 Good afternoon. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you to an exchange from India presents from recovery to reinvention, building brands for the long haul powered by Salesforce. Today we have a stalwart from this industry and many leaders from India. We have Mr. Toby Jenner who's the CEO of WaveMaker and he's going to tell us how to go from recovery to reinvention and how do we build brands for the long haul. He's somebody who's you know helped clients build brands in his current leadership role as well as in his past roles and he's a keen observer of consumer behavior and working with clients to build local value. We also have Mr. Ateet Mehta who's the CMO of Baiju's, Subha Srinivasanayar who's the CMO at Godrej, Mr. Yashdeep Vashna from Salesforce, Meera Ayur from Medlife and my co-founder and friend Nawal for this conversation. I'll start by having a conversation about Toby because Toby is based in the UK and as the global CEO for WaveMaker he not only has an idea of what happened in UK but he has a kind of ringside view to what's happening in various different markets. Are there similarity between those markets? What are the unique you know behaviours that are happening with consumers and hence brands are trying to kind of follow that. So let me welcome all our guests but especially Mr. Toby Jenner first. Mr. Toby Jenner welcome to the exchange from media talk and we're happy that we're talking to you. How have been the last 100 odd days for you Toby? Firstly thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to have been invited so thank you and it's very kind. The last 100 days well look let's go back to the last 200 days because I joined WaveMaker in September of last year and I had a very clear plan for the year ahead of me which didn't include a global pandemic so I just wish every person who started a new job this year well because it's been it's been challenging. I think it's been I'm glad I had six months prior to March to put in place a number of the areas that we wanted to address so we were in good shape and I think ultimately the last four or five months whether it's been COVID or in the US Black Lives Matter it's been it's been a hugely challenging time and it's been a time where communication and sharing of information has been more important than ever before and I joked with my colleagues at the start we were having calls every day in the first week of April last week of March as we went into lockdown in the UK and across Europe and the States about sharing information for false news and it was false news because everything was changing so quickly the information we were sharing went out of date literally every day but it was a choice of you either share what's relevant as of that moment in time or you wouldn't be sharing anything so we made the decision that we would share on an ongoing basis every day certainly for the first three or four weeks so it's been challenging but it's it's been good and I'm pleased to say the team's been incredible and the changes we made for WaveMaker we built a new product with one global operating system so we could connect globally we had a very clear new proposition around positively provoking growth for our clients and our people and you know a time of crisis is one you should never let go to waste and certainly building that provocation at a time like this has been has been a real rich area for us and for our clients so it's been busy but rewarding ultimately you know we had two hours in our conversation was about you know kind of reviving and then reinventing but you added another third hour in this conversation but let me go back to a fundamental question do you see demand in business in various parts of the world coming back in the next six months let's take UK as a market which you really know and then try to look at some other markets and look at how consumers are thinking demand of our services has never gone away I'm not talking about demand of media services or advertising in fact in fact I keep saying Toby that in good times you shouldn't advertise and in bad times you must yeah so and you do need specialists wise wise words no no I think it's no secret that the market is declined considerably around the world you know we're seeing we're seeing huge deflation around the world I think when I when I look at it at a global level you know we're back about 11.8 percent so the markets declined down to it's your mobile you need to turn off the markets declined back to about 517 billion so that's you know a huge number but we we haven't really felt that decline in we haven't been less busy because of the amounts of work and the recalibration that we've been doing for for our clients so you know what we're seeing is 2019 at about 11 billion that was up about six percent about 587 billion and then we're seeing this year you know a decline as I say of around 517 billion so back 11.8 percent and I think next year we'll capture probably two-thirds of that we'll recover two-thirds of that and then we'll go back to growth versus 19 in 2022 so you know one year of pandemic and I would say two years of recovery but certainly recovery is what we'll have and within that what we're seeing is is innovation and clients working in very different ways to ensure that their business strength is maintained so if I think about clients if I think about 2008 and the financial crisis what we saw was digital coming to the fore more than ever before and I think what we're seeing this time round is commerce e-commerce coming to the fore and direct consumer strategies and clients that were ahead have accelerated through this so certain clients I know where the bricks and mortar business shut but their e-commerce business made up the gap so actually they were only back in single-digit revenue declines because the e-commerce business grew disproportionately so I think we're seeing many different ways of developing you know buying online picking up at stores so stores whilst not open become centers for distribution so there's many wonderful innovations and I think we've seen more innovation in the last four months and the last four years it's truly astounding how our clients have developed and you know I would hope that we're supporting them on that journey. You know thank you Toby for telling us that B2C is becoming bigger e-commerce is becoming bigger and you see that at some stage we start to see brands being even more active than they were pre-COVID now if consumers behavior is changed and brands are engaging in a new way because you can't disengage with the consumer right you've got to be in continuous engagement now how are you reinventing the communication and in some way reinventing what you do the client's behavior has to mirror your behavior and in some way you have to leave the conversation that's how you become a trusted advisor and beyond a media procurement you know agency so to say so how are you reinventing your offering especially digital has become so big if you talk to any marketer conversations are more often around digital and how a spend in digital need to go up how performance marketing needs to grow how D2C channel need to be set up you know so give us a input into how you're reinventing what you do to serve your clients today. So when I came into the role in September I came without any baggage so I was very open with my colleagues that said you can change anything and everything the only thing we're going to keep is the name wave maker because I think that talks disruption provocation and transformation and for me those were the pillars that I wanted to build the organization on we as I said reinvented the product we sell to our clients we built what we call provocative planning and we built it around three modules and the reason I mentioned this is because I think modularity of approach the ability to dive in and out of individual modules is infinitely more fast to market infinitely more agile and infinitely more flexible for our clients versus a sequential process which every other agency has so every other agency starts with some sort of barrier and finishes with some sort of measurement framework and you have to go through 10 12 14 8 steps however many it may be and again as I say the reason I tell you this is because we were very proud of that because we thought it was a provocative way to go to market and then COVID hit and then what we we saw was an absolute need for agility absolute need for flexibility and an absolute need for connectivity so what we'd already developed and we funnily enough we were in Mumbai launching this to 200 colleagues from around the world the last week of February feels like a lifetime ago now but it took on even more importance in the COVID world so as we were rolling this out during lockdown across 12 test markets of which India was one it became for us ever more important so that flexibility and that agility through a modular approach really helps lead our clients from a client perspective one of the modules was all around what we call unlock how do you unlock additional value from your digital ecosystem that is available there and we look across seven different areas from commerce to search to social to programmatic to different audiences to the content and we have a