 What does it take today to keep a company and its brand at the top? Everybody wants to be at the top? What does it really take? A digital industrial revolution is unfolding all around us. What it takes to establish a leading brand is being transformed as well. Years of success could hinge on your company's ability to embrace the new paradigm. But is your brand future-proof? To discuss more future-proofing brands and need for a playbook for the connected era, please welcome our session chair, Anitha Nayar, COO, media and communications, Patanjali Ayurveda. And our esteemed panelists, we have Aakash Tapse, senior vice president, digital marketing, AU Small Finance Bank, we have Chanpreet Arora, business head of Woot, Viacom 80 Digital Ventures, we have Charu Malhotra Bhatia, vice president, marketing, Brillwack, limited the home of the iconic brand Hindwaev. That's Briloka. I'm sorry? That's Briloka. Briloka, my bad. I'm so sorry. The vice president of marketing, Briloka, limited the home of iconic brand Hindwaev. We have Manika Sharma, head of marketing, Firefox, Viac and Siddharth Dabade, managing director, India and the SARS region of MIQ. Over to you, Ms. Nayar. Thank you so much. Thanks for the introductions. It's an absolute honor to be part of such an esteemed panel. I'm not going to moderate and chair, but I'll try my level best to match up to the standards of all the stalwarts in this session. So without further ado, let's just get on with the fact that are we ready for future-proofing brands, given the dynamic, digital and ever-transforming environment. And we've all gone through the questions and a few prior discussions. The perspective is that, how will we future-proof brands when the environment in which the brands are operating is constantly changing. And if we future-proof today, we will maybe need to get to future-proofing in another week, another month, maybe a few minutes, few hours, few days, depending on the way the digital transformation is happening and the technological revolution, if my say, on which the digital transformation is hinged, is kind of evolving every day. I mean, you look at how iPhone is coming out with models every year or every six months or so, and then you feel that the one in your hand probably is redundant. So there is, how can you write that playbook when the era is constantly changing? So just over to the panelists and let me start with Charu, given that all of us are from very, very different product categories. Charu, what in your perspective is the fact that are we, will we be in a position to really future-proof our brands going forward? Or especially, and it'll be nice to really give examples from your categories because your audience is to hear as to, how does a bicycle react vis-a-vis a Hindu wear or vis-a-vis a woot or vis-a-vis the AU banking and of course, Siddhartha was the connector. Sure, I'm audible. I lost you in between. Yeah. Great. So thank you. Thank you for getting it started with me and I'm happy to be here sharing the platform with all others and eager to hear everybody's viewpoints. Well, as you very rightly said, it's probably not possible to kind of 100% future-proof your brand in the so-called evolution that we've seen over the last couple of years, more so in the last one and a half years when everybody, all businesses, individuals were forced to kind of swap to digital, I mean, something which a transformation that could have taken years, I mean, we took a couple of weeks to kind of get there. So yeah, for marketers, this definitely means rethinking how we connect with consumers. We might be able to predict a couple of strategies, but then we will have to keep continuously adapting to what future brings to us in our faces. Historically, consumers have had very basic expectations, but now when we see they want more proactive services, they want more personalized interactions, they want connected experiences all through the purchase journey. And more than ever, definitely data analytics will play a very, very crucial role, not only to track these consumer preferences across their journey at a very, very granular level, but also enabling a very rapid response to opportunities from the brands. And clearly a very, very strong emphasis to e-commerce and other social media channels. Now, when I come to Hindware, I'm sure all of us will agree, bath spaces and bathrooms were not a very high involvement category up till a decade back. And now with, more so with people staying at home, home spaces and bath spaces have acquired a new meaning altogether. I mean, we want to be highly involved with the way we do up our spaces, bath spaces, our homes in general. And that's why customers here also, we've observed this over the last couple of years that customers expect a very connected journey all through the purchase journey. So hence for us, what has been working in our favor is a digital way of working. So while it is a very distribution-led industry, we have more than 400 brand stores, so it's a brick-and-mortar retail that works strongly for us with very loyal trade partners in the industry. But then it's become so very important now to connect the customers through a digital way where 90%, I mean, we did a research some months back and we observed that 90% of the researchers, the searches are happening online. And even the decision-making is happening online. And when does the customer actually step out of the house, that's in the final purchase leg when he wants to buy the product. And that's where my brick-and-mortar store needs to be connected to the digital world. So right from social media presence to e-catalogs that we have where the consumers can see, browse the products at the click of a button, to choosing the best products to getting quotes from the dealers, again, using e-catalogs to then finally going to a store and then picking it up maybe for that extra level of conviction that it brings to them is something that we've been exploring and working on. And that's been working fine for us as on date. Another example could be that we've, I