 Ladies and gentlemen, moving forward, our next panel discussion is going to be on performance and creativity, the digital stack, the evolution of digital media outputs from pure performance driver to performance plus branding. And to take the session forward, may I please invite Mr. Akshay Tapse, Senior Vice President of Digital Marketing, AU Small Finance Bank, to join us on the screens. We also have Mr. Ravi Sankhanam, CMO Head Corporate Communications and Liability Products and Managed Programs for HDFC Bank, Ms. Sadhna Daswani, Head Brand and Digital for JSW Pains, Mr. Shawneel Charles, Managing Director India for Outprain and also the session will be chaired by Mr. Vinod Thadani, Chief Digital Officer, Media, Densu and CEO Eye Prospect to join us on the screens and I would request Mr. Thadani to take this session forward and initiate the conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Shuba. Thank you, Shuba, for introducing us to the channel, to the panel and I welcome all my co-panellists. Thank you so much guys for joining the Densu panel today. We'll immediately get on to the panel and the questions which we have framed for today. Getting in, I wanted to understand if I have to ask, digital has historically been seen as a media driving performance while traditional media, if you see, has always been driving the creative or so-called the branding. That's always been a kind of a, if you see from a marketeer's lens, the kind of briefing or thought process which we've been seeing. So, before I jump into other creative led or digital stack led performance questions, I just wanted to open this to the forum today to understand what's your point of view on this? Maybe Akshay, Ravi, Sadhana, the question is to the marketeers and then, Shoneela, I'll come to you for a question which I have in mind for you. Anyone can go first Let me go first. So, thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts here. I just looked back 15 years back what happened when digital came in and at that time the CMOS were all asked the question, you spend a lot of money, what is the impact of that, what is the impact of that? So, when digital happened suddenly something called as performance became easy for a marketeer. So, you can actually measure the performance. So, digital is not about performance marketing, digital is about measuring the performance of any campaign. But the easiest thing to do was to show the performance in terms of a click leading to something called a website visit and whatever it is. And that's how it started and the CMOS went running to the CFOs and said, hey, see, I can measure, so give me more money. And then if you look at various industries, CPG suddenly started looking at it and said, I can't even drive sales on this digital channel. So, what do I do? Because I can't just keep, if it is a banking product for example where I work, now it's easy for me to say that here is a click coming to an application form, there is a account open, everything done, sales can be attributed. But when it comes to CPG, the people in the CPG industry were thinking like everybody talks about digital, if I don't do anything in digital, what happens to me? So, I also have to adopt digital and good day adopted digital because they couldn't do anything on the performance side and slowly digital as a medium for creative also started. I think the agency side was a little bit slow in my view in terms of seeing digital as a brand building medium because of the fact that it was more about performance and the other stuff which was attributable, measurable, which was easily available. And the platforms also did not have a clear performance metric for the brand campaign, so the creative work that you can do on a digital. So, I think that came later compared to the early performance measurements on nothing. And I think it's an industry evolution. Today, I don't think the right marketers use only for performance marketing. If they are still doing it, it's more because of the fact that they do not understand how to measure the brand metrics on a digital campaign. And once they have the technology and the tools in place, I'm sure everybody will go towards the full panel marketing on digital. Akshay, would you like to add on to what Ravi said on this point? Sure. First of all, thanks for inviting me to this forum. I completely agree with Ravi in terms of digital being a performance measuring platform on the channel and sometimes it actually gets cursed also for a lot of digital marketers because they are asked too many questions which ATL guys pass through quite easily. But I think, so we have been obviously at a U-Brand, we have been running an overall 360 degree campaign for the year this year. Quite lucky to be leading that at the digital front. And I think we have completely blurred out the lines between a mainline slash ETL, whatever you call it, and a digital because technically a user who is watching a TV will also obviously watch his or her phone. We'll also surf on internet. We'll also be maybe looking at YouTube videos. We'll also be getting to radio and stuff like that. I think that blurring has already happened. In fact, a recent brand track report also helped us in understanding that digital has been the second most highest impact driving channel for us in between our media mix, which we have been able to create primarily because maybe because of the higher frequency, because of the relevancy or the targeting. I think people do recall that when they see it maybe 10, 15 times over a period of a couple of months or so, which probably on a mass media it becomes difficult to achieve that kind of frequency for one sort of person. So I think, yes, digital has been or I think I believe most