 Welcome to the inaugural edition of Masters of Marketing 2022. I'm Basuta Agarwal and I lead in MOBI's Asia-Pacific business. I'm joined today by an extraordinary panel who leads some of India's most famous brands. I'd like to invite them to introduce themselves. Ravi Santana, CMO, HDFC Bank. Thank you, Basuta. Good evening everybody. My name is Ravi Ravi Santana. I had Marketing, Corporate Communication, and Products and Managed Programs at HDFC Bank. Happy to share my thoughts and learn from all the panelists. Thanks, Ravi. Ishwinder Singh, GM Marketing at Pernorica. Hi everybody. I'm Ishwinder and it's been an absolute pleasure being here. I've been with Pernorica for about three years now and I've had about 20 years of experience in the alcohol beverages industry. Thank you Ishwinder. Anjali Krishnan, Consumer Experience Lead at Mondele International. Hi, Basuta. Thank you for having me on the panel. Hi everybody. My name is Anjali Krishnan. I'm the Consumer Experience Lead at Mondele. In my role, I handle digital data and paid owned and earned media. I've close to about 20 years of experience in this industry and happy to be here to chat with everybody else on the panel. Thank you, Anjali. Next panelist, Sandeep Anand, EVP and CMO at Domino's. Hi, Sarsada. Hello, everyone. Great to be here and look forward to a great discussion. In terms of my introduction, I work at Domino's and lead the marketing function here. Also, in the past, I've worked in companies like GSK, Reket, and Zomato. Thank you, Sandeep. And finally, Anuja Mishra, VP and Head of Marketing, Personal Care and Hygiene at Gotridge. Hi, everyone. This is Anuja Mishra. I head the category of Personal Wash and Hygiene at Gotridge Consumer, a marketer with about 18 years of industry experience, cross-organizations like Nestle, Pepsi, and GCPL. I'm very, very excited to be part of the Masters of Marketing 2022 program and look forward to interacting with my fellow panelists and some great learning. Thank you. Thank you, Anuja. So thank you all for joining us today. Before we dive into the discussion, I'd like to set some context as to why we're all here. The events of the past two years have dramatically reshaped life as we know it and has permanently moved the consumer landscape. Naturally, this has also been an unusual time for marketers across India, but we all know that true innovation comes from adversity. This couldn't be more true in a country like us where we saw the heralding of a new era in digital India. According to a stat by Tri, India became home to over 825 million Internet subscribers in 2021, a majority of whom have been powered by smartphones, proving that we are truly living in a mobile-first age. And in this new age, we have seen that resilient brands are the ones that have pioneered innovations to pivot, strategize and execute. As these brands build multi-moment mobile marketing strategies, some brands have really set the bar high, not just for themselves, but for us as a community. Today, we are in conversation with the leaders of some of these iconic brands. So let's get started. I'll ask the first question to Sandeep. So Sandeep, Domino's is one of the most exciting brands in the country today. And you seem to have very quickly pivoted in the face of the pandemic. So much of your communication became about zero contact delivery, buy online, pick up offline, and all of this was centered around mobile. And Domino's is now interestingly also among the top three food apps consistently in India. So tell us a little bit about this journey that Domino's has been on in the last 20 months. Sure. So Vasta, I would actually start with what were the fundamental changes in consumer behavior which started during the COVID time. And here I'm talking about the first wave of COVID itself. One, when the first wave hit, there was paranoia all around. And actually, when it came to all categories and not just food, and particularly in food actually, consumers gravitated towards more trusted brands. And Domino's, being in India for the last 25 odd years, is one of the brands which is trusted the most by consumers. And therefore, we were a natural choice when it came to consumers' preference in terms of which brand they would order from. The second big change which happened was the adoption of mobile as a way of ordering or way of living life. Because it was while Swiggy and Zomato were there, and they had to a certain extent popularized the use of mobile apps for food ordering. That happened. The adoption of mobile apps, et cetera, happened across various categories. The payment, be it even grocery, be it even medicines to some extent, every category gravitated towards moving to a mobile app-based business. And Domino's was at a, therefore, a very kind of a sweet spot there, wherein we had a significant infrastructure and presence with our own mobile app. At the same time, we enjoyed a very good consumer confidence in terms of trust and safety which was there. Furthermore, we also from our part, enhanced and brought in a lot of new safety procedures and steps at the store during delivery, et cetera. And of course, we shared it with consumers that these are the steps we are taking to ensure your safety. In fact, for the first five to six months of the pandemic, I think our communication was solely focused on how safe Domino's pizza is. So a culmination of all these things that consumers move towards mobile app, they move towards trusted app, and the fact that Domino's took a lot of steps to enhance the safety perception as well as the safety of the consumers really paid dividends to us. So even one of the few brands which kind of braved out the first wave, relatively better, I won't say it was, it would be always be relatively better, versus many other brands. Got it, Sandeep. Now, that's an interesting absolutely, right? Because like you mentioned, right? Categories like food delivery, hyper-local commerce, FinTech, right? These did benefit a lot from having a mobile presence already. So on that note, Ravi, similar to Domino's, even HDFC has been a category dominated across the app stores, especially in a space such as finance, where you're not only competing with