mean, this industry really, really both saw a good after-sales service that the consumer would seek from the brand. And we have just developed a dedicated app apart from the helpline number because customer today needs various avenues to reach out to the brand. So that's another thing that's probably working fine and going forward, all these services, marketing, all these platforms will have to be interconnected for an integrated platform. So that's what we are also exploring, we're working. We'll have to explore technologies which allow a very unified workflow solution which will kind of be able to switch seamlessly from a WhatsApp to a Facebook or a mail. And that technology at Hindware, I mean, that should allow us to find the customer more than anything else and allow for a very quick response and that's what the consumer expects right now. And he doesn't care what department he sends a mail at. For example, if he sends a complaint on a social media post, he wants the service department to respond ASAP to him. He wants an answer and he wants it fast. So integrating such platforms, specifically services and marketing is something that we're looking at strongly. And I think that's, that could be one of the ways where we will, I mean, we will be probably able to state that we have future proof for the next couple of years in some way. That's interesting, Shahruh, moving from, talking about fidgeting and moving from brick and mortar stores and now on to really money that you are taking through. I don't remember visiting a bank in years now, Akshay. So what are we, and I saw your latest ads with Kiara Advani and Amir Khan to be telling us more about whatever offerings are there. As far as your bank is concerned. So what is banking, I think as an industry needs a lot of security and consistency. So what are your views on, you know, future proofing the banking and investment industry. Thanks. Thanks, I think. So, first of all, thank you for recognizing or at least acknowledging the efforts we have been trying to put across with the new latest campaign of the U Bank. But I think if I have to come to the question, the basic premise of future proofing makes you realize do you even know the future. You can prove it when you know the future. And I think in the last one and a half, two years, probably before that only all the brands and marketing especially started understanding that understanding future is our decoding future. I think it's next to impossible. So when it now starts coming on to how banking has been reacting, so banking has been actually at the forefront of driving digital transformation. We have an overall all the services, all the products have been getting into that zone far before we face the entire pandemic about a year, a year and a half back. But then, obviously, in the last couple of years, things have got fast enough quite quite quite well. Some things which we have been showing across like video banking, some things like opening accounts at your, at your, from the convenience of your home. All of this has been also possible because I think regulators also played an important role on Vanessa regulator RBI in this case has played an important role of adapting it to it because obviously banking is a very regulated sort of industry to be in. And I mean, not only the brands with the regulators playing that role also helps in basically building the entire ecosystem. I think that has geared up and I think all the banks for that matter have started thinking or started going in that direction from bank standpoint, I think you rightly mentioned and that data or data confidentiality is an important piece. When you mentioned everything is, I mean when you're going in future when you're trying to create more and more databases when you're trying to know your customers more than probably what he or she knows about themselves. I think confidentiality, security, and probably convenience, if you play this very well in a good equation, I think you can create a proper amount of trust within the customer's mind. If you're able to crack that equation well, I think your brand can as a banking at least can move far ahead. So I think as I said, future proofing is only possible when you know the future, and which seems to be very difficult as of right now. Yeah, I agree with you nobody knows the future nobody knew what was going to happen what happened to us. Almost two years back. Yeah, and life is very, very unpredictable but then all of us have to continue to survive right. So one thing that we learned in this very unpredictable future was are latching on to entertainment quite a bit. Yeah, so my question, Janpreet you're smiling I know comes to you is the fact that you being, you know, they had a business head of an IT channel which is boot. You know, what is it that you think effective and in your category to proofing you think you can, because to my mind probably, you know, we all know that the consumers choices are really really changing. And today, you know, we're all talking as brands, but are we really looking at what consumers want. I mean, everything rotates around the consumers, but you know, we are I think today as brands are becoming even more answerable to consumers. So from an entertainment perspective where content is something that sailed us through the pandemic. Yeah, what do you think is, you know, as maybe root or stroke OTT is the future proofing that you guys are looking at, or can you my my life my job and my career depends on it so I hope we can, and I hope on the other side of it we come across come out as disruptors instead of disrupted, you know, which is also a very high probability that you have career. But I'd like to start with me thank you so much Anita for sharing this session can be more exciting this diversity in the panel. And I'm saying this with some responsibility that not because I come from the world of entertainment, but culture drives strategy culture drives brand building and I think your purpose of existence has now become a cultural preg rather than a an emotional need that we are