depth of questionnaire that I would say is better than any consultant grade audit and where that gets you to is the ability to benchmark yourself first is either best in market best across markets your competitive set and then maps those areas where you can improve against ease of delivery and impact on your business so you're focusing on where you can grow and how easily you can deliver against those areas and then we map it chronologically so it gives you as I say a consultant grade audit within four days and again to the point around flexibility and agility it's speed it's speed of market and it's ensuring that if there are dollars left on the table we know where they are and how to unlock them immediately so that that was something that as I say we were proud of the where we got to at the end of fair fast forward four months and we look at where we are now it's even more relevant you know Toby one of the things is that before COVID everybody was a digital journey that digital journey has been kind of accelerated by COVID now tell us how wave maker sees digital transformation as the core area for its clients you know tell us what are you you've already shared about this new framework which helps you kind of benchmark and kind of get a way forward in four days as you said tell us how are you playing the role of a partner in this digital transformation of planes well I think as I say I think that that's one such way I don't think it should ever replace human human interactions human ingenuity so that's one of three modules unlock that's about delivering growth today in a digital transformation environment we have two other modules one about delivering growth ongoing so that's about maximizing your your performance in market and then the third module is around transforming so that's about breaking category conventions that's about looking at broader annual plans and how we would grow within that I mean I think I think within digital we have to break it apart a bit because for me the opportunity as we've seen through COVID is really around e-commerce and if I look at India as a market and the size and scale of your country the opportunity is absolutely vast you know you've only got 52% internet penetration and if you think that most of the e-commerce would be fueled by that then the growth of another 100 million users estimated to get you to about 829 million by next year it's an opportunity to if you invest ahead I mean you were saying you have to invest in times of recession I would say if you've got a strong business you absolutely should to grow market share in the short term so I think it's a combination of smartphone penetration smartphone growth you know you're the fastest growing in the top 20 markets around the world you've got 152 million up 8% which is you know staggering growth so our client we need to be educating our clients how to take advantage of that as I say and and through some of the ways in which we've gone to market I think there's there's real opportunity there so looking at e-commerce looking at direct to consumer to ensure that we improve our client's margin because that's how they'll have margin rich relationships keeping consumers central to those conversations talking to consumers to ensure it's a seamless relationship online I think are all absolutely critical and as I say we're helping on any number of those levels I mean we we did a huge piece of work through COVID around the impact of consumers and brands and the impact on consumers and what we're seeing is much more anxiety I'm sure that's that's true in India so I think brands can play a role in in managing that you know brands as a utility to help manage that anxiety we're seeing much more localization you know people being locked down traveling less I think that impacts the type of brands that you have exposure to so much more of a local brand versus global brands potentially so again how do you connect back into a community a local community and I'm always incredibly proud of the work that we do in India from a purpose perspective but I think that takes on even more importance now you know brands connecting locally through purpose I think will be critical moving forward and then the third one is how brands behave in in the home you know homes have taken on a whole different meaning rather than being somewhere where we kind of sleep and eat they have become our workplace they've become our gyms they've become our centres of learning as well as you know for the family and for for our social social bubbles so how do brands behave in that environment I think again is very different to how they've behaved before so how brands behave and support around anxiety around locality and around the home again that would be another area in which we would help support and again digital plays a very key role in many of those areas more so than any other channels because they're there and available you know if you can't go out your house at home becomes less relevant cinema becomes less relevant and I'm sure you know the Bollywood has been disproportionately impacted as Hollywood has as well so you know they're just some and soccer well I know and well we had our first test match so we're feeling very good because we won yesterday so but yeah absolutely sports it's been an incredible run for the English cricket team last two years not to mention my football team Liverpool as well so we're all very good on the sport so you know like Toby I could go on talking to you but we have a panel of CMOs and business leaders waiting just before I hand it over to Naval to kind of moderate that of which your part if you had to make three suggestions or inputs to CMOs or let's put it if you had to make three predictions for future what would those be in the context of marketing services media services and the digital transformation that we are talking from from reviving to reinvention yeah well it's interesting your reinvention because that does talk to you talk about longer term I think we have to manage and balance long term with short term and so therefore I think agility is something that will be you know people talk about new norms I'm not sure they're new I think they're just accelerated or dialed up but certainly agility is one that I think clients agencies need to have more of and as I explained I feel very comfortable with where wave maker are on that front I think the ability to collaborate and to find solutions across multiple partners is going to be increasingly important you know flexibility about how people are working from home working in the office what what focused work is one to one work hands on keyboards versus versus that collaborative work that I just spoke about I think will be different and I think if you if you haven't got a an e-commerce solution if you haven't got a D2C solution then come talk to wave maker and we'll help you get one thank you Toby it's been a pleasure talking to you and I hope to see you sometime on a you know cricket field and maybe watch a match together and some beers after that but then we give you know we do it through video conferencing technology I hand over to Naval my co-founder and a very imminent panel of CMO and business leaders Naval all over to you thanks and thank you for engaging Chris on the station thank you Toby for joining us you didn't have to fly down and Toby that was not my mobile that was my line for mobile I put on silent that I forgot to give in so my apologies I apologize it's fine thank you so much for having me it's very kind thank you thank you Anurag thank you Toby and let me also now welcome our panelists who are in their own right some of India's top CMOs I have with me Ateep Mehta head of marketing for Baiju's which is India's one of the premier unicorns as you all know now owned partially by Disney there is Mira Life on the panel the CMO of Metal Life and Insurance Company there is Ritesh Gosal CMO Chroma Infinity Retail a pure play retail company there's Subha Srinivasan Iyer head of media for Godrej consumer product who we all as all of us know is a very large FMCG company in India and last but not the least Yashdeep Vaishna regional director for Salesforce and as you know Salesforce has a lot of tools that help marketers and we are here to have a conversation about what's happening during COVID time so welcome panelists you can you know switch on your videos if you would like so that the audience can at least see us so let me you know lay the context for the conversation we are going to have and then get to each one of you and ask you a few pointers so from what we have seen in the last four months in COVID what's happened is businesses are disrupted right especially the traditional legacy businesses as we have you know seen and the impact on traditional legacy business is also unequal so an auto company is far more impacted than for example a FMCG company is whereas an e-commerce company is much lesser impacted in an e-education company is even lesser impacted in fact an e-education company is gained because of the lockdown my question to the panelists maybe we can start with Toby Toby you've seen now COVID has been played for the last four months five months and wave maker works with a swath of clients across categories what if you were