other banks, but also other FinTech solutions like payments, and now crypto and so on. So tell us how you've been able to sort of break out of that clutter when it comes to mobile. Prastha, I'll just leverage on what Sandeep said. The difference between, say, for example, the physical food delivery versus a bank is, see, we were already mobile, we were already net-enabled, and more than 95% of our transactions were digital prior to COVID. So what really happened is the change in the way people accepted digital for doing things differently. So from a transaction, which was mostly in the mobile and the internet banking world, we also had the origination shift to digital. So that was the biggest pivot for a brand like us. People still believed that to purchase a credit card to take a loan or to take an insurance policy, they wanted somebody to come and meet it across the table and do it. And this is not only from the consumer, but it's also from our own employees and the salespeople. So digital, while on the transaction print, is much more deeper penetrated. But on the origination print is not necessarily at the same level. And there was a lot of regulatory hindrance with respect to KYC and multiple other things that we need to do where we need to have a physical presence verified and all. So what the pandemic did is the regulatory outlook towards these kinds of physical presence required actually moved. So we had a digital customer premise verification enabled. We had a digital KYC enabled with other EKYC and other stuff. So those were now the regulators came forward and gave us a lot of leeway in terms of doing things digitally. Our own people, because of the fact that they couldn't go out and meet people, how do you actually sell now? So they also started adopting digital to start selling. So the biggest impact for a brand like HDFC Bank and almost for the entire financial ecosystem is the salesman ability to use digital to start selling. And we do expect over a period of time a direct digital selling where we are extremely good at as of now, long way to go. But that will also start picking up where we don't necessarily have to meet a person to start selling. That's where the big difference we saw in our world. Anujya, with Goatridge being a leader in the personal care space, your products picking lifelines for the country at the time of the pandemic. But at the same time, there was a lot of clutter in the personal care space with new brands and products entering the market very quickly. So what was your strategy at Goatridge, especially during the second lockdown for breaking out of this clutter? So thanks for the question, Masar. That's a very relevant one. I think the first and the second lockdown were really tales of two halves in a way. And while in the first one, like you rightly said, there was a lot of clutter. There were a lot of organizations going ahead and really sort of headdiving first into the hygiene category and a lot of launches there. Our strategy was very simple. I think pretty much for the last one and a half years across lockdowns and beyond. One was to of course focus on very relevant product innovations. And that included categories that we felt were relevant here and now to kind of manage and handle the chaos that people were talking of. And equally categories that we saw would potentially become very sustained into people's lifestyles even going forward because there are certain hygiene behaviors that we've now adopted, which seem like they're here to stay. And the second and more important part, Pasudha aside, just the launch of products was building a very distinct identity and communicating with consumers in a very authentic manner, I'd say, in the midst of a lot of information being thrown at them. What we really did at that time, Pasudha was in fact, troubled our rate of interaction with consumers and technology really sort of helped us do that. But what we realized when we spoke with consumers was that the one thing that they were actually leaning on brands for at that point was certain direction and trust. Because they really were feeling very vulnerable. There was a lot of chaos, a lot of information being thrown at them. And at that moment, they said that we only want to lean on brands that we can trust. And for us at GCPL, we've got a great range of trusted brands, both literally stands for trusting people's lives. And we said, even for some of the newer brands that we've expanded into the hygiene category with protect at this time, we said, we're going to continue that spirit and ensure that we're giving people the right kind of information. So information which is very factual, very much about the product. And at the same time, somewhere just giving them a very calming tonality. So not truly creating that fear in their mind, but helping them sort of get over the fear while alerting them and while sort of ensuring them that the brand is partnering with them in this journey. So I think it was a fairly, I'd say overwhelming experience for everyone, but we were very clear that staying anchored on consumer listening and being very sharp in our proposition and very soft in our tonality, would be extremely critical to build the brand and to also possibly even distinguish ourselves from a lot of noise and clutter as we spoke up. Right. Let's switch gears and Ishwinder, moving to you. Yours is a very different category from the rest of the panelists. And given that the needs of your consumers must have changed dramatically during the pandemic and especially with the lockdowns across different states, having such a big impact on the category, how did you adapt your marketing strategy to build brand resilience in the last 20 odd months? So I would basically say that in a different category, we have our own unique set of constraints. We are a heavily regulated category. However, we thrive on addressing our consumer through innovation and through targeted comms, through bi-channel, okay, by focusing on one common aim, and that is to drive a strong rational and emotional connect with our consumers, okay? And that really changed when the lockdown really came into play. The average spend time spent on mobile