of the marketers will be using it for branding nowadays. But yeah, performance I think from BFSI sector. I think BFSI also was one of the leading sector to drive performance on digital channels for a good period of time. But yeah, I think BFSI also started learning how to do branding on the channel. Sadhana, any inputs from you on this? Yeah, so thanks. First of all, thanks Vinod for inviting and good evening everyone. Let me just slightly go back to before the performance marketing era. We all of us as a marketers because we've seen the non-digital and a digital era. We've initially started that any campaign that I could do where I could get millions of impressions and then a lot of us started questioning impressions and then to an era where we started doing performance and performance also was purely doing lead generation and there also we started questioning are these leads good enough? Are we getting enough and more conversion or can we use this money and do something on ground? I think today in last couple of years and thanks I shouldn't say thanks to pandemic but I think in terms of thought process it's really accelerated how we look at digital. Earlier we used to say digital karna hai. Today we say what all things we can do in digital. If one of the reports that I was reading it said that 8 out of 10 people are spending time online and where are they spending time on? Social media is one of the things but they have gone beyond social media. Today you have OTT, today you have Giving Platform, we are doing banking online, people are playing games online. So there is enough and more available online. So I think the question really for us as a marketeers I think how we can really create a connection between what all things we do. So I would like to really say that how do we create a connection in a very disconnected lead kind of communication and marketing. I think if you manage to do that there is a very different way and an angle of looking into digital that's what I think. Sure, actually that brings me on. The earlier panel there was one of the panelists which was Prasad. We actually spoke about that as a BFSI as a category we generally talk about bottom of the funnel and we straight away talk about and Ravi spoke about the same thing that BFSI as a category we were always talking about leads but upper funnel is equally important. Hence I wanted to understand when we talk about a consumer journey and in a consumer journey there is no upper funnel and bottom of the funnel. It's a consumer journey and in one of the clients maybe last week itself when we were talking about and we were in the boardroom and he made a very important point which I wanted to discuss and wanted to take your views on. Is there people were saying there is difference in branding, there is difference in performance, some people say there is a very thin line. The question to ask is from a marketeer's perspective at the end of the day I think what you'll actually want is growth. It's the one thing KPI whether it's awareness building and hence brand track whether that awareness building leads to consideration and hence it leads to people interested to your product in our case could be leads and then conversion. Hence do you understand and do you agree that in today's world there wouldn't be any such things which says there is only a lead gen or there is only a brand. It's a brief which comes which says I need growth can you please articulate how the entire strat or solution or a plan would look like. Would it be right to understand that or is there something which goes into your mind while putting a brief to the client? You know I'll answer it in two different ways. I think the first is obviously what you said is right all of us are interested in finally the end of the big growth and this is an artificial divide this performance marketing and brand marketing are all artificial divides for me I'll put it simply to my entire team saying performance marketing is for today's customers brand marketing is for tomorrow's customers because not everybody is going to buy our product not everybody is going to buy or paint their house every day. So when Sadna is going to do something about paints she has to just make sure that whenever the context arises for painting which is going to be a very involved decision how do I make sure the consumer experience what painting could be how can I make it a measurable pleasurable affair for similarly for a person to take a loan for painting that house that thought is going to happen only when they decide to paint the house it's an involved decision so how do you engage over a period of time and that's brand marketing for channels media the kind of creatives that you use depends on the purpose for the campaign that is being built. So this artificial divide between performance marketing brand marketing is all in our minds the brief for me is very clear are we talking only to today's customers what about tomorrow if you are going to talk to tomorrow's customers only tomorrow why would they even consider you so if you are going to be in this kind of a relationship it is extremely transactional how are you going to build long-term value so the long-term value is built only if there is an emotional connect with your consumer over a long period of time if it is purely transactional relationship you don't get anything out of that apart from that one may be a trial that people would have done so in my view this is slightly illogical to talk about it performance is for today brand is for tomorrow's customers and you have to talk to. No thank you Ravi I think you brought up a very good point today and the tomorrow to take care of it from a bracket year's lens Akshay Sadna before I jump to