 Let's move on to the last panel for the day on the digital marketing state of affairs and what's next Let's have a huge round of applause for a panelist here in tow The panel will be chaired by Neil Pandia CEO a pack by six one Followed by our panelists here. Mr. Karan Rajpal head of digital marketing Dalmia cement Miss Ashima Kakkar head marketing NLB technologies Miss Archana Agarwal VP media Airtel. Let's welcome all the eminent personalities with the huge applause, please Everybody please put your hands up in the air Thank you once again to all of you for taking out your precious time over to Neil sir here. Thank you Thank you. Okay. Firstly. Thank you for him. I think it's really really awesome to see everyone in person Put faces to the name. I Believe that you know digital has an illusion in all of us that ensue in zoom calls And we don't I have taken digital as really Pandemic has affected me a health and a lot of other stuff. I've not considered really bad But when I see Rajeev who is fit and fine right now with me Gives me some intentions that illusions and we need to move out of that guys today. We're gonna talk about Digital marketing in state of affairs. I think there's a lot which has changed in pandemic and we have done hundreds of webinars and Seminars talking about that thing. So we will speak something about the obvious changes into digital marketing, which were maybe I may be augmented reality Maybe adoption of digital maybe acceleration of digital into five eggs all of these we all such stuff Which we have spoken but today we'll try and see if we can cover something new as well Let me rather not waste any further time. And no before we start. I think I have one simple question to all of you guys We have defined visual marketing Multiple times. So if you have to define visual marketing in your style, I mean current In your experience if you have to define not the bookish knowledge or the theoretical knowledge, how would you do it? I can start from anywhere so I think marketing before digital marketing the shortest and the clearest definition I've that stuck by me is marketing is the truth well told and Digital marketing is the opportunity to tell that truth over and over again until your truth becomes your consumers truth as well Ashima any interesting facts about this market? So I think digital to me is a way of life and I think the brand for brands has become a way of life for all of us It's become a way of life and I think digital to me is observation and to me that translates into campaigns that translates into ideal So that's digital to me Telecom is always ahead in digital marketing anything new from personal and professional For me digital, it's a black box. It's world gardens. It's future tech It's where the consumers are going to be in the future It's entertainment. It's a lot of things So I mean I'm looking at work from a consumer and a marketer doesn't understand what the consumer is looking for Hello, I think you know this is something which everybody can do Marketing something you know for which you have to go to business school and you know work in some fancy companies where nice suits like yours and mine and Talk some fancy Jagans. This is something which can be done by everybody and anybody who's a little bit Savvian technology understands this deal But even if it doesn't stand if you know and if you want to do business, you can start doing business You can start doing business very very quickly and enhance the business very quickly That's what I think about digital marketing That's the biggest difference which is there in the world in this Really said I think Rajiv I completely agree on a person for me I think digital marketing at personal level was my moment that adopting Banking apps and doing transactions on and I think we never imagined I think net banking was among young stars Or maybe 35 40 year olds but going to elderly people also that was Personal level of achievement in business marketing and I also believe as Rajiv rightly said digital marketing for Being on L'Oreal side when on the previous version I think Purchasing lipstick online with AI put into a structure or with artificial resin put into stocks I think that was the level at which this marketing has gone. So a super. I think That's that's a very nice definition of digital marketing in your own respective industries. We have an interesting panel guys today I think we have someone from Dalmia cement who has Moved into digital marketing over the years and now are a pro in digital marketing as for current right now We have telecom industry Archana from metal who has been we have been learning digital marketing from telecoms in India I think for years telecom and e-commerce guys were doing the digital marketing. Ashma I think works for an organization who has brilliant digital transformation taking forward and Rajiv I think I'll start with Rajiv. I'm ending with Rajiv. Rajiv. I think as a personal Believer into Darbar as a brand over the years I have seen Darbar ads and televisions from the years, but I if you see recently Darbar has moved More modernized advertising. That's my perception. You can get a little more about it But as you have would have moved into more modernized advertising Has your thinking into digital marketing has also changed? Is it that elderly audience moved into digital or you are switching gears into youngsters and hence You're targeting digital marketing on you I think first of