devices in fact increased pretty drastically because there was hardly any fresh content which was coming on television. And in fact, conviviality and consumer engagement at the last three feet had changed drastically during lockdown. Outlets were closed, okay, and consumers were buying and consuming at home. Basically what really happened was that consumer behavior evolved in lockdown and therefore we had changed our marketing mix, obviously in favor of digital. We had to be agile with our narrative and with our content mix and look, historically physical engagement has been a very important piece of basically talking and working with our consumers. We moved on to a complete digital outreach. We had to become a lot more topical. Our intensity and our frequency of engagement with the consumers really went up. And we in fact innovated very strongly by creating seamless consumer, a digital world which did not exist before lockdown, digital experiences like showcase and like our World Cup activations. In fact, influences started playing a very important role for us because what they really did was they started communicating a brand narrative to a consumer and helped us reach to a larger set of consumers as compared to before. So for us it was a pretty drastic change, but I think we were pretty agile and nimble to go quickly and take advantage at that point in time. No, absolutely. I think, like you talked about, I think the digital as a notion, it probably existed somewhere but it really come to the forefront now. I think across your category, but possibly even across all others. So it's definitely interesting to see how you shape that with a lot of agility at your end. Actually, the next question is for you. This of course has been a very buzz, I would say incredible year for Montelay with a lot of buzzworthy campaigns. We had the iconic Daily Milk campaign with the gender flip, the not just a Cadbury ad campaign with the whole use of AI technology. I mean, these are great examples of how Montelay is marrying creativity with technology to drive grand purpose at scale. So can you share a little bit more about this approach? Was it actually, this is not something new for us Montelay has always been at the forefront of marrying creativity and technology we've been doing it for many, many years. Of course, there's an accelerated movement that has happened around it in the more recent times like already Sandeep Anishwinder spoke about that the consumer landscape has dramatically changed and that's led to a lot of focus from our side also on digital platforms. We've had some very, very successful campaigns in the recent few years. The one that you're talking about the Diwali ad that we released recently. It actually the genesis of that started somewhere in last Diwali where apart from our business, we realized that a lot of local businesses were also significantly impacted by the pandemic and we wanted to do something for them as well. So last year when we launched the campaign we did it by mapping close to 1800 pin codes and local stores and directing people to stores close to their home where they could shop truly making it localized and helping them also have a great Diwali. This year we wanted to take it a step further and through AI facial recognition and partnerships on this world deep fake technology we managed to create an ad where you can get Shah Rukh Khan to mimic his entire facial expressions, his voice, his emotions, everything and create an ad for yourself or your store and then share it with people around you. So I think in our own little way we've tried to give back to some of our partners and this is just one of the campaigns. We also have a campaign called Madbury that we run every year which has very deep consumer engagement where we actually get our consumers to co-create a product with us. So we've been constantly doing something or the other in the space of digital to enable consumer experiences which are much, much more richer and given the situation that we are in today technology helps you enable a lot of that. Absolutely. I think Ravi on the same lines I think HDFC also has been leveraging the power of technology to amplify your brand purpose and you have an iconic tagline we understand your world. So how do you think about, you know this approach of using technology to amplify brand purpose and ethos? Anastas, Anjali was talking about it's all about engaging with the customers and then we just expand with the digital saying engaging with the customer at the right time with the right context. At the end of the day we have a suite of products available and each of these products may not be relevant for the customer at every point of time and there are certain points relevant at that certain context. And today what is available to all of us as marketers is this phenomenal availability of data to understand the context in which the consumer is engaging with your brand. And if you're not going to leverage that context then your messaging is not going to necessarily appeal to that customer. So the entire way in which we see it is understand the context of the consumer use the data that you already have and I can look at the other three of the people in the panel and we can say, yes, they know about their consumers more from the physical research they do. They don't have any data about their consumers. Domino's will have definitely a lot better than say for example, a Monteluzer, you know. But we have everything about you. So today the way I see this HDFC bank is a very trustworthy bank and if you are saying that it is trust and when you go back to consumers, ask them how do you define this trust? The trust has changed its meaning. It's no more keep my money safe. It says you have so much of information about me. Talk with me about the most relevant thing that I need to do or I need to have today. Don't talk to me generally. Don't come and tell me this brand can do wonders for your life and I don't need any of those things at this point of time. So we need to understand that context using the data that we have and how do you leverage the data to go back to the consumers? And how do you actually not lose sight of the consumer