serving for consumers in this very disintegrated world where insecurities and unpredictability is very high, rather than selling a utility. To be honest with you when you mentioned Apple iPhone you're not buying the phone you buy status right when I sell a service for food, I actually am selling an escape to my consumers, and I need to acknowledge that the other big acknowledgement that we have as a brand is that it is impossible for me to reach a mass number of consumers at one go like you know 15 years ago even five years ago, you know you you'd consider newspaper, television, hoarding and most it's no longer true people aren't stepping out of the house people are in subscribe service environments. So what is that new new medium through which we can communicate with our consumers and to us in our playbook being true to the platform session agenda today, there are three things that we've discovered makes sense to us. One is our social media engagement across platforms, how we engage with every consumer matters, I acknowledge today that I am competing with Brad Pitt. I'm competing with a new service called Vice BBC, my mother's cat videos and my own content when I'm in your social media feed. Do I have a personality, a point of view, my ability to connect with you in those three seconds that matters. And you know the content that goes on to the short form video app in the tier two tier three towns is very different content from what goes on to Facebook to Instagram to a Twitter so that is one big change in strategy that's coming to us. The second for us, this is something that we do for our brands, who partner with us and for ourselves is becoming contextual. We have stopped looking at our consumers as a demographic audience units, and we have started looking at them in context of their online and offline behavior. So we actually work with cohorts and we have seen that contextual marketing content integrations are being contextual to a community is actually very effective with us. At least in our business being contextual like if I'm talking to a lady called Rhea and I know that she's an LGBTQ activist. I need to acknowledge that not just in my social media but the content that I serve to her and how my brand engages with her sensitively through the content and the third is personalization. We are a premium platform, we have first party logged in data. We like Akshay said we have to be very conscious of the data that we take a from a security point of view, but we also need to use it to make it a more stress free experience. 80% of consumers in India, whether it is whether they are radio listeners or TV watchers, they just want passive programming whether we like it or not even in VOD they want passive programming. And so it is our duty to become more relevant and personalized. I think these are the three big things that matter to us. Yeah, so interesting I am with you on the fact that you know we need to be contextual and you know if a brand ceases to be relevant to its audiences there is no point. Yeah, and also I think very importantly understanding of our audiences as to you know online offline is in our minds but when you when you yourself as an audience, you no longer say that oh I'm watching TV. So it is offline and I'm watching, you know, something on Facebook and that's online. So that also as marketers is something that we created the divide in our mind. So I think what is important is to really look at the customer, you know what is it that the customer wants how is the customer behavior, those insights into into consumer behavior or customer behavior are important, which really is makes is the basic pillar for, you know, asked to really dwell on. So, I'm sorry, I'll come to you last because you are the connector in the whole process. So over to you Manika very interesting category of Firefox and just before the pandemic or not really before but just before the second wave it. My daughter wanted to you know desperately buy a Firefox so I went and bought her one. Yeah, so the connect with the brand happened there at the brick and motor store. Yes, where I was. And honestly, I did not check anything digitally as far as Firefox is concerned, but just went to a Firefox distributor close by and went and just saw touch feel a bit of a run and they said yeah this is what she wanted to buy. So what according to you when we are talking about the entire era of digitization. Yeah, is is a is a category like yours, looking at from a future profile perspective. Yeah, thanks Anita, thanks I'm glad you have a Firefox. So and you know first of all, really happy to be part of this panel and get to hear diverse views on such an interesting topic. Honestly, a very relevant topic for these times. And I, you know, you spoke about the distinction we always made with offline and online. So I think in order to be future proof if at all we can attempt at being future proof is to actually break the mental models that you know that work for centuries. So the traditional idea and funnel approach doesn't work anymore, you know, consumers generally spoke about consumers being, you know, always connected and always consuming content. So how do you really break that clutter how do you make become relevant for consumers I think that's the challenge that brands face. You know, obviously last few years digitization has revolutionized consumer journeys. But now the pandemic has been another inflection point where you know the pace at which consumer expectations have transformed during the pandemic, you know it's about it's bound to have long term impact. As a brand, definitely you know we've invested in a complete digital transformation, where we are not looking at media or we're not looking at consumer interaction in silos, we're trying to map the consumers journey with the brand. You know, end to end. I think that is the key. So not looking at different touch points in isolation. So let's say for a social media handle to a physical retail store to the events that we do. Normally, traditionally, you know everything was approached at in