to put up you know kind of two three buckets what are the biggest challenges you've seen when it comes to communication from clients to consumers well a couple uh first and foremost brands that haven't been true to themselves have failed so authenticity is not new uh but I think it's been compounded by COVID I think everyone uh certainly in the UK work I've seen it all looks it's all been shot on iPhones it's all about you know family I think ultimately there are brands that can play in that space and brands that should play in that space only a client of ours Mondales has been fantastic in that because they've got a brand platform around generosity which lends itself perfectly to that behavior but other brands that have tried to jump into that space have failed because they don't have that uh that genuine reason to play in that space so I think I think having that brand purpose that I spoke about earlier uh is has been central to how people have behaved uh in in in the COVID world right let me hop across to uh Shuba Shuba is uh as I mentioned part of one of the India's largest FMCG companies and Shuba you have a category of products across the entire some of them are very essential daily need products whereas the others are you know in a different bucket and each one of them has a different TG different communication needs so tell us your learnings you know especially in terms of what challenges have you faced what are some of the successes you've seen during COVID times so I think uh first and foremost in my entire career the last four or five months have taught me collectively what you know probably another four years would have never taught me there is a certain way that we are used to you know planning and then like you rightly said the multiple categories and the multiple audience sets that we have we saw all these multiple audience universe completely shaken up in terms of their behavior in terms of the way they were purchasing even within essential categories the way they were purchasing and the way their own physical environments were disturbed now the disturbances that you observed are actually not only physical not only the anxiety and the fear that Anurag spoke about but there is also a real issue in terms of production disruption and supply chains and uh as a company procurement all the processes everything was disrupted right now in this kind of a scenario uh we did one thing which is you know continuously looking out for customer cues so we upped this entire whole consumer understanding segment that really helped us a lot uh the other point was that immediately you know sort of getting our supply chain back to action that is another thing and uh sorry tell us uh when you say you you looked at customer cues uh more closely how did you do that uh okay okay yeah so i think i should have elaborated on that friend we are so used to traditionally doing that customer contact or consumer research in a certain way uh novel uh i think we went uh into this work from home mode by mid march i think by last week of march as an organization we had taken this entire decision of how we would actually meet consumers virtually and we started you know keeping that channel open and subsequently we've completely moved on to connecting with us the consumers online calls video chats groups everything uh you know online and that's a very valuable you know learning uh we were listening to consumers constant very attentively we understood a lot of health cues you know coming our way and uh i would say that if i were to give you the i think the best example to give you would be this whole set of around 12 products a range that we launched for protect uh around the home care around personal care and kitchen you know three segments within brand name protect and 12 products launched in a span of just the last few months you know that's massive so my whole learning has been that today agility matters more than anything else and unlearning and between unlearning and adapting honestly we are living in a current volatility where nobody actually has any time to train and to trust the process and to perfect it there is no scope of that so you have to keep improving being flexible as you learn and you have to adapt and experiment that's the whole you know a sense of how we've seen changes happen protect is an example in the same way we have multiple examples of turning around new communication we've gone and made you know films using consumers the communication part of it so a lot of these uh steps you know we probably would have never done the same way and that's the whole point that today living in the middle of this whole pandemic in the middle of you know the consumer is going through so much of fear and anxiety livelihoods being affected we have a whole basket of essential items which you know primarily address a household an Indian household and when I look at all these categories and I look at all these brands the first point that you know is most important for us as an organization is what is it that we can do to address an immediate need that a consumer faces are there cues that they're either telling us signaling us or can we intently figure out if there are any immediate needs that are going to emerge and irrespective of what you've been following in our you know process are there ways in which we can cut short the entire process come out with something new which is going to address them right I'm going to pick up one of these points with you when I come back to you let me just pass to Meera now Meera you're an interesting category one of my friends was telling me insurance requirement is boom that means I messaged you MetLife is India's largest e-hat platform we allow people to order medicines and deliver them home as well as allow you to book lab diagnostics at home my apologies so medicine demand has gone the same way so that doesn't change change much but tell me at a time when you have consumer attention so focused on you know self-care at the same time care for their family members and what's happening around them their jobs what's happening with colleagues what do what do companies like yours do when you are doing communication because there is always this you know red thin line of going overboard and you know every time I get a sales message from a Parma or a medical company you know a part of me wants to block those messages because you know it's like somebody trying to sell them their services and goods and trying to take advantage of your adversity so for a company like MedLife what would you do during covid times to make sure that one you reach out to your right consumers and two you also don't cross that red line sure so Navan I think two parts to it the first one where you said that how do how do we ensure that you reach out to the right set of customers this wasn't a problem at all as you've seen across India e-commerce and all sale of essential goods on e-commerce has shot up organically right so even without us having to spend marketing dollars demand went up to x to april right and now centered on to a new normal level so getting demand in was never an issue through this entire lockdown it only accelerated the problem was more servicing the demand because no matter what you think you are never you or never have I seen overnight demand spike to 2x without even spending anything right and therefore nobody was prepared and on top of that you had locked on and all the all the associated problems including manpower at that time so I think the first question in terms of how to reach out to the right people my answer is more in terms of saying that how has an organization we decided whom do we want to ensure that we service and retain right because as an e-commerce company you already have a very large base of customers especially medlife medlife has almost more than 10 million customer base now thanks to data and thanks to the kind of digital and you know enhancements that have happened you know exactly what is that set of 100,000 or top 200,000 most valuable customers that you have who not only drive your business revenues but also growth for the future so it was very important to very quickly identify the set and say that come what may despite that the demand has sought and you have cohorts from three years and four years back coming back to you you keep razor sharp focus on this most valuable customer set of yours and ensure that you service them and that's what we did in medlife and coming on to the second part of it in terms of communication and how you don't go overboard I think you know what Shubha said we essentially tailored our communication around to what we heard and listen to our customers right so our customers and in fact we did a survey very quickly in March itself and what customers said March and April first week is one 74 percent said that they were not quite sure of the news and the various information that they were getting around covid 85 percent said that they would like to hear from experts and not from news broadcasters or indeed friends etc about covid and you had a similarly high number of people more than more than some 60 percent saying that they did not quite know what to believe and what not to believe now with respect to covid having gotten this