 Keynote address. She is an electrical engineer from Jadavpur University and MBA from IIM Calcutta. She started her career as a management trainee in Hindustan Lever Limited. Subsequently, she joined Titan where she worked on several roles in marketing both international and domestic. The next tent was at Talismar Corp as a director of product marketing. She moved on to become business head at Lee in Irwin Brands Limited. She is now the CEO of the Watchers and wearables division of Titan Company Limited. Ladies and gentlemen, she will be talking to us on the topic of the new frontier of brand strategy and digital engagement. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome Suparna Mitra. A very warm welcome to you. Hi, lovely to be here. Lovely to have you, Suparna. I'm going to leave the screen to you for your conversation. Great. Thank you for having me exchange for media. This is a very interesting format and I was wondering how relevant really and how apt it is that we are having this completely virtual conference with all speakers and all participants participating virtually and it is on digital marketing. So I'm going to share some thoughts and obviously everything is about post-COVID. I don't think there is anything else on anybody else's mind right now and I'm going to actually use this opportunity to talk about some of the things that we've done in Titan in the Watchers division on brand strategy and using digital and that is the whole thing about how are we going to look at brand strategy through digital media. So just give me a minute. I will share my screen. Yeah. So let's start from around the middle of March. What happened? We had a sudden lockdown and practically all consumption except essentials came to a grinding halt. So we are in a category which is very discretionary, totally non-essential in some ways. We are a category that is about self-expression, about status, about emission, about very higher order kind of means and not about essentials at all. So in many ways we are non-essential but in many ways we are also a category which makes people feel good. So the journey of what we did from mid-March to now, the first phase was actually the lockdown phase and the big brand challenge was how does a category like ours, totally discretionary, remain relevant and salient in an essentials only market. So what was the strategic intent? How to keep the brand alive in the consumer's minds during lockdown and the situation was such that while consumers were not actually consuming anything other than essentials, they had a lot of time and they were constantly on digital media. Consumers were working online, shopping online, entertaining themselves online, kids were learning online. So the entire gamut of human activity was online and especially in the early days there was a lot of consumption on COVID related news. So in a way the opportunity to engage digitally with the customer was very high but the question was what do you now tell them? It would be totally daft to tell them then that go out and buy watches because all the stores were shut and there was no reason at all for anybody to buy watches. So what did we do? We felt that this was a great time to build relationships and to cherish and nurture relationships between the brand and the consumer that have been there for a while and this was a good time to stop and really work on those relationships. So how did we do it? We did it by subtly placing the brand in emotional and gifting moments with audiences on social media. So what were the constraints? One was that there was if you couldn't shoot anything and all of it had to be generated by people who were or everyone was locked down. All of the content had to be generated at home and that was a constraint but what was the opportunity? The opportunity was completely in the space of what do we mean as a brand to consumers? So we realized that we are a very big category for gifting, for birthdays and anniversaries and what we saw was that people were locked down, they were not able to celebrate, they were not able to reach out to friends and family and we actually gave them a lot of avenues for expression on their birthdays. So these milestones which people missed were a way of connecting back to the consumers and presenting the brand in a subtle way, not in any kind of commercial sense but just from an emotional sense. So apart from birthdays and anniversaries what else happened during that time? We had a few interesting occasions which lend themselves to this kind of communication. One was Mother's Day and what we did and I'm going to just play this for you is how do we create content that actually allows people to express themselves. So this is a huge time for self-expression. It was also a huge time for rediscovering how special our close loved ones are. I think lockdown, one really paid attention to close family members and mothers are mothers always special so let me play this for you. What else did we do during the lockdown phase? Another interesting avenue for brand engagement was how do we imbue the brand values of positivity and optimism in the consumer's life in these peculiar circumstances by using brand assets. In the earlier panel discussion there was a question on sonic brand name and we are blessed and tightened to have one of the most distinctive and very very signature sonic brand asset and which is now called the Titan Tune which we have in the lockdown period used it to like I said subtly place brand values in the consumers in the context of the consumer's lives. So another piece of communication which went out and got huge amount of social engagement, social