a very disintegrated manner and every there was a, there's a media KPI that you assign to a particular touch point. I think that doesn't work anymore. So you need to. And in order for us to become relevant for the consumers it's important to understand where exactly is the customer with the interaction with the brand. So, I think that would be the key to future growth yourself, so to say. So for us, for example, even post purchase, it is important to create those interactions to encourage and enable product use for five walks. We want to create a culture of biking cycling in India. And therefore it has to go beyond what product purchase because a lot of consumers, especially during pandemic pick up a bicycle, but never actually got to ride it. You know, it's been lying there. So as a brand, the owners to not only sell the product but also ensure that and engage customers for usage of the product is important. And therefore, you know, we do a lot of events. We started a virtual events, anything which enables a customer to use the product more and more facilitates that consumption. So I think that is how and that's the relevance that you create. So you become part of the brand's life. It's not about, you know, you sell a particular product and then you're out. You become a part of consumers' lives so that they keep coming back to you. And that's how the brand advocacy also builds. And, you know, one thing that I would like to say is that while a lot has changed, but one thing that I think will always remain is the purpose, you know, the champion spoke about every brand needs to have a purpose. Whatever you do, you remain true to that purpose. As long as you have that as the goalpost, everything else of course is extremely volatile and ever changing. Sure. Completely with you, Manika. So what I'm hearing is a lot of personalization, customization, relevance, contextual, you know, obviously consumer journey, various data points, security, you know, and of course, the purpose or benefit in the brand benefit which comes to a person. So we have got so many dots, Siddharth. How do you think in your, you know, scheme of things because you are, you know, from not really a brand category, so to say, but a connector of brand and audiences. So what in your perspective is this attempt to future proof leading to? Yeah, yeah, I think so, you know, I agree with all the points and the first priority for a brand is to kind of establish itself and that's where a good connect with consumer, good understanding of the consumer really matters. And then from there, how do you kind of track the changes in the consumer behavior, consumer expectations and how do you probably keep ahead of it as well, those things really matter. And I think there are three more points I will just add and, you know, I'm also coming from tech data and platform perspective. So one is definitely how can a brand create a ecosystem where there are a lot of dots getting connected in terms of, you know, you have a lot of collaborators in your industry with you basically, right. And that, for example, if I just take tech platform, which is like Amazon, right, so the way tech platforms have always been successful is by creating an ecosystem where there are a lot of developer partners and they are developing a lot of stuff on top of that and hence there's an entire ecosystem which is getting generated. And so to speak, you are not only, you're not only created a brand but you are also kind of creating a disruption instead of being disrupted you are the disruption basically and that's where not only you are being with the future but you are actually able to define the future so that is the point number one. Right, the second point is that diversification is very, very critical it's not always possible to create a platform like that but then if you are well diversified and I will give a simple example here again. We will have in couple of years time cookie less paradigm coming in. So are you as a brand dependent on your digital channels with cookies and how much are you dependent on and then what are the other, you know, like device ideas and other channels which are developing which will help you and then cookie less paradigm actually comes in you can rely on other channels to still have a good consumer understanding and and your business is almost non effect not affected because of this change in paradigm right so that is the second point. So diversification definitely helps and again, you know, we have a data lake which has 700 million consumers data in India both online and offline. And the way we have looked at it is that yes there is a portion of data which is basis cookies, but 80% of our data is based on other, you know, channels like device IDs, then contextual signals, other channels which are not dependent cookies like digital lot of home connected TV and so on. So from that perspective, yes, 20% business or 20% of the data will get affected when cookie less paradigm will come in and I'm sure there will be a solution for that as well so the net impact might be just about 5% for which we are already ready and we are also working with a lot of brands to help them get ready in that. And the third point I would say is that I think you know as rightly being said here future is completely unknown. The ability to shift the shape is very very critical so the ability to pivot how adaptable is your organization and your brand, that is something which kind of has to be as a yearly assessment in your reviews. And you know, and possibly how can you keep building muscles for adaptability something which is very very critical. So yeah, that would be the shape shifting ability would be the third point which is very very critical. Thanks, thanks for your perspective, Siddharth and I'm sure the panel would agree, you know, on the various things that Siddharth has touched upon, and given the fact that everything today is completely tech based. So while we're talking about you know future proofing and we I think if I can take the liberty of saying the panel agrees when you don't