insight from our customers it was very easy given that we have a panel of about a 50 of 1500 doctors around the country we quickly moved to just creating doctor videos and telling people that this is a doctor and doctor the same as believers and obviously brand comes with a lot of trust and it immediately helped move that conversation from just pure play commerce and transaction to more engagement and more what how we could help as an organization and actually stick to our vision of improving health outcomes for people so I think that that was a very quick change that we did in terms of communication given that organically demand was so high and I think it paid off in terms of there being a lot of goodwill of course we had the worst of customer experience but at the same time we also had the best of engagement and in a way from at least the most valuable set of customers a lot of gratitude for having kept them in good health through this entire period. Let me now hop across to Ateeth. Ateeth you are an envious position e-learning demand has gone through the roof you guys can't handle it in times like these and every marketer faces challenges when it comes to communication because the boss always wants more customers so what are the top challenges you faced as a company because for you product demand is not a challenge logistics is again not really a challenge some bandwidth issues here and there but that's not really a big deal so what are the challenges when it comes to you know when you're done the marketers act what are the challenges you faced? Yeah so I think there were like enough and more challenges some of them were known and some of them were not known yeah but the number one challenge which we faced in terms of that what are we going to do as far the lockdown is concerned and specially for kids while an FMCG company launched a protect a medical delivery company launched a lot of engagement and drove sort of a experience with their top set of consumers but for us it was the entire country was on a lockdown and schools were shut so the first thing which we did and it was really really fast track it was in my entire career I have never seen something getting done so fast especially a tech product so from a learning company we also became a teaching company so byjuice is now a learning and a teaching company so the number one what challenge was to ensure that everybody who does not have the means to do online learning while metro cities a grade schools they all started online classes but that might be one or two percent of the total population as for schools are concerned yeah but if you look at mass India most of the schools didn't have the facility to start online education and so the first thing which we did is we started taking life classes so our prominent teachers top teachers India's best teachers came and they started taking sessions exactly the way the sessions are going to happen in school it was a schedule session so for example standard fourth biology on a Thursday at four o'clock then Friday there is a chemistry and the Saturday there is a match so on and so forth so on an average about six to seven sessions were created so it wasn't a challenge but to get this thing going became a huge huge burden because time was running out by the time we realized that we want to do this to setting it up to ensuring the content is ready to ensuring the studios are ready to ensuring that people know about it passing on the communication digitally and getting students to participate was the number one challenge and thankfully we overcame that but apart from that there were a lot of other small small challenges in terms of demand supply you are absolutely right that there has been a surge in demand but we had a huge issue in supply because our product is a physical kit which goes out to you and that kit contains a lot of items one of the biggest items was a tablet where a person goes to the educational videos or courier services and educational courier services was not part of the essential services as far dispatch is concerned as for courier is concerned so there was huge amount of demand huge amount of expectation but we couldn't dispatch our kids but slowly and gradually everything came to a situation wherein we could manage it people who were far off from the center of dispatch they started getting delivery fast we figured out a way we had our own people somehow getting to their houses especially in the big metros small small challenges but I think the biggest challenge was to create something back for the consumers and happy to say that we did it in about three weeks post the long term fantastic I'll come back to you on that yes team Salesforce again a company that works across the board with a large category of clients so if you why don't you give us a gist of you know what has been your experience in the last three four months of having worked with these clients across categories what according to you have if you were to bucket these challenges in say two three areas what would be those two three areas for your clients so so if I was to bucket this into can you hear me well yeah yeah so if I was to bucket this I would largely put it in three buckets so there are people that are investing or using this time to kind of make those investments or decisions to understand as to what the challenges and thereby how can let's say a Salesforce or any of the other enterprise solution help them so there is one set of customers that's still buying the second is somebody who says okay it's COVID let's not talk maybe we talk when things are good and then there is a third category which is you know saying that okay I'm going to do all my research during this time but I won't take a decision now I would you know be ready what up with what I want to buy let's say in a month from now or two months from now but I wouldn't buy right now I would buy when things open up funds come in whatever could be their reason so there are these three types of customers that we're largely seeing but then there is if I break it down by let's say industry segments we are seeing a huge spike in the ed tech okay so likes of you know by Jews and a lot of other people are already you know making the most of this time right I mean there is so much that you can do during this time in terms of not just your brand recall but also customer acquisition so that's predominantly one area where we're seeing a huge spike we've seen a I would say a curve you know when you look at let's say other categories of let's say a manufacturing or a retail or the standard education but largely it's been it's been anyone that's ecom wants to move from an offline to an online so there are customers who are probably about 90% of their sales or revenues are offline and they are now saying that okay I want to move online and you know Meena spoke about you have those 1 million customers and you have these 200,000 which are looking good but how do you make sure that the rest of the 800,000 you are able to kind of nurture them to bring them up to the value chain of somebody who gives you as much ROI as 200,000 so there is that set of people also and there are people who say okay I know my one million people very well how can you help me acquire new customers so it's a mixed back about you guys have been hard because you know naturally offline sales are all grounded to a halt even now in many cities shops have not opened the online retail piece is right is a you know complex matrix it's not easy to deliver put on air conditioners only through online sales so what what have you guys been you know trying to figure out in these last three months both in terms of you know what is the kind of way forward for a company for a brand like you for the next immediate I'm sure sales will come back once everything is back normal but say the next three months and what has been your consumer reach out approach so two three things let me first correct you our stores are open around 130 or 160 stores are open the stores which are open are running at around 15 percent lower sale than last year so it's incorrect to say that businesses are at a standstill in fact what has happened is as soon as you know lockdown started receding we started opening our stores and initially there was a huge pent up demand because a work from home also means you need to be equipped to work from home in smartphones suddenly people wanted a camera a front-facing camera which will do justice to their face you wanted a better quality laptop at home because suddenly household health disappeared you needed a vacuum cleaner dishwasher washing machine a lot of convenience products you were killing so much time at home you needed a television so there was a there was a huge pent up demand starting the second third week of May even now as I said we are running at around 15 percent below last year and actually the problem is supply more than its demand you are at 85 percent for like-to-likes stores yeah like-to-likes stores are at 85 percent of course 30 outstores are not open because of malls not being open and all that but the bigger challenge is supply it's not demand yeah the only category where we and all our competitors got stuck is ACs because you had stocked up before the season