all everyone is on this right so even you are my grandmoms and parents and everybody's there Even you know if you go to the rural areas and if you talk to people and ask them How do they do the watch TV? They'll tell you they don't want a TV, but you know, they will have Smartphone and ask them. What do they do? And they say that this make Lal Ranga button. I'm supposed about it That's where they watch movies. It's like you too, right? So so that's what Has been I mean for people of this country everybody's consuming digital and you can't be away from it and as far as we are concerned What we look at is that you know, we look at the trends Into context into marketing basically that's how the journey is and you look at the trends You get the right context and you basically market it to people and That's how our journey starts and ends Any specific trend our would have picked up and you would have you know taken advantage of that trend for Robert as a brand Several of them like for example, I'll give you an example of a brand called Dabbar honey, for example, right? Dabbar knee is a brand which used to be about 33% market share brand just about three years back. Oh, yes back Now we are sitting at 55% market share And it's been possible because we learned from people we did a lot of social listening We understood from the market what's important for people and we figured out that you know What's important for people is that you know, we should tell people that how is honey sourced and We did a lot of content around sourcing. We did we created a lot of content or sourcing We did a lot of content around purity of the honey But as a product and it was a success. It was success that you know, it wiped away the competition completely That's one Interesting. I think moving from B to C. I think we have seen within B to C a lot of FMCG has done a lot of digital marketing The current if I have to ask you this one you are thank you, Raj You are more of a B to B and very less of a B to C. That's and safe assumption. I've taken But you can correct me if I'm wrong How is digital marketing seeing a different side of an angle when it is B to B largely or B to B to C To some extent, what is your perspective on the learnings? So cement is about 85 percent B to C Where the cement is consumed by the consumer but a lot of the sales to that segment have happens through What were called influencers in the earlier era not social media influencers but people who are masons contractors head masons and Our channel partners people who sell cement for a living out of their shops To each of these people, you know digital marketing is still catching up This is the cohort which I think we will reach last due to socio-economic educational reasons but what is happening is Across the entire Consumption cycle whatever it is that you're buying today It is almost natural and normal behavior to look for it online even if you cannot cannot purchase it How do you make the consumer understand? Something about your product in the two minutes that you have with him cement is a very very low involvement product You know, there's a fair chance nobody in this room today would have thought about cement ever except for the 10 minutes They were asked to buy cement for building their home. How do you use that time? How do you make it simpler and easier for a customer and for me? You know, it can be as simple as saying the customer having to visit Six different outlets trying to understand what cement to buy or you know having a very confusing conversation With their contractor who may have and you know the dealer who may have other incentives How do I basically capture that entire funnel bring him into my fold that you know really makes a difference? Cement is not sold online. It's not an e-commerce or even a direct-to-consumer business today But outside of the sales what parts from the awareness to the consumption cycle which for many brands can be yours But for my brand is minutes which is cement Lena hair or many cement Karid lia, you know that journey can be as little as two hours What difference can I make in that moment? that Really brings in the difference Secondly over the past two years, you know digital was a good thing to do for many many people But they were at least two Elongated periods in the last two years because of the pandemic where people could not get out So a lot of these people are now getting online and seeing a journey. So they think they're online push military How do you make that journey simpler for them? So, you know, my thing is not You know, how easy I can make the purchase process My thing is from the moment a consumer has thought they need to buy cement How quickly can my person reach out to them and aid their buying? And if I can do that well, and if that is something I can improve on over time That I think is the short-term Goal for me and then as the market matures as consumers mature, we will see that but Just one last point, you know people buying cement By themselves largely happens in what we would call typically tier three cities be centers So on and so forth people like us we would either be living in a you know flat Which is constructed by a builder or we would be living in a condo again, which is in the B2B segment This segment, you know what growth we can make vernacular tier three centers people for whom Mobile is really the internet. How do we get into those strutters? That is the real thing that we're working