cannot be in rightful sense called upcycling users that you're creating another piece of content it's kind of similar messaging and very honestly in an FMCG company like I'm a native of loyal and every communication is largely the same it's just maybe the celebrity I'm using is changing or maybe the home I'm using is changing but largely the same I mean unlike I'm not a technology I'm not a smartphone that every year there's a upgrade my positioning is largely same I talk about health I talk about nutrition I talk about taste and it's pretty much the same so maybe upcycling if I look from that lens in terms of communications pretty much the content is same is that sometimes when you're doing a big ticket television campaign you just try to refresh it I would say refresh would be the better term and communication pretty much remains the same I'll have maybe a new celebrity who would be more relevant at that point of time and try to build that otherwise I mean upcycle or recycle the content would be very it's actually also relevant for the people who has built something great in the past so that people have that memory of that that people can still think of that okay that was some campaign in the 90s I can still recall but if you don't have that credit this thing it's even as a marketer if I think I'm trying to create a recycle content for a consumer it will just appear as a new content because they may not have a history to it you know I'd like to come with such a feeling unlike Mukesh you know who's picked this was identified that as an edible oil plant there's not much varied communication he can do with regard to upcycling you know you on the other hand have much to offer in today's age there are so many diseases coming up so you can try all those options so tell us how what are the challenges that you are facing in this upcycling process see I'll tell you our industry especially you know it is not an commodity market and our products are not commodity market you have to refill your stock my communication and my offerings to the consumer is not like you know Neha come I'll give you 50% discount get me break two times I'll not give you two time pay so you know and neither you will come for it so for us actually you know hitting hard on on consumer mindset with a repeated communication but only the flavor need to be changed so for example we are struggling today with respect to you know with with we're working with a couple of very good agencies and we're working with some of the big consultants in the industries to change the mindset bring the revolution fortunately I was a part of the revolution of upcy yeah this one geo where in the perception of using data as a perfume drops then using a data as an municipality tap open the tap whatever data you want to take it so I was part of that journey and today that mindset changed there is a science behind changing that mindset it's a very rightly said by the forum you know it's a repetitive content which is the same content which has been promoted to you in such a fashion in your subconscious mind it has been native again and again so we are struggling today and we're working towards one particular concept that unlike you service your car you have to service your body yeah so you know it is so important for proactive precautionary preventive hair checkups it is so critical for you and the content we use believe me or not we try to hit the same communication through different channels to the same customer making it trying to do something different either by the communication is the line of communication sometimes emoticons sometimes and cartoons sometimes and videos sometimes and messaging sometimes and endorsements sometimes and you know a celebrity talking about you know it's important to get an interactive health checkup or something price in a month at least once you should so it is very critical at least in my industry we know that you know we have only one thing to offer which is illness or wellness two things to offer wellness and illness and sorry we don't offer that we give solutions for we give solutions for and Mr I think one MG Mr I don't remember Akash I think he also remember I think for him also it's a similar kind of this is the cure of illness and wellness so we really have to use this contents and number of times to the same customer sometimes he gets irritated you know we often get a problem blocking those whatsapp numbers and call center numbers but we don't stop we still communicate we are confident that you know someday person will definitely understand and we get trends actually believe me or not we get trends people proactively asking I have gone through your content it really had opened up my mind I really have to take care of my diabetes I really have to take care of my you know malfunctioning of kidney so you know they talk and they recollect that particular communication and that works for us last what is the kind of advice that you would give to all the brands with regard to this I don't know how much does it really give bulls either subskilling yeah I think and all the conversion metrics so I think yes repurpose upskilling content we do a lot in B2B marketing as well and you know a general tactic is that if you are coming up with a point of pure thought leadership say for an industry you will come up with a paper and then you will convert that into you know different kinds of content right it can be a video it can be a small content can be an email it can be you know various forms of content and when there is a need right we always use it again I think but they do things which we keep in mind is in terms of the quality of content that you know repurposing it a lot of times sometimes dilute the quality so that's where in B2B we you know focus and make sure that does not happen and the other thing you know which I personally focus on is called content fatigue right for my audience to make sure that you know I'm just not throwing the same kind of content to them again and again and you know very similar to how you know a stand-up comedian would you know retire a joke right after some time I think it is important for us all to see that we you know retire the content and do not just keep telling the same differentiators right to the industry and crime so that's what you know and B2B which I follow thank you. Shridhar would you like to buy something to that? No I mean I think this is not a domain that I have a lot of perspective on so I'm going to you know pass this. All right we move on you know also what are the best