know about the future what are we going to prove really. Yeah, but the fact is that one, two very important things which to my mind matter most is as Siddharth said adaptability, you know so adaptability and resilience, I think are two things that really is something that the brands will have to have to go with irrespective of whatever future we are looking at you guys have in your own, you know, discussion points mentioned various things that brands can leverage to to try in future proof. Yeah, and also that you know, what is it that we need to do if we have to gaze into the future and be relevant all brand existence we be really relevant to our consumers and not look at them as SEC, you know ABC residing in a male female 25 plus kind of target audiences which in yesterday's we used to do a lot of demographic there. Just a just a quick do you think there is a sacred playbook that brands really need to play by. I would fat them know because you know you can only do a playbook if you are very sure about whatever, but will be very interesting to you know get your brands can leverage if you go to future proof. Like I said part of it has already been discussed but you know a perspective from all of you start with Akshay and then move. So, before we move to that I think one thing I could mention is we talked about adaptability we've talked about the entire shifting and changing of behavior I think that's something which coherence with our brand campaign also about saying but love. I think that's something which and I've seen a lot of brands actually talking in that direction. Every brand wants to have a change everyone wants to talk about the change. From a banking standpoint, if you if I tell you there's probably there is a if they're a playbook then that has to be revised or re looked upon. I don't know if it's in months or weeks but definitely not in years. That's for sure. So, even if we create something and if we create try creating those sort of a playbooks. Those will still be more of a guidance those will be more like probably in the next. What do you do if these things happen, or what do you do for a sustainability growth so something like cookie less sort of environment. What's that just mentioned now, while we understand that something is a future in the next couple of years. How do we build or how do we strategize ourselves in creating first party data. How do we start enhancing our first party data and try building models on that. I think that's that's the only guidance which that playbook can give. Obviously what changes how it changes that is fully dependent on various other partners which are beyond our control. These are all ecosystem partners for driving it. Also, I think there's an interesting point with Siddharth brought out was, how do we make create an ecosystem, something which a lot of brands are trying to create like even banking is trying to create banking as a platform. Also, not only small as Bob, but then that's how that that's something I think with these new new age brands fintechs new banks coming in. I think that's that's an area where banking is also trying to move into. And if that becomes successful, then we are actually talking in the ranges of probably creating platforms like the biggies like Amazon's and the Google's of the world. Obviously it will soon or less, it will start consolidating into some piece, which will be a issue probably in a longer run, but I think that's where we could be heading to if we are trying to go in that direction of creating platforms. One more piece which I think I would like to mention out here is there was a, there was, I think, Manika mentioned that online offline has started August and he also I think I mean he quoted that there is no differentiation. I think one more piece which has been which has been happening and which is growing also is the lack of differentiation between a brand branding sort of a spends versus and performance sort of a spends see banking has always been very heavy on performance I mean that's how we started that's how we explore digital world. We love we all love numbers a lot and that's the reason I think performance we could get that number right on the dashboard so that I think everyone love to see those sort of convergence. Now that branding came into picture obviously there were two legs of it and for a longer period of time these were two running in a connected way but still in silos and some some sort. I think with the so with our in fact what we are running right now as a campaign on digital platforms. We have just merged both of these together because technically there is nothing which is only branding or there's nothing which is only performance. Both of these things do simultaneously each other's work and hence we are looking at as a holistic sort of approach out there. And that is what we are also seeing that that will not only translate from because I know few of the offline players who which also work on performance sort of a metrics. So I think this will start growing as we move ahead and because everyone obviously would like to know what they're getting in return for every dollar spent in advertising right so that will I think that's a that's that's a move which will happen. Finally I think you mentioned about getting a Firefox bike about I think six months or a year back and yeah so banking is still not achieved to a level where people say that hey you know what I want to get an open an account. I do not frankly seen anyone doing that I think the idea is how do we create banking as an ecosystem or as a as a brand where people start relating it with their daily lives. See everyone banks every day almost everyone does some payments every day but they don't realize it. I mean it is starting getting into that utility sort of era where banking may become like one of one of the utilities like probably your water or your electricity or something like that. And you don't care in the end of the day which brand is giving you electricity at your home right. So I think for banking it will be this challenge of how do you