started the entire season got washed out virtually even though people would want a second AC in their home because the kid is studying in one home well you know you are working in the next room because of the absence of delivery and installation partners in a lot of cases or you know lockdown and you're not able to deliver the AC there are challenges so that's that's really where the market is coming now to you know the question about engagement so like Toby said at the beginning brand brands need to stick to what they are known for every brand has a rivet from its customers and you should speak that language you can't break out of that that's one second is when people are going through tough times they like hearing a familiar voice you it's like you know wanting to hear from a friend when you are in lockdown so starting somewhere in the beginning of april our social listening we didn't do any research but social listening we picked up a very interesting queue which fits well with chroma chroma as a brand which is you know apart from all the talk of gloom and doom and covid and what it's doing there was this interesting thing of how these skies are clearing up the water in the Ganges is suddenly you know crystal clear you can see the Himalayas from Jalandhar and so on and so forth so we picked on this as a trend because we have been talking about you know responsible consumption for a few years and we built a campaign around this through all of april and the early part of may that's really what we focused on building a digital narrative about you know saying of course this this today will pass everything passes this too shall pass once we come back you know what will the new normal be like will we go back to consuming in the old way or will we be a little more responsible in the way we buy stuff so that's the narrative we built in in terms of engagement and probably because it was you know you know very clean window in which to talk to people lots of people at lots of time this was this has been by far a most successful campaign across all digital platforms so that's on the on the campaign side in terms of the online versus offline thing so for perspective we have had an online presence for years till last year around 90% of people would research the product online before they come to the stores actual sales online was around 3% that that figure of 3% is closer to 15% now like we are having infrastructure problems on the site because the traffic that you enjoy the logistics setup that you have etc all of thing everything is at you know greater than 100% utilization so it's a you know we have to find ways of releasing resources from offline to make them available to serve customers online so that's that's one of the challenges which is going on equally because a lot of people are now turning who are used to buying offline are turning to you know doing the first transactions online what it means is we need to give them a soft landing in the world of online shopping so what we are doing around that is really using our store staff as the as the considered so to speak what we have started on a site is a is a connect to store kind of service where the customer requests a call back somebody from the nearest store calls in and assist him with making the purchase all the way through to making payment by a payment link so that's that's one of the new ways of working that we have figured out of course going forward a lot of such other things will have to be done in order to rebalance the online to offline shopping that we are seeing let me pick you up on this is an interesting point I wanted to take this up later but let me pick you up on this now during normal times you know you do this attribution model you try to figure out where you spend money how did you get the customers in now during covid time that you become very right for two and a half three months you do not know who's you know who's interested so searches were still happening right online searches were on whereas stores were shut and you were also not able to do online delivery because there was a complete lockdown in the country for a good part of six weeks now that things have opened what is the difference you've seen in the attribution energies into online sales as well as offline sales you're doing online marketing what is the difference you've seen pre-covid post you can tell us a little bit first off I've never been a big fan of performance marketing or attribution to my mind performance marketing is actually sales promotion with a different term we work on building the brand building the equity of the brand whether we are using online media or offline media we don't get obsessed over you know tracking one customer forward from a google click through to you know the transaction at the store never have and in fact probably that was the approach we had taken then we should have gone silent across you know the the months of April and May but that's not the way it really works I think we are well ahead of the market in terms of getting the business back and it's I think to do with the fact that we didn't go silent in April May and we kept the engagement going whether it's at a product level or at a brand level Toby what's your view on that let me pick you up on this attribution modeling sorry I would really love to hear him on this since they make it in the agency so they are they are doing a lot of work and I'm sure I mean you can contradict your client that's okay but I think I think I think measurement's important I think understanding effectiveness you know a wave maker we always believe there's a better way to grow our client's business and unless we can prove that we're growing our client's business then I think we're we're failing so however you define measurement against the KPI set that is important to you be that penetration sales share of voice share of market whatever it may be then you need to be able to measure it and and if that means that you need modeling econometrics data I mean I think it's interesting isn't it that we spoke about Mira spoke about MetLife MetLife moving into a services almost remit and I think that's what lots of clients are doing now how can they be of service to the consumer and I think it's a because a direct relationship allows you more access to more data to more tightly understand your consumer to better target and have a conversation with your consumer and if you want to call it sales promotion or customer relationship marketing CRM then so be it but I think any way in which you can have a a better more relevant conversation is a better conversation because it will mean that clients are less consumers are less or consumers are more tied to brand because they're getting more relevant messaging so the services is interesting but as I say I think ensuring that you have relevant messaging to a consumer and you track and you measure that to prove it's effective or not or not and you change accordingly are hugely important but yeah it's depends on as I say the KPIs that you're being judged against and the business ultimately is being judged against and the stakeholder returns that you're being judged against so tell me are there brands today who risk getting too much into detailing or attribution modeling and letting go of the basic tenants of old-fashioned brand building are a lot of us now chasing performance marketing and you know chasing the entire consumer journey and not thinking about as you said you know being authentic being real uh making building a brand for the long term and focusing too much on you know what did I do in these 30 days I see I see less of it in India I mean India I think you probably lead the world in purpose driven marketing which tends to be longer term but I don't think the two are I don't think it's as binary I think the two are inextricably linked and as I said if you uh you you talk about the supply chain I think that was a conversation at the beginning and the challenges around the supply chain and binge acquisitions when everyone went into lockdown you see everyone's results in Q1 you know clients of ours Mondales alone really strong results quarterly results everyone has to report their results to the streets to the city on a quarterly basis now if you say but don't worry we're long-term brand building we'll be back next year the CMO uh and you have many uh on on the panel you know they won't be around so I think you absolutely have to get the balance right and that's what I said to Anna Rag at the beginning is the balance between short term and long term and the sustainability of those sales of good sales in the short term that fuel long-term brand success and the two as I say it's not binary the two are inextricably linked yes let me come to you I see you smiling away to glory what do you have to say so I have a different view and uh I usually land up giving controversial views almost everywhere uh but I'll still share some of the experiences as to why uh you know I I think in that direction so there is uh I agree there is a set of people that think that okay this is not important I want to go with my set of values and what I think uh you know we want to build as a brand yes that exists and there is no harm there is no problem in doing that but at