 keynote session of the day. Talking about the future, the future of marketing by Lauren Ezekiel, chief marketing and growth officer WPP. Now he helps the brands to build a bridge to the future. He transforms agencies through winning global new business and driving client growth, making him one of the industry's most recognized and influential leaders truly. Before joining WPP, Lauren held the twin role of president of Digitas, North America, an international plus group client leader for GSK. Now during his 16 years at Digitas, Lauren helped build the business into an award-winning global marketing and technology agency. What a man to begin this day with. Please let's all, wherever we are, put our hands together for Lauren Ezekiel with the first keynote session of the day at day two. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for the welcome. Much appreciated. Gettica, I can't promise such great anecdotes, but can you hear me clearly? Okay, very good. I'm going to share my screen in that case. So thank you very much, Gettica. Thank you very much, Dr. Batra. It's an honor to be here and I appreciate you inviting me. Actually, my last trip before the lockdown was to Mumbai. I landed back in London on March the 5th. So maybe my first trip after lockdown will be back to India. So I'm going to talk a little bit today about the future of marketing and I'm going to try and get this done in about 20, 25 minutes. So hopefully there's a little bit of time for questions. Interrupt me if at any point the audio goes a bit funny. I know how these things work, but this is very much sort of a perspective on the future of marketing. And we're going to start with a video. Hopefully that will play properly. So we'll hit play on that now. The elephant, can you find what internet is? You're out of the green. Sir, here it is. I'll take it. Please send it out to me. Here's my credit card. To bet, there are more than 5,000 computers. We've got to put a computer on every desk in every home. We're trying to make something that people love. Sunday, it's this restaurant. The Lunar Aid has the deck. Why if you could type directly from your brain? It sounds impossible, but it's closer than you may realize. Retail will change more in the next five years than it has in the last 50. It also has incredibly small haptic ends. You're going to swallow a pill and ingest information. So the future is now, and this is the point. And I imagine utility experience, all those things were not part of the marketing nomenclature a few years ago. As Gautika said, it's an incredible time to be in the industry and frankly, an incredibly exciting time to be CMO. And the way the world is working is completely changing if there was any doubt. I mean, imagine any of those things in that film just a handful of years ago, ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft only launched 10 years ago. Amazon, Alexa, and voice-activated services just five years ago. We cannot imagine a world without those technologies. Now, this year alone, a billion dollars is invested into flying car companies. And there are 25 different flying car companies at different stages of progress and innovation around the world. And the valuations of these companies are only going one way. This is actually a few months old as a valuation, but at five trillion dollars, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Alibaba, 10 cent, these valuations over the next 10 years are predicted to go from five to 50 trillion. So the rate of pace, as Gautika said, is only going to increase. And in fact, by 2025, 40% of the Fortune 500 will be new digital entrants. So not just new companies in the Fortune 500, new technology-driven, new digital entrants, which is an incredible pace of change in that respect. And what's fascinating about APAC is that it's home to about 50% of the world's fastest growing companies at the moment. And even if you think about India, just India alone, you've got some of their most valuable unicorns, Paytm, Oil Rooms, for example, and BJU in terms of education tech. So really some valuable and high growth companies, which is exciting. And I think one of the points about the future of marketing is the constant need for change, the constant need to break into new categories. And even the companies with these high valuations can take the fangs just for a minute, well known term. They've managed to diversify very well. They've had to go into new areas. Finance has been something that Facebook has focused on very much. In terms of Amazon, they've been pivoting towards health increasingly. Google and of course, Waymo in terms of transportation, and even Apple in terms of acquisitions around home security with Lighthouse. And so these companies are really pushing themselves, pushing into new categories. And even brands that are a bit more in a less high growth space and more traditional space are doing so. And some of you will know these brands, some of you may not, but Econox is a US based health and wellness company that has gyms, West End is home furnishing company, and LVMH, you will all know. They don't have a lot of income, but what they have done is they've pivoted to the hotel and hospitality industry. And this is not a new thing. They've been doing this for a number