on now fairly interesting I don't think so there will be a time sooner we will see Simmons getting sold on Amazon as well and That's where your consumers either in tier three or tier one or tier two was searching that perspective would the D2C model can be Replicated Ashima for you. I think I have you worked your career into take my earlier which was one of the pioneers in the digital marketing as well and Today at NLB itself, which is a digital transformation organization. What are your? current learnings or the past learnings into the overall digital marketing as an affair if you can highlight some Of them would be interesting sure So I think for me the most interesting Understanding over the last one month of the transition that I've had from Tech Mahindra to NLB Tech Mahindra Which was a five billion dollar company and NLB, which is a five hundred million dollar company the sensitivity to digital is far more and I think it's the emerging businesses that are Climatizing themselves to the need of digital far more quicker I think it is also owing to the young new age entrepreneurship because they live in a digital age Therefore they understand the the giving of the platform much more easier Also, I think the whole Dynamic of the industry is also changing and I think last two years all of us marketers who thought you know Do events get leads and come back home? We've all realized that this is not going to fix it and Therefore the need to be able to reach out to a customer in the most relevant way And I think that's true for Consumer company such as Darbar and it's true for B2B company such as myself That a consumer today is looking for information at all times It just so happens. Are you being able to give that information at the right time? And if you are not you're losing an opportunity. So therefore the responsibility is to be able to Suggestive before we enter the room. There was a conversation on its content important or its channel important I think one can't exist without the other that's my take and that the general phenomena is and I Say this, you know, so when I joined and I'll be there made business isn't stopping solutions For the life of me. I didn't know that there were 14,000 skill assessment platforms and That's how huge the market is and That's how diversified the market is for any sphere of life you touch today If you want to get hired, there's a platform if you want to get fired. There's a platform and Twitter is most likely So that's my take Very interesting. I think hiring there are a lot of people in the room Also want to look at hiding it to take platform and we can help you on those lights as well Archana coming to you. I think you are the one who's handling a Lot of million dollars in media digital media for a tell There are multiple things. I mean a lot of us are moving into digital there is a differentiation where People want to move into digital marketing and people know digital marketing or maybe digital media I'm sure you would also come across within your team that you are TV. No, I'm digital Yeah, for digital Q Kanna in such scenarios. How how do you how do you answer to those such questions? And how in absence of a third-party? Attribution model into digital spends you when you are spending so much on digital marketing. How do you define ROI from person? I think There's always this constant debate between And why should we do digital brand digital which is driving top 100 Because at the end of it most Market years or brands are interested in finally saying how many needs did I get how many acquisitions So it's always should we shift all our budgets to performance But I think over time, you know with all the experiments we've done. I think over time Everybody at least now in the company started realizing the value In conjunction with performance and everything goes hand in hand, right? We can't do one aspect and Not do other things, right? So we've also gotten to advocacy and influence a market We have a command center where we do social listening We've gotten to some it's not exactly long-term but content integration on digital When you see how do you see results? Fortunately because we're telecom, you know We unlike FMCG is that you have to wait for one month later You'll get the market share and all of that data and then you know whether the campaign has work here I can get to know practically on a daily weekly basis because there is a CTA which is given the CTA is either driving traffic I mean when I joined a tell it used to be a call center So this is a CTA used to be a number So you knew how many calls were coming to the call center on a daily basis and you knew that whether People if people are calling to inquire about your product that means somewhere the campaigns the campaigns working Now you can see there's a CTA which drives traffic to the website or to the app your you automatically get to understand What's if it's working or the other most important thing is also looking at consumer journeys while you're building a digital campaign But more so on digital because it's just direct click right and that click has to lead to a certain pay landing page I think Last year a lot of effort and work went into driving the consumer journeys and creating these consumer journeys to make them more Efficient for consumers and making it more easy then we did a lot more We've introduced a lot of things in the last one year in terms of like self care And we also track to