practices to maintain brand consistency across all your digital campaign I think that's the biggest ask for all marketers today you want to have that one flow and that consistency let's quickly start I'm sure everybody can give me one point each let's start with you Sinha I think the one factor neither is persistent persistence right because it's very difficult with brands you know on digital you're rolling out a campaign probably every month or every quarter right it's really difficult to come up with new ways of saying the same thing right because consistency is about saying the same thing pretty much looking the same but looking different right so I think just being persistent not being lazy about it and also I think somehow not getting caught up in creative ideas you know because oh this is trending we must do this but does it take me away from what my brand has been trying to say I think if I can think of one word it's persistence it's very hard you have to keep pushing people back saying no you know we'll only do this once we have the right message or campaign which makes you same but different versus getting caught up in these trends and hashtags and things like that which is important but if your objective is to be consistent then just stick to it and don't give in to the pressure or it can be timeline pressure it can be creative partners pressure it can be business pressure so I think that is the one sort of rule that I think I would use. Rajdeep what would you say? Yeah I think you know what we do in you know our organization is that you know we are very particular about the brand guideline side so be the salesperson be the account manager be the marketing person or the inside salesperson or you know whatever we put on digital or email has to have consistency right in how we you know we talk and what we are pitching to our customers so for example if the you know the ambition of my company is building a better working world the the the key message right which we want our customers to know or how my campaigns look in terms of visually that is very important that you know that uniformity and consistency of the brand needs to come out and with having a set brand guidelines having style guides and making sure that it is in the DNA of the marketing and sales team when they go out they follow it that is very important if you're able to do it then most of the challenges you'll be able to solve in terms of you know brand consistency. Okay and Ms Chaubey I think Mukesh we'll come to you next I think Ms Chaubey has just got a call was he okay Mukesh what what do you basically follow with regard to brand consistency how does it really improve your metrics? I'll give two instead of one I think first is doing your consumer and second is being married to your positioning see platforms of advertising formats communications script faces will keep on changing and the brand also needs to evolve with time as I was talking maybe today right now it's the digital I'm trying to create a lot of reels on Instagram I'm trying to create an article on the website I'm trying to create a static or a holding on offline channel so my form of advertising will change and I'll have to adapt to that particular format I cannot be producing long content on Instagram and short format on YouTube or vice versa right so I have to play as per the format it's like very wrong dress like a pope right so I have to adapt to those specific platforms I have to keep that communication messaging relevant but as long as I know that what is the positioning of my brand what do I stand for I will never go away from my DNA or my proposition every messaging every script every copy every line every statement that I'll do I will know which lead back to my proposition and my positioning and to as long as if I know who's my consumer again I'll not miss out it's not that on Instagram I'm trying to target a 17 to 18 year old and on YouTube I'm trying to target a 30 to 40 year old no if I know my tg is there and who's my tg I'll try to make that content relevant for that particular and then maybe sometimes I'll just skip certain platform which I feel that maybe it's not relevant for my consumer as maybe Sneha was mentioning that we should not do things just for the sake of doing it I'll not do metaverse or AI just for the sake of because that the new shiny toy in the arsenal of a market year but if my consumer is still reading newspaper I would still happy to do newspaper advertising I'll not go to metaverse so knowing my consumer knowing my positioning will help me stay consistent across whatever things keep changing in the rapidly changing world that we are right now you know like in case and you know without losing sight of your tg you're trying to adapt to different platforms and doing the best that you can offer there Mr. Chopi how do you you know for a brand like a healthcare brand how do you personalize this and make sure that communications have there have that underlining for and the uniformity and yet have that diversity which regard communication for that particular platform you don't mute I'm sorry so you know in our context we use tools I mean there are a lot of transmission tools to do the personalizations reason being you know again I'll be very honest with you I've been industry from almost quite a time I was fortunate to work with few of the best peoples but actual marketing I felt that I've done in medical industry I mean this is where we actually do my marketing because you know it's not easy to do marketing for products which are not commodity it is supposed to be a need a base requirement and things like that so I just we use a lot of automations we use tools to you know ensure that you know a tg is being very clearly articulated I just can't go scientifically wrong with my communication and and to the right to the to the specific teaching so we use tools to ensure a lot of we use data mining tools to do test mining profiling communication mapping relevance you know doctor validations and then we try to ensure that the right channel is being as right customers are being communicated and with the right communication through right channels so you know because there's a lot of medical legal issues also which can come up too we we also have we can't over promise we just can't you know under promise something we talk about numbers and ratios which are dancing with your life and parameters so we really use a lot of AI tools to make sure that you know we get that consistency across a particular subject domain or disease or portfolio