another question for let me just add something Ravi made a very interesting point that you know I mean this is something that you know it's it's you know I've been asked a lot of times that you know why do you want to do a lead generation for a for a paint customer right because it's not like today I'm thinking of painting my house and tomorrow I will decide I have to go and you know paint my home it's not like that I think what is important is that really how do we really keep engaging with that existing or a potential customer and we look at at the various and multiple interventions I think there's a very thin line difference between Pele I will do just the awareness and then I will develop interest that item model I think has we have grown beyond that so we look at you know at a various juncture of the brand funnel how do we keep and constantly building engagement with my customer whether it's an existing customer or it's a potential customer I think that is the key to key for any marketing. If I could add a minute to this I think just to substantiate Ravi's and Ravi's point in Sarna's views. Patience will also be a key because when you're looking for a future sort of a customer you never know when that moment is actually going to come when he or she is going to start believing or start thinking about the category or product of yours. Now that can only be bridged with a strong attribution model where you are able to track some level of understanding of how that if you call it brand marketing that spend of brand marketing has helped overall somewhere down the line to help your mid funnel and bottom funnel right now that attribution model can also help a lot of CFOs and CEOs to have the patience about hey you know what okay right now just hold on things are happening and you're seeing that down effects going on so I think if you have that stitched in pretty well then absolutely there is no there's no difference between a brand and a performance sort of marketing. So thanks I'll now jump on to sorry Shonil you've been across and working across clients across categories in your current role I just wanted to pick your brains on what are the lessons from brands who have gotten creative and branding successes in digital media some of the case studies or some of the work which you've seen when you're interacting with agencies or brands if you may you know let us know about these things. Oh that's fantastic to be here thanks great event fantastic panel you and me have been you know founding this digital street for a long time it's nice to see you know this digital is now front end center for everyone and you know illustrious CMOs are on digital panels earlier 5-10 years back they would skip the panel because just you know 5% of their efforts and budget so it's good to be here and you know talking more about you know creativity and you know branding and where sort of the intermissions happening in digital I've been at this for a long time I think about 10-12 years I think we're reaching a stage where we are seeing a lot of action in this space you know earlier like Ravi mentioned there was a clear demarcation you know we would we would get briefs which were just performance-oriented and you know the platforms and the publisher ecosystem and the media side of it was just out to deliver performance I don't blame the you know the marketeers or the creative folks because the medium was too new the good parts of it was I was offering you know great data and insights and ROI and you know a measurability but you know it was all about banners how much creative how creative can you get on a banner okay you know we still do use them but you know it's just something which doesn't lend itself to too much creativity then the form factor this the real estate shrank when India moved to mobile so you know that was one another hurdle in the way the internet was mostly in English so you know even though you wanted to address India which is so vernacular diverse you sort of had to think in digital you would only think in English you know I have to make my landing page and banner in my communication so these were some of the limiting factors I'm happy to say that you know we've crossed most of that hurdle that those hurdles I think at least 70-80 percent of it is done and we're seeing fantastic case studies here to to highlight you know what your question to me was I think you know there are some clear winners you know from the platform I represent which is our brain where we deliver you know native content recommendations and native advertising solutions for advertisers we are seeing some fantastic growth stories emerging from edutek fintech ecom crypto you know these are you know the the categories which are really you know changing the game and because the platform which sort of our brain represents you have to make a little effort towards your it's not just a static banner you know you have to create some content where you're driving the audience to so we're seeing everyone's making a significant effort now in content and the guys who are doing the right kind of content marketing meshed with native advertising that's probably more about what I'm going to talk about you know as we continue as the best solution for all this is we're seeing some fantastic case studies and you know developments in that space thank you thank you so much Akshay you mentioned in your first point where you talked about that you've done and are looking at a full funnel so hence could you let us know about some kind of success stories which you've seen or doing across creative and branding and what are the KPIs specifically put from a digital perspective sure so you know if I have to mention one of the case study which we recently