seeing how many what percentage of our consumers are Calling the call center how many are going to the app directly. So I think We're building pieces of the understanding of what's working and what's not right because everything finally has to You're right. There is no, you know, the attribution metric is Hopefully a kind of absent and everybody follows the last click attribution But in I'm not so sure it's because the advertisers want to follow that or it's because the way the industry is built Okay, because the industry is like, how do I pay a platform based on saying that no, actually while the click came from you and that position came from you But there are ten other platforms which actually have tried that awareness Awareness consideration and then the interest and then finally the actual purchase, right? So industry evolves to actually coming up Together on a platform saying this is the attribution models we should follow and it could be very different for every different industries I think you'll still But I think from a ROI standpoint these are things that we look at and then we do a lot more brand-new studies We do some MMMs Now we are recently investing into We're doing lots of work in terms of platform understanding the reach of our campaigns on digital purely reach curves then we're recently We still haven't got the final reports, but we've done some pilots with the Google's ADH which is the ads data hub to understand a lot of things on terms of how What's the right frequency? So all of this is very I mean we can't do this manually requires a lot of automation and that's where we're looking We are exploring new tools one night I think of your company which we're exploring exploring then there is the other tool which we're exploring is Copilot and skippets and various other tools like this which actually this year our focus has been purely on understanding How can we enhance our understanding on digital and improve our marketing ROI be it efficiency or be it effectiveness because When you're looking at brand campaigns while efficiency is important the effectiveness is more critical While for the lower end of performance campaigns your efficiency in terms of my lowest cost for acquisition becomes important So we have to figure out between the two metrics as to which where do we focus on more the effectiveness part and where we are focusing on the efficiency part I think that I'm interesting and even who's heard in this room a crash course in five minutes about digital marketing That was the answer. I think she's mentioned Everything what a market here a digital market here would want to do on a day-to-day basis. So thank you Arjuna for that Having said that I think it intrigued me with Arjuna saying a lot of new words like advocacy influencer marketing Maybe last click and a lot of other stuff. I this question is open to all of you guys one So let me let me frame the question in a way a 70-20 10 rule I mean 70% of the money time effort we do into the regular things some ad 20% we may invest into impact like cricket IP or something like but 10% of the money Time effort we would want to invest into something. It's really new and never done before maybe innovation So in your a respect to organization 110 person in history whenever you would have done it and what do you how do you feel that has worked for this? It could be anything it could be influence a marketing We just go for you or anything anyone gets a car and I will again I think Rajiv I should go with you this time because I'm just following the path right, I think One important part has always been So that what we have done is that you know, we have since we sell across the country and all the geographies they're like hundreds of brands to sell and you know So we have come up with a structure regional structure in which we have regional marketing So we include Influences from the local markets and we do that very very locally and we have on our panel will probably have One of the highest number of influences any company would work I Think in this country as many number of people who are there on LinkedIn would be on it as influences also, right? as many influences in the country so lots of influences then New things like connected TV, etc micro targeting Pick wine which has worked for you in the last six months would what would be so In companies like us one thing doesn't work combination of several things work You know, and it's very difficult to attribute success to one person or one Reason so everything works together. You know, so I give this answer every time which has been asked from my bosses earlier that So I think I have a very interesting Answer about the 10% that you asked for confidentiality reasons I can't disclose it fully but So cement like I said, it's an age-old industry Frankly all of the brands have been sleeping at the wheel when it comes to digital of course the last One and a half years because I've been here for three years. I know exactly what the before was and what the during is now Everybody started with spending a lot on Google search, right search ads They're one of the largest drivers of commerce in India on the online ecosystem over a period of time. I realized that Just below the ad it wasn't actually the brands themselves which were owning All the keyword results, you know all page one. They were owned by this aggregator, right and There was a solution available with this aggregator literally pennies on the