of years. Of course, Econox hotels have got Econox products and gyms, the same for West Elm, and LVMH, in fact, have got a multitude of properties which they managed to LVMH standards around the world. So really interesting pivot in that respect. And I think this is the way we must all be thinking. And I looked for some examples in India, you'll all know, of course, this one, you'll all know Reliance Geo, the biggest telco in India, but it wasn't born that way. It was born in industry and petroleum, but it now operates across business in energy, textile, natural resource, retail, and of course, telecommunications. So really a good job in that respect. And after launching their mobile service, they quickly became the biggest telco in India. Innovative focus and approach that's recently landed. Big investments from some of the companies I've mentioned, Facebook, 5.7 billion for a tempest, just under a 10% stake, Google investing 4.5 billion for a 7% stake. So we must, must future proof our clients, those on the line from agencies, those on the line that brands, future proof your sales, future proof our clients. It's something that is so exciting about the agency landscape at the moment is our ability to be able to work with our clients to do that. And I think that one of the things to think about is that the old terminology categories have changed, just like those brands, the fangs have pivoted, so have the categorization. And this is something that we think about a lot of WPP. Telco has evolved, retail, travel, health care, and of course, automotive. And we need to be thinking more broadly. Telco becomes media, of course. I don't need to tell you about the fragmentation of that space in terms of content, in terms of access. Retail becomes commerce, accelerated, accelerated 10 fold through the pandemic, travel becomes more around hospitality and travel, healthcare very, very much into the wellness space and automotive around mobility. We're working with mobility companies to put content in cars. So it really is very broad when it comes to these new categories. And that's, I think, an important mindset to be had. Think about Uber during the pandemic. They did a fantastic job of pivoting from rides to eats. The rides business virtually shut down. The eats business accelerated at a pace I don't think anyone could have imagined, but a fantastic example of a company doing a great job in terms of pivoting what they need to be doing during a pandemic. And so mobility becomes bigger than that. It becomes about the future of brands in motion. I've put some of the brands in here that are doing a good job. The future of an all electric economy, for example, will see manufacturers like Ate Energy, Lotia Oto, 22 motors, and electric scooters, BYD Electrica, for example, in terms of electric buses. So very important that we think more broadly in that respect. And the same goes for commerce. When we speak about commerce, we speak about the future of a cashless society. I think we've still got a bit of a way to go there. But the adoption of a cashless society is a huge topic around the world, but it's an even bigger topic in APAC and in India in particular. I'm sure you'll hear more about that later from Rajan, who does a great job at talking about that. But we're shifting away from cash into cashless for sure. There's no question about that. And it is a big topic. And then you've got some great leaders in India, Paytm, PhonePay, of course, and WhatsApp and GooglePay, looking to branch out increasingly in this space around the world. But not just them, not just them. Retailers such as Amazon and Walmart are also joining this space. And I'm going to play a video now from Suresh Pillaji. Suresh Pillaji is the head of marketing for HSBC across Asia Pacific. And you can listen to him a little bit about the impact of new technology on brands and his brand today. My name is Suresh Pillaji. I work at HSBC. I'm the regional head of marketing for Asia. Back in the day, financial services used to be all about products. It was built and they would come. There was a personal loan put it on the shelf and somebody would pick it up. But now we are starting to think about it as an end-to-end experience. And it's moving from just understanding your customers with a clipboard and a pen to hovering data to understand them better so that we can be in the moment with them, trying to solve things for them. And finally, supported and the transformation supported by all the changes in technology that's available for us. Everything from 5G, I bet the 5G to IoT, which is becoming real now and wearables and the ability for us to use all of that to solve for our customers is the way we are transforming. And all of that needs imagination and all of that needs applied creativity. So that's great to hear from him. I'm going to play you three examples now against three trends. And one is that brands are spending differently. You know this, but it's interesting to see some examples of the work. And the case I'm going to show now was actually created for Wendy's. And the question is where should Wendy's be spending? What should they be doing? And how do they paint creativity on a new canvas? This was done by VML, Y&R in the US. Take a look. Talk about Fortnite, shall we? It's