amended with one of the other largest OTT platform in the country right now what we did was we used something which is not so common on ATL or the main light side is moment marketing what so we created the festive based content a long format content this wasn't the typical ads which are like 30 seconds a sort of minutes in fact these are three minute plus videos which we created now people do believe that digital does not have a lot of span of attention from people people users may drop out of the six seconds five seconds whatever their youtube mantra is but we used OTT platform and interestingly we actually received an a view through rate of about 77 percent and that I'm talking about for a three minute plus sort of a video now that's that's great I mean if you ask me why would someone see an ad of three minutes because it's not an ad technically but the message is delivered the entire philosophy the band was wanted to wanted to share with the audience has been delivered with a long format content I think 77 percent itself is like two waves of the platform's benchmark but I think the the reason why it blended so well was because we actually use the platforms USP of delivering GEC content to a lot of audience and we created the the content the long format content of our brand and content in a way that it it gelled very well it looked like a GSE so people kind of were given that they were anyways in that mindset of seeing a GSE sort of content they were okay to see this for a three minute or also and obviously the message got delivered I think these are a few of the branding exercises and in fact we got like a five point jump on our brand lift studies by Hotstar Across the Recall and RMS this was slightly later part of our campaign so initially we got slightly higher on few of the other platforms but I think more importantly what I would like to share is these sort of experimentations are very are not possible on a few of the other channels because you don't get to see ever a three-minute ad I'm sure on a TV maybe a few of the US channels do play it but not in India definitely and those are the areas I think which we can deliver the message the branding objective as we are speaking are also being achieved in a very very different sort of format so I think this is something which I would like to share and from a full final standpoint we know there are models which are created obviously we have seen various formats of content working in a very different way in terms of making people aware consider as what Sarno was saying while there is no AIDA model right now but then obviously we are seeing those differences of users reacting to our content pre our campaign brand campaign and a post brand campaign so obviously that lifts have been very clear the conversion rates have started improving because of our branding campaign so those are obviously the direct attribution towards the brand trends which we have been doing on the platforms so what I hear Akshay is making creatives as per platforms and that is what has become a success which I could say so if there are short formats use it on those platforms if you have a long format use it on those platforms because that's where you feel that the consumers are taking a note and hence you get great brand results like you mentioned thank you Akshay for that Ravi one thing and this is a question which I genuinely wanted to understand from a senior marketer like you would be with media convergence taking place where digital will become the backbone what are the strategies may be adopted to drive creative and branding success on this platform first thing is the mindset shift has to happen we have to think digital first once you start thinking digital first the entire work that we do on the creatives start keeping that platform in mind if the mindset shift happens because what I see today is many of our agency partners come first with a TV approach because you're talking about something so the first thing is TV and then trying to adopt that to the digital format I don't think that works so the first is to shift the mindset to say I will start digital first and even inside digital I will start mobile first so that we understand very clearly because at the end of the day while we do understand because we are a banking ecosystem player so we do have a lot of first party data so we don't know a lot about customers where they approach us and what they do with all of us but still if you want to reach to a larger audience the mindset shift has to happen and I think that's the core of all this stuff after that I think there are three things that we all need to look at the first thing is what is the approach and when you're talking in this kind of a fashion we all know that we have multiple customers and each of them are in different mindsets so which customer you are going to talk about performance which is about the bottom of the funnel which comes out about consideration which customer about so that you are talking about tomorrow's customers also because some of these tomorrow's customers you don't want to paint them by starting talking about performance today so when it comes to performance is your creative talking about rational persuasion for doing it that should act whereas when you're talking about brand are you giving them a feel that you want to be associated with this brand what is the feeling that you're generating in that creative so you should be very clear about the consumer context and correspondingly make the creatives the second thing I look for is the formats the formats in the mobile world and in the various screens are very different are you doing a vertical shoot are you making sure that text is minimal are you making sure that it is