and then try to have the channel that the communication aligned in a right format now I think Mr. Srila do you want to say thank you I mean the the word that comes to my mind is you know authenticity right I think again when I look at my own company that I work for currently and some of the others I've been involved in in the past I think and then they've all been you know great brands in their own right and for me I think being authentic being true to your own you know core values of the company and who does it matter to because you can't cater to everybody right there are only going to be a subset of people that will ultimately you know their worldviews will align with yours and that is where a connection happens and I think you know from a branding advertising marketing perspective I think their authenticity comes through in everything that you're doing you know your messaging your positioning like for example in sales force you know trust has been a number one value since the company was you know started way back in 1999 right and it's kind of you know uncanny that in today's world I don't think there's anything more important than trust you know with all these concerns about privacy you know GPT, Gen AI, you know toxicity bias, data privacy etc etc right the number one thing that again matters today is you know what do you want to do with my data right is the value exchange you know transparent is it clear you're asking me for a lot of information so that I can personalize that information for you but how do I know that you know you're not going to misuse it right so I think it all comes back to trust and I think if brands you know stay true to those values it may not be for everybody as I said but you know for some people it will appeal and I think that's where the sort of the you know the magic happens I think. You know you said something very interesting you said nothing there's nothing more important than trust I would like to add there's nothing more tricky than privacy for the market so I promised my last question to all the marketers here you know how do you basically balance the two you know innovations that digital industry provides and you know that growing need for consumer privacy and lockers cookies we've seen them all so how do you as leading marketers stack both and you know try and create that balance make sure your brand is light. Can I go first on that Neeta? Yeah I mean I think you know the way I look at it is that there is obviously a fine line I think we've discussed this earlier as well between you know personalization and privacy how far do you push that line and I think you know again it's different for different brands you know some may choose to be conservators some may choose to be a lot more adventurous you know so to speak but at the end of the day I think customers you know are willing to part with a lot of information about themselves right but and they'll do it willingly if they know that they're getting something beneficial in return from them that is you know personalized to them etc etc right and this is what we call a zero-party data right where even going beyond first party zero parties where customers are willingly giving you information about who they are their likes preferences etc etc right and I think the value exchange you know if brands can get it right they can make it very transparent well I'm asking you for this piece of information this is what we're going to do with that information right hopefully the offer or the you know the discount that I'll give you or the loyalty program incentive that I will offer you will be much more in line with what you expect right maybe it's not points right maybe it's a it's a free lunch at your favorite restaurant for example right that may mean a lot more than the 500 points that you're giving them so I think as long as brands are able to make that clear then I really think you know privacy is not really that big of an issue at least in the minds of consumers of course as an enterprise which is collecting a lot of consumer data you have the responsibility to safeguard it ensure that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands and it is not being abused and so on and so forth but beyond that I think from a consumer standpoint I think they're okay with sharing data as long as they know that you know they're going to benefit all of it. Mr Singh would you like to add to that you know Mr Rajeev? Yes yes yeah I think you know for us you know when it comes to privacy and innovation you know privacy is is very important because you know just think about a tech company right and our you know main customer base if it is based in Americas or Europe till the time you take care of you know the privacy of the customer it is nearly possible for you to run a campaign right so there are a few let's say countries in Europe right and without written consent you can't even send an email or call them right otherwise you're going to be in trouble so privacy comes first for B2B marketers and then yes innovation is always there we have to find a way right like in Jurassic Park they say that life finds a way like the same way that a marketer has to find a way with innovation but yes privacy is there is no negotiation on it. So Mr Rajeev Singh says privacy comes first for B2B marketers whatever you wish but what happens for a B2C marketer? Yes I mean because before marketer I'm also a consumer so I cannot say go to privacy I think is an important topic honestly I would not say that I know about it all and I can tell you what should be done I think there are more educated and more worthy people who can take a call on that but yes the way things are going right now I think this requires some balance maybe right now I don't know India usually follows the GDPR principles there's something happening in US there's a California consumer protection policies and everything so a lot of people still claim that their data collection follow all the compliances which are GDPR compliant or whatever but still there are no checks to that that are there actually GDPR compliant or they are just a pointer on their on their brochure or representation because what happens at the back end it's a black box honestly no one knows what's what's happening behind that I mean even a even a generative AI or whatever the AI is happening right now it's essentially black box I mean you don't know how that entire data has been collected what you can only see is different and that you're just doing a prompt and something is being thrown to you what