the same time I think uh there is also uh you know the it's like this that I I I have a team of probably about say 20 25 people right now when I talk to each of them all of these 25 are going to think differently the same way if you're talking to 100,000 or 200,000 people who are outside as your consumers each of them is going to be very very different and each of these guys are unique unique in terms of interest unique in terms of what they want to buy unique in terms of the websites that they're coming from going to time that they spend so on so forth so it's important that you get your message out and you know in in the way you want to do it but it's also important that it gets communicated if I'm talking to you and you're not listening then it's really not worth it right I mean there's no point in me saying something so it's important to personalize the communication it could be in line with what you think is your brand's ethos or you know the the positioning that you have but it's very important to make sure that the message is across and that's that's what communication is all about so that's one part one part of it the second part of it is you know unless you measure you really don't know what's happening with your with your spends there are a lot of people who so what we do as sales forces we basically help brands and customers like you to basically understand as to who's doing what at what stage of their buying cycle or then you know what we call as the customer journey so which is you could be at a stage of you know where you're searching for a brand to to bring it to you know we selling that to you are we servicing you the overall customer journey and it's important for you to understand where is the bank for the buck because that's where you will actually make that investment again so we kind of go a little deeper we go in terms of going against you know we kind of get to a customer and say that okay you're doing let's say seven channels of digital marketing let's say the traditional channels are let's say an email SNS XYZ but are you seeing a better ROI on let's say a Google ads versus a Facebook versus let's say are you able to you know do you think it's better to spend on let's say an Insta depending on where your consumers are so the we basically get to a level of telling you that okay this is the dollar you spent on this particular platform or this channel and this is the kind of ROI that you're seeing out of it so you might as well spend or move that spend from one channel to the other channel and that's a lot of people you know say that okay this all looks good looks good on a paper or on a slide and you know maybe we'll do this as phase two or phase three or phase four but there are a lot of people who actually implemented things like this and now they've gone back or rather they've come back saying okay I do this for one division of mine I want to now do this for you know the other divisions that we have in the company so we're again seeing you know both sides of it so I think in us in summary it's it's great to go by what you think you as in you know the positioning that you want to have for your brand but as long as it's communicated to the buyer because otherwise there is no point in you thinking that okay this is my brand and this is what this is where I should be spending and you know this is what I should be talking about because the consumer doesn't care and the second side of it is that unless you are able to figure out where's your spend going and what's the kind of money you're making through it you will not spend. No, can I just pick up on the point. I agree with most of that I don't agree looking at things necessarily by channel I think you need to look at the integrated communications system because individuals channels may be fueling other areas something we've done about 1.2 million individual client journeys we build we've got a global approach which looks at trigger phases and priming phases which ensures that we understand through the lens of a consumer versus a channel how to react so I agree with most of it but I think you have to look at an integrated communication solution not necessarily just by channel. Shubha let me come to you with all the you know various categories of things you're doing how do you crack the personalization piece especially in times like these when you're saying you in three months you launch well new you know products what's the secret sauce. So going back to basically what he started doing as lockdown set in I think one of the agility has always been one of the most critical factors of you know that we've always looked at agility as a very important piece of the work that we do with the way we work now and like I told you earlier this whole piece of listening in to consumer than the change in the way that they were prioritizing what gets into the house what is most essential in fact that piece was critical for us in turning around you know these 12 launches that I talked about under the protect umbrella apart from that like I said we've actually challenged every motion in terms of how we work you know the speed at which we were the way that see wonders that saying that I'll go by all the established SOP and our ways of working and the systems that we always worked the way that we were till now now each of us all of us across the team we've seen that we've sort of looked at the challenge in front of us we've looked that all of us have been totally engaged we have a fairly large team we've been totally engaged in listening to conversations taking feedback and this is more of a you know huge amount of collaboration that's actually behind this launch that I'm talking about but I think also most importantly we were just talking about a lot of data right now data and measurement well that's another very important piece one is launching the second is you know there was a simultaneous testing and feedback that is actually being taken in from consumer that's also going to be as we go speed of testing speed of improvising that's going to be a very vital component for us as we proceed and the customization piece that you're talking about now as you know digital is where you can customize a lot of communication on your mass media options specifically linear TV it's not really possible but in between there was this phase you know just as we entered lockdown you know all shoots were stopped and in fact shoots have just resumed right we've actually used a lot of user-generated communication in these months of April and May specifically a lot of engaging user-generated communication involving consumers that's one part you know to drive the point to resonate a lot and that's really sort of for work well for us coming to the specifics as we continue further now that shoots have resumed we are back to shooting TVC's the same old and own way I'm sure there is going to be a schematic communication which is going to continue but our window of how we are going to view it you know there is I don't think we are going to continue with these films now running for two three years without being you know questioned because today we live in a sort of six six months to six months time frame so if required we are ready to adapt and turn out new communication we are equipped to turn around communication in a much faster way you also sort of identified ways in which we can work around along with our partners and I also have to say this specifically that a great amount of collaboration and you know shift in the way we work across our partners and today we are pretty confident that we turn around any kind of customized communication that we require in much shorter spans of time. Meera if I come back to you what's your sense again what you say is across categories across point price points so when you look at the personalization piece how does it work for you especially during a time like this when everything is locked down and things are challenging how do you handle the personalization piece? The personalization is possible where you are able to target individually and obviously that that happens in two areas one is of one is of course digital marketing and the other one is in cases like medlife where we have our own app and our own website and you have people registered and with with a purchase history obviously a lot of personalization is possible over there so and personalization can't or to be a little realistic and to be a little more commonsensical personalization is more about segmentation right so you are able to segment customers into meaningful clusters and segments then you decide what you can do best in terms of personalizing your message into them so in a in a category like ours the most or the most inherent classification is based on patient clusters so you have diabetic patients versus heart patients versus thyroid patients versus respiratory care patients etc so a diabetic patient is more interested in figuring out what is the impact of this pandemic on them and how is it different as compared to a non-diabetic right so similarly you know when you have first or you can have personalization even bases language groups right so we have we we actually launched during this period and of course development had started much before the