make sure you're not a utility but a brand which people likes to connect with emotion. I feel and as a whole industry if you're able to make sure that does not happen I think that's great for everyone. I echo what you're saying Akshay and in fact I wanted to mention this but you know for the I was a little scared to mention it but I said see your bad love campaign that you are running actually what you're saying is nothing new right. You're just saying it in a very different way whether it is you know connecting through video whether it is it is you know giving various facilities and all but what is more important there is actually the platform. So you are actually selling the service through a platform. Though what you are selling in terms of USPs are something that you know people know people are aware of and hence this whole thing about branding versus performance that you were talking about you know there is no awareness. How can you lead to performance as simple as that to my mind also branding and performance really have to go hand in hand and there are there when I was in an agency it used to be very interesting for clients to come and say. We only want conversions you know and then one would wonder and say but who are you in the consumer is going to ask you who are you for me to really consider you. So given that situation Charu what do you think in the category that you're talking about and I launched Polar in the country so I know how you know how uninvolving and uninteresting a category like yours can be you know for for customers and to get their attention. You know to sell becoming extremely expensive in today's day and age I mean doing up a bathroom costs you lacks today it's no longer a thing about the pot and a bathtub and some faucets. So that's interesting because yours is a very very drab category dry category sorry for sorry. I feel it's not there anymore I mean people are really really doing up their bath spaces. The personifying their bath spaces so yeah it's something from a category where it was used to be you know very uninteresting and not so involving and you would leave it to your you know the contractor or the architect or whoever was doing it to making this category so interesting today. Where people are spending and I've seen some amazingly expensive bathrooms that you know all the nourish are creating today. So what according to you is is you know if at all the need for creating a playbook in this era and what are certain things that you can leverage and certain tools that you can use you did touch upon that in your early comment but it will be nice to you know consolidate and hear them now. Yeah so taking on from there only so I've covered some bit of it but taking on from there. Yes the category is seen a major major revolution and transformation and what we've been seeing now is that there is an explosion of the number of mediums or channels that the consumer is now seeking to reach out to the brand and it's not just that as a brand I want to reach out to the consumers for them also they using various number of channels and and the mediums have just plotted proliferated over last year so hence as I mentioned a very uniform integrated platform or a data warehouse is something that we need and as you rightly mentioned consumers are spending a lot on bathrooms but more than that it is also important for us. I mean we've also done a lot of work I mean the industry to kind of create that kind of an aspiration for the bath space and hence a lot of advertising spends whether it is on mass media digital. So this I would want to take one case here one project that we've we've currently started with and not just reaching out to the right audience at the right time this is also helping me optimize my ad spends. And that probably is the way forward so we've we've we're trying this on our website so customers when I talk about him where they come through various sources offline online. All my brand stores there are about 10,000 touch points that I have then there is social media presence website app and a lot more. So what is important is right now what we're doing is we are combining we are storing we are processing this database this first party customer database as a share also rightly pointed out and this is then being used to calculate the customer life cycle value. So bathrooms it's not that it's like once you've done your bathroom and you you've done your sorted for like 10 years 20 years now people are changing it every couple of years the three years four years and plus there is also a lot of focus that has come on upgrading. There are powder bathrooms that have come up which did not exist maybe a decade back. So there are a lot of opportunities where you can upgrade where you can calculate their customers life cycle value then there is customer conversion time that I can track through this then we can implement the right. Omni channel that we can support to sales and conversions at the brand store so again the digital wave combining digital and taking it to the brand store. Apart from that it is also what we are also doing here is we are creating a 360 degree consume consumer profile so that the right kind of leads come to me and I direct my advertising spends to reaching out to the right customer. So we are mapping his user journey complete user journey through multiple devices whether it is his screen whether it is TV whether it is Facebook whether it is any other social media that he's wanting to reach out to me and then develop a customized personal profile and then reaching out to him so again speed is important here. I have to act fast so targeting consumer on the right platform where he's interacting with me and then giving him a personalized communication that's something that we've started at him where a couple of weeks back I would say it's as latest as that. So we've just done a pilot and it's so for example if there's a customer who's just browse my website and he's returning then I'll send him a WhatsApp I'll send him an SMS we're sending him push notifications and we're