in this data-driven experience also? So I think it's a mix of the data and the consumer insighting and how we bring it together and reach out. And the way we reach out is all about one-on-one personalization and the amount of personalization that we do and for example, the kind of campaigns that we do which is more to our own customer base. I don't need to necessarily go to TV and shout because we know our customers. We have their mobile, we have their email IDs. We have everything about them. They come into our offices. They come into our branches. So we don't necessarily need to use mass media per se but when we use whatever mediums that you have, you need to make sure that it is not a spam. It's very, very engaging and it requires a lot of understanding of both the context in which the consumer in which the data can give you and then making even the messaging in line with the context. So what we have done in the last 18 months in terms of pivoting towards more and more digital conversations with the customers, I think we have reached a lot of stage. We have spent a huge amount of effort and energy to understand data, to understand what happens and what does this data signify? And we are now trying to shape behavior. We're not more predicting behavior. I think that's passage. What we're looking for is if this is how the consumer has done A and if you have seen that over the period of the last six years, six months, what is it that I can do with another consumer who are just six months prior to this? So how do I shape the behavior in terms of making sure they take the better financial decision? Because our final goal is to make sure that every choice which a consumer makes is the best financial decision for that consumer. So it's all about how do we use the data? How do we use the human context that comes out of the data? How do you marry the two and how do you reach out to consumers? Yeah, and I think it's interesting how you also talk about how this data is not just for the here and now, right? But also predictive in some way to help consumers make better decisions than even how as a brand you think of similar customer cohorts to predict for the future. So yeah, I think the use of data is absolutely the key. And I think like you said, I mean, Domino's is another brand which would have a lot of this rich data. So I think Sandeep over to you to really understand how does data inform your marketing strategy and Domino's and how are you thinking about it? So I think I'll borrow from what Ravi also said. Consumers now wants a more personalized experience and they are no longer okay with a broad brush stroke, which was okay maybe five years ago or maybe even three years ago, but no longer that's the case. And therefore it's very important to understand consumers and put them into cohorts, I would say. Create those cohorts, create those personas and tailor make your offering. If not your offering in terms of say the menu mix, but for sure in terms of the kind of benefits you give them whether it's in form of discounting or whether it's in form of the engagement which you do when you reach out to them via CRM or digital, to tailor make your communication basis their own preferences. These personas are actually good for both consumers as well as for businesses because consumers prefer them because they feel that someone who knows them, understands them is talking the right thing which is probably relevant to them. And it must be highly true in a banking business for sure. But it's as true in any other industry I would say. It's good for business when you have engaged consumer and when you have a consumer who's hooked on to you or listens to you they tend to transact more. From a business point of view it really makes sense to have this and like in any business I think once you've got the customer the once you've got the user your journey does not end there. With ever increasing app download space, app download basis it's very important that we also work on the retention track and the churn prevention track which is what we actively do at Domino's. At one end we focus on increasing the app base. At the other end we are also focused on ensuring that the churn is kept to the minimum and retention is also priority especially for the select set of consumers who would be high frequency etc. Got it, Sandeep. So switching gears and going back to Ishwinder let's talk a little bit about your category and it's a captivating space and there's a very special relationship that your category has with the both Bollywood and Cricket especially given the aspirational nature of your messaging and both of these spaces actually saw a slowdown during the pandemic. They are of course on a path to recovery now but given this slowdown that happened what changed for you in terms of customer insights and media planning in this time frame? Look absolutely correct, Vasatha. We do a lot of interactive work. Okay, both Bollywood and Cricket. However, what really gave us confidence during this slowdown was that there was not really a drop in consumer interest but there was a supply side issue in terms of a lack of fresh content which was coming because of COVID restrictions in place. So what we really had to do was we had to just go back and look at historically what are the kind of assets we already had in place? So let me give you a small example. We have this beautiful asset bank of Royal stack barrel select large short films which are award fitting short films and we took them out and we've seen a great amount of consumer interaction this year in that asset bank and that helped us engage with consumers at a time where no future, no fresh content was really coming their way. That's the first example. Second example was let's look at fashion and blender spread fashion tour is a physical event. However, because of lockdown, we again went back to a setback and we found this, we had a lot of rich content already with us and what we really did was we played that content with consumers and digital and we learned from those from how consumers engaged with us the minute we put out those content. From those learnings, we in fact have created a new set of assets, which is for