as personalized as possible because digital gives you that ability to do that in your creative thinking like for example I'll give you an example we wanted to have a lady in marriage costume immediately the first thing that we get to see is a north now how many of these people know that north indian bride with full of mehendi and all those things will appeal to a south indian audience or a northeast audience if you have a creative thinking like that then do you have the ability to change that face based on the geography to various other bride look is for the respective geography so the formats and everything start to be coming to the next one the third thing is about platform you also need to make sure that you have multiple platforms whether it is the video platform whether it is the social media platform whether it is a discovery platform it is anything else that you do or the otp how do you make sure that this creative will actually fit into those platforms so once you have this shift in the mindset towards digital and then also mobile first then you start looking at the approach the format and the platforms and if you have a checklist of how we want to do this i think then everything comes out very easily because you can easily measure in every one of these platforms what is the actual success for the top of the funnel what is the brand leaf study that you can do and at the bottom of the funnel what is the lead generation what is the conversion that also you can do so you need to be very clear about the approach that you take and if you have a very solid approach i think most of this are very easy to do sure thank you ravi sadha would you like to add on to this point yeah sure um i think most of the points ravi mentioned this one point i would like to add i i think it's important that we also understand this whole art because as a marketer we love perfecting the balance between art and science there is a lot of data and there is a lot of learning that is available to us whether it's to do with your brand health study the inputs that come from there or you know you're from your website traffic from your social media so there is a plethora of information available so i think making sense of that and then leading that into a great brief or an input i think will also give a good kickstart to whatever you do just to give you an example you know one of the things that we assume that in a category like paints a painter or a contractor will not be active on social media when we went into the market and we realized that so many of these guys are active on facebook and we did this whole initiative where they could share the work that they have done with us on social media and we started reposting and resharing that on our platform so i think mindset have changed the consumption pattern has changed and the data that is available with us i think making sense of that that goes into a right briefing also plays a critical role thank you i know i'm running late i've already got a few messages from e4m but i would want to have one more question i just wanted to understand from shonil has brand has digital been able to drive creative and branding goals across if you have any experiences on any categories which you would like to highlight so we know it's getting there you know i would say on a scale of one to ten you know the marriage of creativity and you know using digital platforms well is you know at a part of three or four on ten hopefully we're on some panel in a you know in in a year's time where this moves to about seven or eight but i i appreciate the efforts which are being put behind this also on the other side of the fence you know for what the marketers need the platforms also have to bring sort of a menu card of solutions to them right you know what is a successful digital ad you know you know beyond the creative it has to showcase on premium inventory going back to where what akshay was talking about you know native content it the ad has to blend with content you know to make it very efficient like you know the case study example he gave so we have to deliver premium inventory to the advertisers we have to ensure that they are engaging ad formats they have to be multiple formats you know so that you know you can cover up a huge gamut of different platforms there has to be rich targeting has to be very contextual brand safety is something which is very important for all these marketers you know it's you can't just run their ads just about a lot of the internet is fairly unsafe so you know you need tools and methodologies to ensure that the the brands are kept in a safe environment and most importantly you know again going back to performance everything has to have some outcomes which are you know based on measurement so these are you know some of the things that make up a successful digital ad and just to give you a sense of you know traditional brands are taking a little longer the bigger the companies the bigger the brands they are their sort of journey to success you know on the creative side is rather I am seeing a lot of smaller brands you know these are you know affiliate commerce companies you know they are they are leveraging the platforms and the opportunities very efficiently and awfully especially in the last six months so you know of the pandemic and we're seeing a lot of smaller brands sitting here in India buying media and inventory and advertising in international markets and selling it we're seeing this in China we're seeing this in India and that's that I'm finding is a very interesting success story because they are also being extremely creative with the way they are approaching each country each market and you know to go back to Ravi's point that you know they are