media engagement during this was a Mother's Day piece which was using the Titan Tune and a lot of leading musicians from the country came together virtually for a concert and it was something that created magic and actually opened up many new ways of connecting with consumers. So here we go. Occasion where we used the Titan Tune and this was on April 14th when the entire nation was waiting for the Prime Minister's address on because three weeks of lockdown were already over and at 10 a.m. the Prime Minister actually extended the lockdown and by 2 p.m. we had put out this piece of communication called Time Together. Let me play it and then I will talk about what kind of reaction and engagement we had got at that time. So when viral it got the highest organic views for the year and it was just people just spread it, they just forwarded it to lots and lots of people. I think there was a certain topicality that the timing was everything. This post after two days wouldn't have possibly held as much meaning. The fact that at that point there was an old nation saying now what three weeks have passed and at that point when the news came that it had got extended the reassurance from this lovely piece of communication is this too shall pass and give it time. It was something that really worked. We even got picked up and it got talked about by Shobhade in her Mumbai mirror column where she talked about this commercial for Titan which is an appropriate word in place of numerals on a watch precisely 12 words that say it all just like these numbers we too can be apart yet be together and the baseline this too shall pass give it time and she calls it splendid. So this was another usage of the tune very simple creative I mean you would think about it there's nothing except that the power of the idea but it really struck a chord. And the last one which is actually using our brand a set to deepen consumer engagement and affection for this beloved brand was centered around all the little activities that people were doing during the lockdown. I think certainly for me the lockdown was a period of self-discovery because it kind of forced us to stop and think and pause and reflect and also reignite a lot of things that had kind of faded away in our lives and we found a lot of people were doing a lot of new things together for after a while and we felt that this was a time where we all loved a little, laughed a little and lived a little and made it count made made every moment count. This is the time to learn something to forget something to plant to return to an old love this is the time to feed your mind and to feed the world to stand still and to dance to grow up to become a child to connect and disconnect this is the time to do nothing and to do everything. What a lovely smile from that child it really made every moment count. So we now move on to the opening up phase. This was late May, June and though cases were going up every day and more lockdowns were being imposed and the whole thing had become certain cities, certain geographies were having their own lockdowns and one of the big things was the fear of personal safety to go out and shop and the question in the back of people's minds is okay if I don't have a choice I will go out and buy essentials but why would I go out right now and buy a discretionary category. So the big barrier that we wanted to address at this point was the fear and to assure people of our safety standards and during the lockdown in the month of April itself we had worked out very comprehensive safety procedures for our offices for us factories for our stores and a lot of work had gone into training our store staff also to make sure that they understand what this is about and this was the time when we felt that this was the need of the hour and all of the engagement that happened at this point was addressing this. So we did have a lot of new ways of communicating with customers and little innovations that actually helped them overcome the fear so things like video calling, video shopping or browse online and then just pick up the watch and store so you don't have to spend a lot of time in the store when you're browsing and now I will play a short video that had gone out to all our loyalty club we have a very large customer loyalty program called Encircle and we had sent this out to millions of customers to assure them that we had done everything we could to ensure the highest standards of safety. Hi I'm Suparna Mitra CEO of Titan's Watches and Bearables Division. At Titan the safety of our customers, employees and the community is the priority. We have curated a contactless shopping experience from start to finish. We have sanitized products and have trained our employees to adhere to social distancing norms and use masks and gloves. We have let no stone unturned to ensure your safety while you shop with your perfect executive back to your favorite store. So that was on assuring customers of safety protocol and then from I would say middle of end of June we really started working on demand generation because finally the context is such that the audience's sentiment is I'm at home I'm doing everything at home I don't want to be going out do I really need the lifestyle and fashion categories you know for most of us we were only really paying attention you know I would say shoulder up because that's all that is visible on a screen when we're doing when we're working from home and a watch and a wrist is very far down and it doesn't even come to and you know watches are things that you actually wear a lot to impress other people especially in work situations so how does one address this challenge