pandemic got announced but in March we launched our vernacular app with hindi as the first language that we gave a choice to our customers and what a difference it made in terms of you know language personalization almost 55 percent of our orders outside of the metro suddenly came from the hindi app and not the english app right so personalization can be at various levels but either on digital as a medium or if you have your own platform over there for customers and that way it is really about meaningful segmentation into some large clusters one on one is simply you know more utopian as a thought tell me you know in many cases personalization and contextualization go hand in hand and for a category like yours contextualization must be tough because you know as I said earlier it is easy to identify but again there's a danger of crossing the line right when you're talking about contextualization for things like medicines right so how do you find that balance I actually tend to disagree contextualization when it and see health is such a personal thing and given that the base of med life is predominantly a chronic base of patients who buy medicines every month like they buy groceries right so given that contextualization actually helps make customers feel even more engaged with you and love you even more for the fact that you are giving them very relevant information right because like I told you and this is not particular to just covid if you look at the overall trust in what people come across either on you know some social media ball or on whatsapp as a forward the level of trust is very low and there's always a question mark whether this is fake or this is genuine right and given this that in general information and information around health also suffers from that kind of paranoia of it being fake or genuine to be able to contextualize health information and health related information to people basis the conditions that they suffer from actually makes for a wonderful way to engage as well as retain them so it's actually the opposite right Ateeth you know you deal with a category especially the younger ones children where you know communication has a lot of challenges how do you communicate how much do you communicate how much commercialization do you want to bring into the entire space so again personalization and contextualization become like very difficult balls to juggle what are the what are the things that you keep in mind when you when you go to your you know young customers and 12 year olds are not you know sort of young but younger lot where part of the communication is to the parent and the rest is to the child itself what are how do you dabble these two pieces you're on mute Ateeth you'll have to unmute yourself yeah so it's an ongoing challenge which has been there for a long period of time wherein your customer base and your consumer base is different so now with the type of product range which we have which caters from a three-year-old going up to a 16-year-old lot of personalization needs to happen and as Meera was saying that it's all about creating your cohorts or your segmentation whether it can be on use case study it can be on market prioritization it can be on language it can be also on grade so we do a lot of amount of data and we do a lot of amount of understanding in terms of that what is the consumer is requiring and create a sort of a cohort. Parallel the kid is still not going to swipe the card to buy the product it is going to be the parent so a generic conversation as an air cover has to happen which is your typical reach frequency based advertising wherein the parents is aware of the product while the communication is designed in such a way especially on a digital platform that it is very very customized and personalized and then so that's that's on the personalization part and contextually a lot of things we try to do contextually we believe that we are doing a great job but more often than not we become very tactical on that matter so it's very important to also understand that if you're doing something which is contextual which is to the time it needs to be not a one-off thing but it's something which we can sustain and it rolls back into your overall strategy approach and it's it's still varying the lens of a personalization so it's a very tricky situation it's a challenging situation but the advantage which we have is that we are at start we are a tech company and it's an edu tech company so there's a lot of tech and a lot of support happening in terms of understanding the data finding out what the consumers want so over a period of time as experience comes in as more and more consumers come in and more and more cohorts gets created which are then now repeat users and a lot of other interaction it becomes very clear that these are four or five things which one needs to do and if you do that right and if you do it consistently more often than not your business objective and your marketing objective gets done okay so we have five minutes I want to do one last round of questions before I take a couple of audience questions you know innovation in our business is a often used abuse term right and last three four months I've been tough for businesses on the personal front but I wanted to ask each one of you if there is something truly innovative that you've noticed it could be your brand you've done something or noticed outside for the sake of our audience and our listeners I'd like to know from you because you guys handle as I said brands across categories and you are in a position where you also get exposed to a lot of work other companies are doing so I think let me start with you something truly innovative you've seen in the last three months or you have done that that you think has covid specifically has pushed you into doing it which might not have happened otherwise no as I said we were called by juice the learning app while learning remains learning is what you are you're learning it from a pre-recorded academics content and because of the situation we started teaching and teaching is life classes so that was one big innovation but I think all edutic players did that everybody had the resources they had the bandwidth and they had the ecosystem to create that so I would not say that's an innovation that was the need of the hour everybody was very flexible very agile very nimble footed to create something which is teaching which is helping the larger student ecosystem but something which really came to my notice is all the especially in the event space now we all know what has happened on to those events but for example exchange for media you guys are now getting people every second day and having a conversation which probably was not happening in terms of frequency so now had not been the situation you would have continued meeting in a five star hotel having this conversation of over a cup of coffee but we are doing it more often more inputs are coming in from like-minded people from like-minded people from the industry so this I think is a great innovation in terms of getting more and more connects happening compared to a physical world so I think this is an innovation the FMCG category with launching whether it is Leavers whether it is Godrej whether it is Mariko whether it is somebody else all the health protection conversations which are happening across the board in terms of what you need to do the personalization happening coming in from specialist coming from insurance guys coming in from a person like a med life in terms of it's coming from a doctor so coming from an authority with a lot of credibility I think it's a great innovation in terms of driving it might not be an award-winning thing but it's creating a huge social impact perfect I think very good examples Toby again you have a you know helicopter level view as well as a you know ground level view so tell us a couple of things that you know that is interesting well one that I think came to the fore that wasn't actually born out of COVID is the work that Loreal are doing with Modi face which is an augmented reality business they bought two years ago but given the amount of people at home I don't know about anyone who's got kids but mine seemed to have various different coloured hair for most of the week and I think being able to interact and again it comes back to that utility Loreal getting into being a you know services business so I thought that was a great piece of work I think the work that we did as WPP as wave maker for the World Health Organization we helped in real time through pro bono we generated circa 50 million dollars worth of free advertising across multiple flat platforms across multiple markets and then we're feeding that back into our creative partners to build content for for the available space to get the messaging out about washing hands about staying home as I say you know we're talking about experts and having that that understanding that if it's coming from an expert people believe it and trust it and there's no no better expert than the World Health Organization so we're normally proud of the work that's ended on that. Perfect Meera what's your take? So I think in terms of innovation and I'm not going to really restrict myself to marketing the point is