dollar when it compares to search ads and You know, I have run it Fairly successfully over the past two years now pure commercial value to be able to show that in a business where digital doesn't really Give away, you know, saying that this was what my cost per lead was or this is what my overall consumption was but to be able to do that. I think what is more important is The ability of the businesses management Regardless of their orientation, you know, I come from a business which is older than this country's independence and The product is told sold today the same way it was sold 70 years ago for the business to say that yes, I Will jump into this with you and we will see what happens that I think is what makes the 10% available You know stunts are in digital especially stunts are dime a dozen You know every day you have somebody coming to you and pitching something new Your ability to be a you know, see What is the commercial value of this at the end of the day is what is important? The thing that I think has been missing for many people in finding this 10% is Everybody is trying to monetize their own network rather than saying how will my network reach out to your customer in a Newer way, you know, I can show your ad I can send an SMS on your behalf I can run a video on my platform because people are consuming something that is one and Now I am you know now my next 10% is something even more interesting Which is what is being called these days as zero-click results? So how do I basically pick up? Say search snippets pick up maps and all the other things that are available there and drive business through it as Long as you know, we continue to be in that same sphere of Is 70% make which they are 10% who did they we continue to be in that thing and then you know what Rajeev was just saying It's a combination of things. There is a way out of that It's more a function of the business you are in and it's more a function of your understanding of that ecosystem Very fair. I think if I have to say 10% you rightly pointed about that You need to move away as a seller what what you are going to the customer as I think don't go with inventory selling don't go with Impact selling go with a solution selling to the clients and the brands I think that's where that 10% will really come into picture Ashima in your entire experience that one thing which you feel it falls into that 10% and is innovative So before taking that on I think you know as market years the whole conversation on tools is so fascinating and Also somewhat Digressing in our daily lives, you know because somebody will come up and say there's a new tool Let's try it out without understanding whether it's needed in our ecosystem or not so the the in in the quest of appearing cool, you know We look at platforms without realizing What is the purpose it's serving me and I think that's something every marketer needs to be very up But like Rajeev said that there's not one medicine that works It's usually a concoction and current times has proven that So I think personally I was so you we all know world economic forum Davos is a very high-cost platform As a market year if you have to do any sort of branding it Davos It's gonna cost you an arm and a leg and you when you're up against brands that have just a billion dollar budget for that particular year time of the year and We worked on a very very different model. So coupled with programmatic and geo fencing and I think that was my first experiment with geo fencing and I always thought it's something that is cool for local brands to do in terms of geo fencing Okay, I'm a local restaurant. Let me do geo fencing but to understand how as a B2B brand I was able to drive conversation is something that I mean I think I'd like to talk about as a case study sometime in my career But I think the fact that geo fencing coupled with programmatic gave me the same traction a billion dollar brand Was getting in less than 200k in I think Ashima in the same point. I again agree with you from a perspective that Rajiv you have you've spoiled the answers for everyone else because you know from a perspective of picking one I have everyone is going on to end the picking all three and all of them But I agree to your respective answer what you said. That's not one thing I'm rephrasing the question not one thing which is only work But one of the things which have worked for you as an innovation First I want to say while it takes 10% money takes much more effort So the effort is not 10% the effort is actually 30-40 maybe 50% right because any new platform or anything new You require a lot more effort put in to understand it and how it fits in with as you were mentioning Ashima That how does it fit into your brand, right? How everything doesn't need to necessarily work, right? I would rather talk about stuff which we've done recently and what we've been Has worked in the last few months that we've been investing in The fact is Different things work for different audiences We have we've been doing a lot of connected television That's where the future I'm thinking some of the questions you have but I feel that future today a lot of audiences are moving towards connected televisions and a lot of work in that space is yet to be done But we've already started working in some of the in fact just before this I was having a meeting Question I was like I want to understand did I get brand-lift from just these connected We didn't get the