and we found that we had to go back into our kind of treasure trove of meaning for the brand to find out a new trigger and push it up front. Actually this new trigger is an old trigger it's something that has been there associated for the brand from the 90s but it was not something that we you know deployed very actively in the recent times but Covid told us that one of the things that is really important to people right now is connecting to loved ones and gifting is one way of communicating our love so we established that if I have to get the right trigger one of the big triggers is an emotional appeal for gifting and this was something that we built on to the brand and we called this whole campaign idea gift a titan smile and the idea is that you could be gifting a titan smile the moment you gift a titan you know the other person will smile so you could be gifting a titan smile to people your loved ones who are in the same household as you you could also be gifting it to your loved ones who are in some other city and right now you can't even think of you know traveling and also a lot of missed milestones you know birthdays anniversaries a lot of jobs lots of things have happened in the last four and a half five months and we haven't really you know said thank you to people that need that we need to say the thank you to so here is one piece of communication where we built gifting among family members so this is how we kind of took it across different relationships uh reasons to gift your wife for the countless cups of coffee before every meeting gift your many reasons to gift your dad for all those dad jokes that kind of made the lockdown a little more bearable reasons to gift your husband for being your bff i think we realize many dimensions to our intimate relationships and i think the most important one was self-gifting gift yourself for picking up the brain brush again and this could be one of the many reasons to gift yourself a titan another lever another trigger for this category is desire and desire had to be brought back into the forefront before the audiences just got habituated to learn and learn to live with less and desire is always about the lure of the product it's always about how differentiated how how unique how drool worthy the product is and we actually had one such product that had been awaiting launch since actually march april and we launched it in august and this is actually a smartwatch from titan it's called the titan connected x and it's a flagship full-touch smartwatch from titan and it's done amazingly well it's priced at 11,995 it's a great price for a smartwatch but we weren't very sure how it would do because of the situation what we found is that it did really really well and i'd just like to play this little video that talks about the features of this watch presenting the new titan connected x these are the triggers which we were trying to put together at a category level now i want to talk a little bit about what we see is happening overall for brands and retailers which is the demand has got so substantially reduced and yet we haven't really realized what this really means we thought we thought of this idea sometime in june july and finally we we kind of launched this initiative in august it is not a campaign it is probably an initiative in its best avatar it is a movement it is about actually how do we get india ticking again and india will start ticking again only when each of us who have the ability and the very thought to do those small purchases small and big go back and start life all over again what we don't realize that the wheel of the economy is so inextricably linked every cog is enmeshed with the other that our little actions of not consuming things that we're used to is leading to huge losses of livelihoods unprecedented and unimaginable unemployment and no matter what we are expecting from the government and the rbi etc i think it's every citizen's responsibility whoever has the very thought to start consuming again so this movement which is called let's get india ticking it's a category agnostic campaign it is not about watches or titan though it does have the signature titan tune but it is about giving a subtle nudge to consumers all over that consumption is actually in some ways better than charity because when you consume it leads to further production and that leads to further employment and then that leads to further consumption and this is a piece of work that we are very very proud of we are also very passionate about it's at that stage where i'm personally writing to CEOs of many companies and leaders and many brands requesting them to take the pledge and so far we've had 55 brands taking this pledge and that's amazing because brands coming out and saying i will support you is just so amazing because somewhere we have opened our minds to saying i don't need to be all possess about my brand and my category and we're all in this together and together we have to get india ticking heartbeat of our nation every time we buy something we get india ticking to join the initiative log on to the website we would request all the viewers if you want to participate in this you want your company your brand and we've got brands across food retail accessories apparel power FMCG it's just amazing it's been an outpouring of support and everybody sees what this is about and we want we have a target ambition of 200 brands who will partner and hopefully there will be enough decibel levels created by this uh that a lot of people who've been holding back on that tiny purchase on buying the flowers sending the clothes to the man who irons the clothes you know buying