the newest video game, Chris Frederick, fast among kids, college kids, even celebrities. Fortnite has taken over the gaming world, becoming the most streamed game on Twitch ever. So in Fortnite, amounts to new events called Food Fight between Team Peepsette and Team Burger. Wendy saw an organic way in. We found out Team Burger stored their beef with freezers. And Wendy's doesn't do frozen beef. So we got on Twitch, chose a character with red hair and pigtails, dropped into the game, and instead of killing other players, we started destroying Burger freezers again and again and again for nine hours straight. We also declared our mission on Twitter, sending hundreds of thousands of gamers to Twitch to watch us play. And soon other players stopped killing each other and started tolling Burger freezers with us. Wendy's, dude, let's go! Top Twitch streamers took notice. News outlets were talking about it. Even Twitch posted a highlight reel of Wendy's best freezer films. But most importantly, the game developers removed the freezers from every Burger restaurant, meaning Wendy's hybrid Fortnite of frozen beef forever. So well onto VMO, and I well onto Wendy's award-winning campaign that they put out last year. The second trend, and there's just this one and one more, is that platforms are really driving transformation. And I want to play you an example from Mindshare in India, actually for Unilever Lifeboy. And I'm just going to hit play and you can see what they did. Lifeboy, India's number one soul brand, wanted to reach these people to change hand-washing behavior and reduce the incidence of illness and death. Introducing Lifeboy's infection alert system. Our solution was to create a data-led infection alert system to help Lifeboy proactively educate consumers when they are most vulnerable to fatal diseases and activate it through mobile, which has the highest reach in Google. The ultimate government of India data collected from 34,000 Google community health centers across 822 villages and sub-districts. The proprietary algorithm simplified big data to help understand the intensity, magnitude, and trends of each of 21 communicable diseases at a weekly level. Modeling historical data on these diseases, we derived a predictive incidence rate. When an outbreak was predicted, we activated an automatic calling system that made on an average 8 million calls every week, alerting brutal consumers contextually on the prevalent disease in their village and educating them on the importance of hand-washing with soap as a preventive measure. Lifeboy reached promising business results. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar saw a drop of 178,000 cases of the deadliest diseases during the campaign period. The infection alert system has now been extended to six additional states. One step towards healthy India. Lifeboy. Very good. So one more. I think we're running to time about 10 more minutes to get ready with questions if you have any. I think we'll have some time for those. So the final example I want to play you is actually for Mac Cosmetics, done by Ogilvy in China. And this is around the point that there's no such thing as a global brand anymore. Brands must be global and local. And innovation happens locally as well as globally. And I think that's a very important point. Culture happens locally. So take a look at what Mac did in China alongside Ogilvy. First time in history, Chinese shoppers buy more frequently on mobile than they do in traditional stores. In fact, 24% of consumers now say they shop less often at physical stores. Traditional retailers in China are all asking themselves the same question. What is the role of the physical store today? In the age of Gen Z consumers and increased competition from influencer driven digitally native brands, it was time to rethink the entire physical customer experience. Welcome to the age of new retail, combining online interactions with traditional retail experiences. Mac's experience center in Shanghai is pure new retail. After six months of development, Mac's new forward thinking store integrates both online and offline brand experiences into a single customer journey. It blends product discovery, social engagement and purchase into an immersive brand universe through intensive development of interaction design and technical innovation, touch screens and mobile interfaces create interactive engagements with physical products. These were tailored to three hottest product categories, lipstick, eyeshadow and foundation. From the moment you step into the new Mac experience store, you're invited to scan for a WeChat check-in, instantly displaying a personalized greeting. It's just the start of an integrated O2O experience where the Mac WeChat mini program becomes your passport to everything the brand has to offer. Within the first month, Mac's new retail experience performed beyond all expectations. Store traffic and sales increased 400% versus a traditional Mac outlet. With Mac, we reinvented the physical retail experience for beauty lovers, opening up new ways for brands to interact with customers offline and helping Mac lovers go beyond digital to truly fill the color. I think this is a great example of using physical for experience and driving back to digital. I've seen