answer but the fact is that those are the questions that At least at Etel we are already asking our partners saying this is what we want to understand because The base work there is enough stuff We're doing through means and all and various other platforms to understand and as I said We look at the regular metrics, but these are the new things which are the ones which is the future and That's what I would like to focus on so programmatic Could become very big in future there are a lot of platforms who come up with the platforms and Some of them seem very interesting. I think the other piece which We are working on is the whole B2B space because we at Etel there is we have Product for us to advertise what worked in that You know so every platform or every campaign is different every Anything which is a lot more Thank you. I think thank you. We have just 45 seconds. So Taking Arjuna's perspective only so I think we all spoke about 2020-21-19 We are sitting in November right now and let's talk about 2022 and One one take or a one New thing which you feel in 2022 would really Stand out for market years to look out for as she rightly mentioned connected TV was one of the things Is there anything one you are looking at at your respective organization in general? You feel the industry is moving into that direction in 2022 I think the two things which will get talked about a lot next year is metaverse I think everybody will have and probably exchange of media will have a Contents of metaverse around the same time next year, you know and that's one and obviously, you know I mean for companies like I think all of us, you know, I mean Targeting is very very important. So sharp targeting tools, which can be sharp targeting the programmatic tools or Something like this or and and the most important thing is transparency Programmatic doesn't bring so much transparency Transparency well, these things will be very very important for us I will just do a selfish answer to that transparency plus programmatic plus targeting is equal to pixels one. Sorry guys Current one thing from you so for me, I think Next year will be the year of boiling over of a lot of things that have been building in the ecosystem For the past few years So if we quickly look at it one thing that's been boiling over is the number of influencers So two things will happen one is a Larger set of what one can very confidently call tier one influencers will rise up. We will see Not from the branded content perspective, but from the influencers own personality perspective things coming up Could be their own content boven bombs doing his TV series now. So a lot of these things are already in play So when you have these influencers, what is the logical next step? So I think social commerce is one thing that has not happened in India yet It's very very big on a standalone basis in the States. It's humongous in China In the last six to nine months social commerce Becomes the one thing where your influencers basically At its you don't make it best Peddling things to you and you can buy it there and then the second I think will be around the quick commerce space what can I get to you in the next 45 minutes and The brand that is available on that platform and the brand that brings it to you will walk away with All the premium that the market is ready to pay for convenience. So that entire premium around convenience. So it will change from I mean, what cheese career? I can make it down. What do they come up to? I mean, what cheese career? I can make a kid. They can see it. I think that's which we're right and ready for it At least for the 70 or million people who transact digitally on an everyday basis. So these two for me So I think as a B2B brand one thing that I'm very very excited about is the no click searches I think it's going to get much more powerful as we go along and I think if a brand is seriously Thinking about this fear. They need to address it As a B2C, I think the in post shopping is Something that's going to catch up massively and I think brands B2C brands really need to gear up for that Okay, so that I'm interesting guys. We have taken three minutes more So from perspective guys 2022 if you your market years from B2C to B2B There is transparency and targeting which Rajeev is looking at that is Karan is definitely sure social commerce is going to go really big in in in store app in Banner shopping in in post shopping is what Ashima is looking at and Archana has rightly told us a lot about connected TVs and what is going to benefit So that is what 2022 looks for all of us guys and have a fabulous day guys. Be safe Thank you so much guys for That was quite an insightful session. Can we have a huge round of applause for all the panelists here on board with us? I Would request all of you to stay back. I would humbly like to call upon Mr. Rohail Raman senior editor exchange for media to kindly do the honors of presenting Momentous to all the dignitaries here on the DS with us Starting with the chair for the session. Mr. Neil Pandia So, please accept this token of appreciation from our end Everybody can we have a huge round of applause, please? Thank you Next we have Mr. Karan Rajpal Okay Once again, thank you to all the dignitaries here for your precious time here today Thank you, ma'am Last but not the least please accept this token of appreciation from our end a Humble request to all of you for a photo obsession here A group picture, please. Thank you