the fruits and vegetables you know at the at the local level uh all of these people you know you saw the chai wala and the jalebi wala and the raddi wala uh this is really an appeal uh from all of us to let's all get into it and let's get india ticking so um this is really what i had in terms of how do you really engage consumers with your brand through digital engagement uh in these times thanks a ton for your patient listening and i'm open to questions i can i'm actually going to come out of this presentation and then we can talk about it thank you thank you soprano that was a wonderful outpouring of questions coming in for you so i'd like to quickly mention a few of those questions to you because uh this is a three-part question so let me start by just asking you seeing the success of these wonderful music campaigns do you think it is important for brands to consider their sonic identity to engage with the consumers and enhance their digital experience obviously the answer is yes and um but my my simple point is that this sonic identity has not been built now it was built three years back and uh you know we are only building on the tops of on the shoulders of the giants who've come before us so both on the right and the agency side people have done so much work and uh it is it is a very precious asset we take it very seriously we are constantly innovating and building on it and it was during this time that you realized what the power of that asset was because it was just instantaneous magic in terms of engaging with consumers yeah um so the question following up to that is that should the focus now be on how a brand is being heard over the visual identity i think both i think it's about an audio visual signature and if you saw a lot of the pieces of communication that i showed there are some key commonalities there's always a certain rootedness there is a warm there is a certain class but it's not some very status oriented there is a certain authenticity there is it's always emotional but and the product is lovely so it all comes together well so this identity is an audio visual identity yes there is a corporate audio or audio identity the sonic identity that is very strong but it is an overall package that if one one did not put the name at all of the brand i think 60 70% of consumers would know that it is tight right so another part to the question is what the brand focus on having music at retail outlets aligned with the brand identity so we play um play we have playlist model retail stores obviously you know it needs to be in the background because people are shopping it can be very uh in your face and we try and mix it up in terms of genres it's not that we play only Mozart i don't think that'll work i think it's something that and also different stores you know we have world of titan stores where we play a certain kind of music they're fast track stores where we play a different kind of music so it's it really depends on uh what the need for that music what is what role does that music play in the retail store is different from the role that music plays if it is a uh a piece of brand communication right another question we've got is that uh i think this is a question that all of us suffer from like i am not a person who can go online and shop i need the touch and feel so this is a very relevant question on that topic which says can digital engagement replace the touch and feel factor so um what we are discovering is that there are new hybrid modes which are working very well so uh we're doing obviously earlier there was a customer who was perfectly comfortable buying online that person continues to be perfectly comfortable buying online but there are like you said a lot of customers who would do the search and buying offline you go to a store in fact you go to a lots of stores you check out you know sometimes one nice watch for a birthday or something you uh you go this weekend also you got next weekend also then you do a little search online now what we are seeing is that we are trying to aid the customer to do the search process online because that's what people are really keen on so whether you know we have live chat on our website or we do appointment booking or we do video assisted shopping so uh the store the customer actually calls in and the video the the store staff engage with the customer on video and show them that you know this watch will look like this so as opposed to because the customer doesn't want to necessarily touch a lot of watches and apart from that you know the safety things that we anyway talked about now we are doing UV sanitization of watches once one customer has tried it on we UV sanitize it before putting it out so it is a very interesting hybrid that is coming up and um that's actually something that I think will stay because yes at some point some vaccine will come people will go back but some things become habit and then you find them convenient so why do you want to go back right right and if things are getting better then why not I think people will save up on a lot of shopping time also by doing this online absolutely so with that Suparna thank you so much there are many questions coming in but with the paucity of time I have to thank you here but do join us on our online conversation using the hashtag tech month just for all our viewers also please send in your questions using the hashtag if Suparna can come online and answer some of those there as well thank you so much for your time and this wonderful insight to presentation thank you thank you so much kyati and thanks to exchange for media it was wonderful to be an e-tech bunch thanks bye bye everyone