sending him to the nearest store. So the push notification will also send the address of the near me searches the nearest store so that then it converts into hyper local lead generation and closure for the trade partner. So that's that he also gets that support from the brand and and while we do all this data churning and this warehouse that we've created this then further goes in developing these AI modules or models as I call it which are based on consumer behavior. So this helps us identifying any VIP customers that I have the propensity of the actual customer the kind of conversion that I can go at with and also helps me reduce my ad wastage. So in a turn something that this is definitely going to help us I mean as we move forward in future to kind of optimize my admins and also reach out to the right audience because it's important to tap the consumer when he's in that process of home renovation. This is not an FMCG that I go I mean I see the ad I like the packet of chips and I go and buy it. He has to be in that phase of purchase. He has to be in that phase of renovating his house. So how I capture him how I send him the right info how I direct him to my store. I mean that that consumer journey is very important. Yeah. I'm sure Charu I'm a poor customer and with you know the various touch points and if you look at yourself as consumers and you're getting an SMS you're getting a notification you know you open your social media. There's an ad there and if you're on television you see an ad on newspaper you see an ad. My God. I would say that this is more of a hand holding of that journey because as I as I told you I'm not targeting I'm not targeting a consumer who's not in that phase I'm targeting a consumer who's searching for the products. You know the diverse categories that we all are representing you know so and one very important thing and I think you touched upon that pretty interestingly speed. Yeah so it is one thing which we cannot afford to lax is on speed or being agile you know and there is I think nobody better than the entertainment sector which is. So jump right over to you for your perspective on you know playbooking leveraging various tools and what is it that the future holds for us. So I'll be honest with you for us and I'm sure Monica would Monica would specifically relate to this is that there is fandom around certain brands right there is this love and passion and entertainment kind of thrives on it. On a very lighter note that I've represented certain brands in my career where I would have to actually stick with the speed that is this person lying just to get a job with this company because there's so much attraction to this fandom of this brand. And that's the way we work one of the big things that we made coming back to talk more about the playbook. You know you made a very important point with Monica and Anita that the difference between offline and online is only in our heads as marketers. But the consumer journey has blurred those lines and we acknowledge that three years ago as a broadcaster where where we said listen. If I look at by comedy four years ago it launched food its own OTT app is probably one of the first ones that came into the market. Two years ago we are proposition for our fans became before TV and any time. So today you could watch an episode of Big Boss OTT if you're truly a big loyal fan of big boss season 15 if you're truly a loyal fan before TV if you become a pizza. And you can watch it 24-7 is something you couldn't watch on TV because you're sitting in a room and you're in the lockdown and this is what you wanted to. You know we actually innovated and released that when we I'm just telling you how the product evolved would be biggest driver was its fans that wanted to consume at any time. Today we are more gamified than any other OTT. We for every piece of nonfiction content that it's almost like living in a real time game. And we started doing this only because we realized that our fans wanted to engage with the content it now had to become a two way communication. Then we actually have gone now one step further and we realize that being in the pop culture movement is so important not just for our fans but also for the brands who want to engage in it. Rather than just simply advertising around the content we've opened up our content to advertisers and said come please participate and be a part of the content rather than just being around it. So we're taking that journey and you know this goes back to what Charu was also saying you know you actually connect the intent the pop culture movement and the fandom consumer together. We can't really look and now I'm going to do spot advertising. Now I'm going to do you know email or blast if I don't understand the journey of the consumer if I don't build the awareness and the love there won't be any convergence. So yeah well I think that. George and Pete with you on that because I think interestingly more and more that we're talking about it the mapping of the consumer journey and obviously for the lack of another word the touch points where you can connect with the consumer are becoming very important. So while you are connecting through those touch points with the consumer I think as marketers we should never forget and I don't think we forget that we have to be relevant to them and be the entire brand experience and the engagement you know with the consumer is something that is very very important. So with that Manika you know in your case you know as you said that again there is an offline and online in terms of being brick and mortar you know being there and then even the journey afterwards and the fact that if people are not cycling these days by creating events and you know bringing that fandom in for Firefox there. There is so much more that needs to be done really you know and to me I think all those departments where we were compartmentalizing things to say TV is no more relevant see for the consumers it was never relevant for them it was like you know consuming it on the go. It was for us it was relevant