absolutely thinking digital first actually they don't have any you know offline model at all so I think you know I would put that as something and for us that's you know maybe 30-40% of our overall business which we are seeing is now coming more from these younger agile companies and I think the older brands and all can sort of look at them and pick up some you know cues on you know how to how to get into this properly. No I'm just picking up this point I think it's a good point and anyone from the panel and this would be the last question before I'll sum it up. Why do you feel that the younger brands or so-called the newer age brands or the D2C brands however you put it are being more agile or take those risks which can be done on this medium versus the I won't say traditional brands but bigger brands which have always used these platforms of course they were traditional first I also see many brands even in FMCG now and in other categories doing a lot much more digital than what it was but why why do you see these brands being the first mover and experimenting those many things than the larger brands because money is not a concern when it comes to larger traditional brands in fact D2C and other brands are startups and hence they would think twice because they need to get it right why do you feel that these things are happening so fast? I think the answer lies in your question itself and see for the traditional people I've been used to certain things it's a business answer nothing to do with marketing I also wear a business hat for a traditional person I've been doing something and it has been working so to change is a big change so I will only do small small things to do it for the new two brand guys I think they are very clear in terms of a very small slice of a population they are going to target with their product nobody comes to the market like an HDFC bank saying that I will go ahead and serve India that doesn't happen so for them it is very clearly a problem of a consumer I am going to solve and this consumer problem is only there with say 1 crore Indians are 50 lakh Indians so TV is not the medium for them so it's actually from a business perspective that it starts and it's not about marketing the same brands once they reach a certain scale they also come to TV whether it is an Amazon whether it is anybody else they also come to the TV because once they take that kind of a leap and then they have to do something else which is building a much bigger ecosystem for online commerce Amazon is there in TV and you see all the e-commerce players and you can ask the question why is e-commerce anyway or TV at the end of the day they are using only mobile phone to buy so it's more of a business issue in terms of where you find your business and what is the consumer that you are targeting and where do you see that consumer going today so you will obviously feel that that's happening that way otherwise I think all of us are open and it's a question of the business context that makes you think sure thank you Ravi any last remarks Akshay, Sadhna, Sonil on this and then quickly summarize I know Shubha is up on the screen which gives me a trigger that my time is up but we'll not take more than two minutes I promise yeah Akshay. Just a quick one I think what you've still realized is even if we go very high on digital I think a front page leading daily ad is something which still creates that one day or maybe a half day impact and probably that is because of the entry barrier also because yes you can get onto a Facebook ad or an OTT ad quite easily you don't need that sort of an investment but to get into that sort of a space on a front page check it out or maybe sponsoring a leading media property sports media property I think you need that sort of a backing of the currency or the dollars and that shows to the world that hey you know what I have a right so yes digital is still to go to that zone it's still to achieve that zone but yeah I think it's a matter of time that we do that I would just like to add one last thing that I think it's more of a it's more of a mindset it's I think you know in the coming years it will no longer be a TV versus digital it's going to be okay you know let's do something which cuts across you know all the platforms so I think it's more of a mindset thing than anything else and we'll see that shift happening very soon. Sure. My last last comment and advice for everyone is you don't think content I think you know that's possibly the thing that flies the furthest and has the maximum sort of impact on any digital platform so my advice to all brands is you know consider content marketing native advertising that's probably the the biggest wave which is coming which is going on right now and for the next couple years to make the right impact. Sure thank you I'll just summarize certain things which I have learned today from you guys and I think Ravi said it first very rightly that you know personalized creative depending on the geography makes a lot of sense mindset shift mobile first is what Ravi you said and thank you for saying that. Akshay made a point saying that he has seen success when they have done platform-wise creatives and he's talked about his brand tracks going up. Sonil talked about that we need to make sure that it's going to be contextual, brand safe, great premium inventory and measurement to be the key and of course Savna talked about how the full funnel has gone out the days when we're talking Aida but it's a consumer journey which we look at so thank you very much guys for coming here and sharing your expertise. I learned a lot and it was great thank you very much over to you Shubha. Thank you. Thank you. Bye thank you. Thank you so much everyone.