that store really fantastic. I want to pivot a little bit now the conversation into talent, which is the number one topic for us across WPP for the industry. It's a huge topic. I think it's very important. I think that scale is important. When you use scale to drive innovation, that's even more interesting. I think to deliver on some of these future challenges, talent and expertise needs an absolute unique focus on the future and modernizing. We need to modernize our talent. We're very focused across WPP, developing innovation with some of our partners, using our scale to best effect, using our scale to train our people the best that we can. It's a very important point for us. If you think about the landscape of talent and how it's evolved, what was important and what still is important, account, strategists, creatives, these are traditionally where the industry began. But as we evolve, plethora of new skills, as you all well know, some of you, data analysts, experienced designers, creative technologists, discovery and innovation. I won't go through all of these, but even nuances on data roles, data analysts and data scientists. And then blown out even more in recent years, as some of the innovations that I've shown today come to life. Interventionists, avatar development, even down to SIM developers, these things are increasingly important. So you can see how the sort of talent landscape has evolved, frankly, grown. And I think, as I said at the beginning of my presentation, there's never been a more exciting time. And this is one of the reasons there's never been a more exciting time, more inclusive industry that takes on broader sets of talent that can all play and all will play a very important role. And I think that's a very exciting prospect, actually. And we're very focused on that in India, I might add. When I was there, we spent a lot of time talking about it. But rather than hearing from me, I'm going to play you one last video. This is from Shrinni. Hopefully he's watching. Shrinni is our country manager in India, does a fantastic job leading WPP across India. They've just moved into a new campus at the beginning of the year, which we spent some time in. So here from India, here from Shrinni and what he's doing in India on the subject of talent. I'm Shrinni, I'm the country manager of WPP India. Some of the new roles that we're having for that they've taken previously are analytics experts, folks who can help us manage our talent, especially the younger talent. We have a chief culture officer at WPP India today to ensure that people enthusiastic and motivated to come to office every day. Some of the other areas we're looking at are in e-commerce and quotas as we're actually working very far off course, you see a lot of people sitting in coding and could have imagined this some years ago. Creative teams are largely made up of our directors and copywriters, but the advent of technology and data into creativity and into advertising, I think that's a big shift. Today, you need to have creative folks who understand different technologies, different platforms. So I think in terms of being the creative department of an agency, we really need to be on top of overall content gain and not just advertising. The roles that we'll be looking to fill into the future include people who have a very inquisitive mind who are extremely collaborative, not just adapt to change, but people who can actually re-change, who can help stitch all of the different services we have together, can actually really join the dots and provide holistic solutions to clients. Thank you Shrinni, thank you Shrinni. I'm going to conclude by saying that if there's a one thing I'm wanting to take out of today is that it's an incredibly exciting time to be in the industry. We believe that at WPP, we believe that the best way to predict the future for us, for our clients, is to create it and the best way to do that, as I said towards the end of my presentation, is through talent. Talent on all sides, agencies, clients, partners, and people that want to drive this industry forward. Thank you very much. We have time for questions. We've got about five or six minutes. Some miracle ended on time, so I'll hand it back to Gautika and we can take a few questions. I'm right here with you and you know the good thing about the COVID-19 is that most sessions start on time and finish on time. It's not a miracle, it's the new normal. Exactly, we managed to do it on time. We have two questions. We have many questions for you actually, but I'm going to take two, so we remain in time for the rest of the sessions too. The first one is, what is the secret when it comes for successfully transforming client businesses? Yeah, that's a good question. I get that quite a lot. So I think the key to successful transformation is that the entire company goes along with that transformation. In order for the whole company to go along with that transformation, you need a simple North Star, a simple set of principles across the company, and you need to push into not just technology, technology will help the culture. I think that's incredibly important. My advice is always to make, because sometimes transformation documents can be long, elaborate, at times complicated and challenging. I