but I think those lines are blurring and as like Charu was mentioning or Akshay was mentioning this whole integration piece is becoming extremely important. So Manika with your comments and then we will close with Siddharth to connect you know as I said Siddharth connect all of us together as various brands. Yeah Anita so you know to your question that can brands have a playbook honestly speaking you know all life cycles are shortening attention spans are shortening. So even if we have a playbook it will be very short lived needs to be constantly looked at disrupted question and each brand will have to you know define its own playbook because like we said you know customer journey is extremely important and it's very different for category to category. So brands will have to define their own playbook. So for example you know I'll pick up an example from cycling category so post pandemic cycling category completely transformed from you know transportation a video of transportation to transformation. You know so and we had very less time as a brand to adopt and adapt otherwise you're not relevant anymore. So you know for example one of the things in the you know I think Charu and Chanpeet spoke about the digital world but the physical aspect of it you know the retail space. So typically traditionally when cycles were looked at purely as a medium of communication transportation the if you look at any traditional cycle store it's just you know a lot of cycles placed next to each other. It's not a very good experience it does not enable customer decision making. So that's when we you know we've recently launched a store in Navi Mumbai which we call our experience center. It has a very very different retail identity. There are just very few market products displayed the entire you know objective is to enable customers decision making inside the store. So that you know the experience with the brand it's not about putting all the products that you have in your portfolio out there but in ensuring that the customer makes a decision makes the right choice. And you know there are tools and you know certain engagement tools inside the store to enable engagement even beyond purchases. So that's the kind of transformation that brands have to undergo and very less time like I said you know just about six months will be ready to absorb that kind of demand and still remain relevant as a brand is a challenge. So I think yes playbooks very short lived and will have to be redefined by brands. With you on that Manika Siddharth we just shot on time so just about five minutes remaining for you for your closing remarks and I'll just wrap it up in one sentence after that over to you. Yes absolutely. So yeah and I think I agree you know it's very difficult to have a playbook and I will I will say that probably one defining element of a playbook can be experimentation. You have to keep doing a lot of experiments and you know do a lot of pilots and you know many of the panelists talked about their initiatives and you know some will succeed some will not which is fine. But the point is that there have to be some new initiatives and pilots some experiments which are always happening and then that will lead to innovations. Right and you know just to add as an example so we have a case study with L'Oreal where what we did was we created a beauty index where when consumers in the right target group they are online and we are collecting those signals and creating an index. And when they are also searching for L'Oreal products and beauty related products. So combining all these data signals we created a real time index and then we sync the campaign. The bidding increased and decreased according to the way the index increase or decrease so when consumers are browsing more about L'Oreal products are searching more about L'Oreal products we are increasing the intensity of the campaign and vice versa. And this was initially like started a pilot and then we saw very good results and then we extended it right. So it's a great example of two things one is how do you look into the macro data which is affecting the consumer brand behavior and then in the right moment you are being relevant to the consumer in a very good way that is one. And second most important point is you started with a pilot you saw that it is succeeded and then you kind of scale it up. And that's where you need to keep doing that again and again and build templates out of it and just this year's playbook might not work out in the next year but as long as you have plethora of experiments going you will have some successes and then you can scale that for the next year playbook for you. Thank you so much for that so just now almost on time and my closing comments from everybody who said there firstly I mean there is no question on customer is the king or consumer is the king. Yeah what is very important is you know the relevance of data and technology which is the backbone for the digital transformation in today's day and age future proofing obviously we don't know about future what are we going to prove. But I personally think that you know there is need for a playbook the only thing is that the playbook is going to change very fast because to me a playbook will you know at any given point in time will exist as you know a combination of a combination of a lot of experiences a lot of you know innovations that we've done and those experiences and innovations and our understanding will then lead us to write the another chapter in the playbook. So maybe our playbook you know will be this thick with far too many chapters and we'll have to write them really really fast with a lot of agility. And of course you know the richness of this conversation from various categories has been, you know, a pleasure for me at least and I'm sure you guys would have also loved the conversation so thank you chanpreet, Manika, Charu, Siddharth, Akshay and thank you, Simran, Ritika, Andy for him for having us on this panel. Thank you so much and we love you too. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.