that through given the fact that industry and industrial output and production has been disrupted for all physical goods and services managing supply chain has been one of the most critical challenges through this entire period and continues to be so and here is where I think one innovation that my life did and fairly quickly and I'm glad we did it in in flat two to three weeks time was really introducing the concept of substitution on the app which means that if you need paracetamol if if you're searching for crocin and crocin is not there in stock to offer the customer calphal or a dolo instead which is also the same composition and tell the customer that take this this will come to you immediately instead of crocin which is currently out of stock right so I think innovation to really manage the difficulties that we were facing in supplies and supply chain side helped us a lot in terms of ensuring that almost 20 percent of the orders which otherwise would have basically not happened or would not have converted on the platform because of stock availability issues managed coming our way and we were able to service customers and take care of their health requirements and issues at that point in time. Fantastic Ritesh sorry I'm just rushing through because we are out of time and I want to take a couple of audience questions so I think this has been a time when human ingenuity has really been you know brought to the fore I think a lot of people have done amazing stuff starting with the you know the the vegetable wallahs from nasiq and the mango guys from you know aliba finding a way to you know reach bamboo with their stuff is great innovation for chroma I think the simple thing of creating a connector store facility with a you know an appointment booking facility on the side has been a fantastic innovation because it's allowed people to shop from home allowed me to manage the social distancing firms in my store but the biggest innovation which I think is a great signal to the entire world that we are heading to coming back to normal is the you know the England versus West Indies series the way it's been conducted I think how they have brought it together kept the joy of the game as much as possible to the extent of you know playing an audience noise as the game progresses I think it's amazing thinking yeah I mean I was watching f1 as well as offered this weekend and you know thank god live sporting action is back that's yeah comes back brilliant so yes Deep again a lot of categories deal with what are the interesting things you've seen that seems to one of the interesting things that we've seen is you know it's a hotel chain one of the five star brands in India what they've done is just to make sure that the team is not impacted in these times when people are not dining there they basically pick up food orders okay through an app and deliver it to a customer who basically wants to have something off that particular hotel that's one and the other one that I've seen is where we've been able to move something that was completely offline which is a retail store into an in giving them a completely online experience this is across not just the standard channels but like to be mentioned which is across the sales service in marketing so these are two that I think have been some good work that we've done in the last four months fantastic last word Shubha you need to unmute we can't hear you yeah I was in view so two examples that I'll quickly talk protect so far was a brand which was around hand hygiene hell we competed more with you know the hand wash category now bringing that and today integrating that into an entire range which talks about health the overall health of family that's one home example but I think all the examples that you know all the panelists spoke about there are actually much many more examples in so much of innovation all around us but as a human you know what really touches the chord for me is that you know health and hygiene which have been so paramount to human species is a survival in these four months the amount of time and the amount of heightened sense of knowledge that collectively the world has sort of gathered and today the way people pay so much attention and are so responsive to any messaging on health and paying so much of attention to their own health to their own lives that part to me is the most important part you know and the example in fact for me somebody spoke of you just spoke of England, West Indies series for me the surreal moment was when I saw the English Premier League and you know it was just unbelievable at that point it hit that you know events are back sports is back life sport in his back so I think three moments that I can share with you fantastic I have a lot of audience questions let me just take a couple of them since we are out of time so the first is I'll direct it to Shubha and Ritesh how are you all the great Indian festive celebration consumption story this year it's an interesting talks about the overall economy what do you think will happen between August and December so can I take that thank you I think we've seen sort of some positive you know signals through the last week of June and July and we are pretty positive and hopeful that things are going to pick up this festive definitely it's not going to be as great as you know it used to be it's going to be a little muted but compared to what we've gone through in the last four five months certainly looks like hope pretty hopeful for us but then having said that does not mean that we will have to be very very sort of be very prudent we'll have to be very clear about you know focusing on efficiencies or measurements these are continuously going to be important for us as well yeah for me I think see electronics is in okay and it's not going to change very rapidly people in fact at the larger level homes are far more important than they have been in a long time festive the money goes into April it goes into jewelry it goes into gifting and it goes into the home I think there will be a rebalancing of spends this festive focusing on anything that goes into the home and and electronics will be part of it the challenge I foresee is on the supply chain part because more and more as we move forward components are a problem and there is also the China issue and electronics is a huge dependence on China if not for the finished product definitely for components so supply side there I see lots of challenges on the demand side not so much Toby what's the sense you get from your India colleagues so last three months I've been really tough for the Indian ecosystem do they see significant pickup in the festive season yes I smile only because I said to Anna Rag at the beginning how optimistic you are as as a country and I think the forecast from our team just replicate that but I I there's definitely upside you know you look at the I always look at new business as a barometer for how lively the the market is and you can really see now a lot of pitches coming to the fore a lot of new business opportunities so I think if that's anything to go by then we should we should see a good a good back half of the year I don't think it's going to be as strong as maybe some of my colleagues think but certainly returning to growth in Q3 you know is it is it's good growth is good at the moment right you know we've been back we estimate in India circa 20 plus percent so any sort of growth in Q3 Q4 is going to be good so I think single digits if we could get high so I'd be I'd be very happy but no cricket world cup I think will impact if that goes long so yes Diwali yes festivals but I think a lot of money was riding on the on the cricket world cup so impacted anyway that comes back next year olympics in the cricket world cup everything's next year more sport than you can and from a low base this year we grow even higher next year so look at the bottom side you know next year is going to be 30 40 percent growth last question now what do you think will be the impact of covid on the outdoor media business so there is obviously a short term impact it's it's quite steep significant but do you think going forward say 12 months out if you were to look at it would it have changed the business fundamentally in any way me well I think I think what covid's done as I said is it's fueled innovation and I think those outdoor media owners that innovate the digitize will come out incredibly strong I think those that don't will struggle I mean I think outdoor will come out a bit stronger than print I know it's a relatively strong media in in India but I think if I look around the world I think covid really really will impact print and and decimate that but I don't think I don't think outdoor needs to worry I think if it can digitize it can personalize its messaging or or what I would call relevance at scale uh and and become inextricable retail there's a bright future for outdoor fantastic thank you Tony we are out of time so I'll uh we'll have to end it here thank you Tony for joining us Mira Ritesh Atit Shubha and Yastip thank you for taking time out and for sharing valuable insights thank you to Salesforce for having let us organize this till next time stay safe and hope to see you soon for another webinar thank you till