think it's really important to simplify the strategy for the whole company to be able to go along with it. That would be my sort of guiding principle on transformation. I would say that this is one of the reasons I believe that the CMO role, the Chief Marketing Officer role, has never been more challenging, but also never been more exciting. Because if there's an individual, she or he that can take the company forward in a transformation, I think at the CMO level, there is a brilliant opportunity to do that. It connects so many different parts of the business. It connects so many different parts of the business with consumers, wherever there's a B2B step in between that B2C step. For me, it's a huge exciting time and we're well connected to boardrooms and exec committees around client organizations. For me too, it's a very exciting time because in my little profession, in my little overweight, you just have a blank plate once again, and it's so exciting to be able to create in this whole new space and create a new future, so as to speak. We have another question for you Lauren, don't go away. So the question goes, COVID has had a massive impact on how clients go to market and where they focus their budgets. Now, given all this change, how should brands prioritize the opportunities and position themselves to succeed in whatever the future holds for them? I think a lot of brands have had a significant inflection point over the last five or six months and the conversations that we've had at WPP with our clients have varied. I won't name too many brands but I think the topic of purpose has become so important over the last few months and more so than ever. If I think about, just to use an example that I showed today, if I think about Unilever, Unilever has purpose threaded through the organization and it has done for a long, long time. So when it needs to step up and talk more about it, it's actually quite a natural thing to do and they do it and did it incredibly well. I think we've had conversations with brands that have looked at this period, you asked about COVID-19 and they've sort of challenged the fact that they've challenged their purpose. They've challenged whether they had a strong enough purpose, of course every brand needs a purpose at the center of the organization. They've also started asking questions about what the future looks like, the medium term future looks like. Will the purpose they have today be relevant tomorrow? So what has it done to brands? Some have slowed down and listened to their consumers in order to be more active after the pandemic. Some were very confident on the purpose they had and activated their plans even more during the pandemic. So I have to say it's been very varied but it does come back to, it has come back to in almost every conversation purpose. The one final point I'll make and happy to take one more question is that our relationship with our clients during the pandemic has strengthened. We have spent so much time speaking with them, helping with them, helping them on production, advising them on a number of topics that we may not have been talking to them about before and I think in that respect it's really made us closer to the current clients and long may that continue. We kind of filtered out most of the questions but I have a question that I want to ask you that is very relevant I feel and we'll make this really quick. So what we've seen in the last six months is that the pace at which humans have responded to this action, our reactions, the pain has been incredible. I mean did you ever envision that we could have gained so much? It's such a fast pace in the last six months we've seen that happen. How have we managed to pull this off across the world, across industries, across sectors, across governments, across nations? The pace has been incredible. Look I know I never assumed that we'd be able to do this. I think that you know some companies, some brands were a bit more ready than others to pivot to more commerce, more digital and more direct consumer and I think that you know it's been really interesting to see that but no I think the pace has been incredible. I think what we saw at WPP was certainly on a personal level. I think it took a couple of weeks to really adapt. You know it was a shot to the system. I think we went into lockdown around about the 21st, 21st or 2nd of March in London where I'm sitting now and the first two weeks were tough. They were difficult. There was an adaptation period but after that I think we got into our stride and you know it will be a mixed way of working post-magnetic. There's no question about it and I know it's fascinating for WPP because the situation for us is very different across our markets. We operate in so many markets that it's not the same everywhere but no I never expected it no. Only a couple of weeks you said that right there and that's like a fantastic window of time for change and for marketing it's going to get very tough because mindsets across the world have changed but then that's why we have all of your leaders here at TechMuch. Thank you very much Lauren. Thank you for spending time with us this evening. Thank you. Thanks Dutiga for having me. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you so much. Thank you.