if there's some medical history of maybe Mr. Chobhigan has that what if someone's medical history has been feed in to that chat GPT to throw those responses which I mean there could always be as say that maybe it will help in the evolution of medical science but at the same time it's a medical history the very personal information so yes I see I would raise love to raise a concern yes it's a flag red flag for me what we are doing personally right now again so that's because sometimes our responsibility as a marketer also comes in picture because if there is something available in the market and if I'm not leveraging that I would be come across as a not smart marketer because if you have all the data and sharp shooting data available why are you not doing that so yes sometimes I would say we do commit to those I would say crime would be a slightly bigger word but we do fall into drag yes I also want to come across a latest marketer using all the smart technology to reach out my consumer in the most efficient way possible and save some money for my company but yes it's a it's a tricky path and it should be addressed I don't know what's the honesty what's the right way to do that but there has to be some guidelines Mr. Chobhigan you know this is oh look let me put it officially first this is my personal thought you're not representing metropolis like you said my consumer first so you know definitely privacy is something which is being exposed and it is being misutilized in every context now one simple example the DND I mean we work in offshore markets also we have third world where we actually work within african sub continents I am so happy to see that the DND rules have been so compliant that they can sue you in court for anything I mean but in India we are so doubler but the DND a simple DND itself is not being implemented so very properly but all set and done you know we somehow try to put that star small mark conditions you know condition applies and for example a simple promotion scan this qr code and get a free health checkup and there is a checkbox enabled I am here by willing to accept all communication from metropolis okay so that's I'm willingly doing I'm going seamlessly doing that and ensuring that you know that is default checked and submission button happens so someone comes into the qr scanning fill in this detail or her details and that check button is also on and then submit button I have legally compliant I mean I've got no reasons to nobody can take me to the court at least in offshore market India matter not to do that much and again it's an individual thought I'm not here by court talking about the practices we do we do far better things so all set and done definitely privacy is something which need to be taken care and in absence of any decent broad guidelines fortunately government have just got the third party like try we have another now we have dnd houses which can actually you know they initially they have as we have sms protocols and systems in place now that you know it the filtration actually happened at that government agency so you really have to pay some amount of fees to ensure the filtration criteria of sending an sms to someone in the in Indian telecom market today so that has been bit regularized but still you know on on on websites or on campaigns for legion these are things which have been really practiced and at least you know we definitely say ashwathama maragya but hathita so that ways we you know get that checked and ensure that the privacy has been taken care of and I have a willingness from the consumer but all set and good I as a customer also feel sometimes cheated when it is coming to me as an you know my my data has been I was giving you example of Alexa I mean think about the privacy of that nature I mean and I'm we had practically experience I think on the forum there will be there are more digitally inclined people on the forum and I don't know whether they'll agree with me or not but I have gotten a promotional campaign immediately after discussing so part my home and Alexa was there so what kind of privacy we're talking about so that's my thought on that one more customer first privacy rules so yeah we started the discussion with you and I'm glad we ending it with you so shoot okay so again I think let me just stay in line with the trends whatever I say is my own personal view see I'll tell you let's just go back a few decades ago right and think of the evolution of internet okay internet was somewhere an agreement between corporations and individuals saying I give you free information data etc you give me your information and your data right the rule has not evolved in 20 years so it's no longer gone to a stage where state is giving you access to free health care free roads free water or free electricity or whatever right it is still managed by corporates what do you expect I mean if you want free internet you have to pay there are no free lunches you have to give something in return right that something in return is unfortunately your data right your information there are two sides to this point all this data and information that you are sharing is making your life better you have personalized access to information there is I go to a website when I go the second time I can start off from where I left right I don't have to refill my address every time I'm ordering something you know my credit card details are saved on my frequently shop apps etc etc like anything it will also come with its own downsides and perils I think as long as the benefits are outweighing the negatives it's just unfortunately but it's a state that we as consumers will need to learn to live with right if I want none of it I can just get off the internet tomorrow and like not care about it I don't think that's possible in this world and it's like TV right I mean you have TV for entertainment but too much TV has its own negatives right so I think it's the same logic yeah I mean it comes with a lot of benefits it's it's made our life so much easier it also comes with its own negatives sounds great so let's speed up and you must have maybe want to be treated ourselves I guess that's the bottom line and I am so glad we had this discussion there was so many facets to this and I think we need more than one you need to make these two interactions with consumers seamless but we have a few voices up our sleeve now after this discussion thank you so much for joining us and making this so much so much fun thank you thank you thank you you're interacting with all of you great bye