example, the showcase which is currently on which is a emerging talent hunt. Okay, for all the fresh challenge which comes into the fashion industry and we've used our historical learnings to even do activations with World Cup. So our learnings from digital, our learnings from consumers, we've in fact seen a huge spike in our consumer engagement rates and we actively track our performance on social conversation and on share of voice allowing us to constantly assess the level of consumer engagement. And that's something I think we've learned during the lockdown period. Interesting and again, I think it goes back to the thread of agility and innovation and how I think everyone had to rethink their approach because of the constraints we were operating in. I think on that same note, Anjali, even for you, it's so critical to know and understand your consumers and especially when you're taking new products to market. So during the pandemic, right? With all the volatility, how did you gauge consumer reaction and get a pulse check, especially when stores were not open, not accessible. So how did you go about it at Montelers? So there is different ways in which we approach it. We do have digital panels that we work with and we have insights and analytics team that does consumer connects virtually. So while you're not able to actually go to the customer and see what is happening face to face, you can still connect with them and get a sense and a pulse of what consumers are thinking and doing and the way that they're looking at our brands. The other way that we've been looking at getting some sort of a pulse of consumers is through some of our campaigns that we run online and we're collecting a lot of data through those campaigns. Some of it is third-party data, some of it is first-party data and that also kind of informs our decision making. So I would say that, yes, it is a little different from the world that we used to operate in before where it was more face to face interaction with the consumer but you're still able to gauge what consumers want and how they are leaning towards your brands through digital ways of connecting. Anujya, what's your take on this? Also, Vasatha, I think that there was a very life challenge to the industry but I think at GCPL, we were very quick to realize that just how we as humans and I think we as marketers as a business fraternity had very quickly jumped through the virtual world to continue into our business continuity and to continue working on all aspects of the business. Likewise, we ensure that we really kind of tighten our association with the consumers and with our retail partners and ensure that learnings and insights and more importantly, understand what your feeling kept coming through. So we literally kind of were doing almost about 50 hours of consumer emotions through the virtual platforms and I think the only thing that you kind of do miss out at that time is being in the living room of the consumer, kind of just immersing yourself in the environment but I think the virtual platforms did a fairly strong I'd say, surrogate to the real experience because I think there was also a time that's when consumers were also yearning to be heard. I think there were a lot more, I'd say articulate and a lot more vocal about what they needed and how they were trying to deal with the situation. So every time, when I and my team were speaking to the consumers, we heard a lot of interesting feedback, interesting points of views and very interesting perspectives. We were all I think as humans struggling with a black swan event like this of this magnitude for the first time and so I think we all related with each other but when you kind of connect with consumers even though virtually and you ensure that you're kind of maintaining that pulse it definitely helped us a great deal and it also helped us a great deal, Vasatha because we were innovating at break next week. I think the industry at large which would typically have an average of stage gate or innovation timelines of 12 to 18 months on the lower side suddenly was now launching categories within 60 to 75 days. And it was extremely important that we were not letting go of some of the critical steps of consumer testing, of ensuring that we did the right level of deliberation on getting a pulse of the consumer on not just our products, but also the overall behavior change. And I think that that plays the whole shift towards the virtual platforms and leveraging technology was a big plus. And I think since we are on this whole topic of consumer insights, I think suddenly going back to you, right? I mean, a lot of these consumer insights then feed into the whole marketing approach and especially into something like the notion of moment-based marketing. So I think Domino's seems to be a great believer in that, right? There have been a lot of campaigns this year where you've responded at lightning speed when it comes to specific moments, right? It was, for example, your heartburn, how India vaccine, like how India campaign around vaccinations or during the Olympics when you engaged with Mirabai Chanu during that time. How do you strategize to capture these moments and consumer retention in these peak moments? This is something which we as a strategy kind of follow. We have had a huge practice, I would say, in the past, where we have associated or talked about events, festivals, and talked in a language which consumer would relate to. So movement marketing as a calendar is something which is an integral part of our calendar and tied to events, et cetera, which happen in the calendar year. Apart from that, for a brand like us, which is more youth-oriented, which has to generate conversations with people, it's very important that we keep our ear close to the ground and pick up these opportunities which come to converse with our consumers in the language and on the topic which they want to. For example, when it came to the heartburn campaign, vaccination was the top which every consumer was having either at home or with their friends. It was something which was everywhere. That became a platform for us to talk to our consumer. Of course, the filter which we applied was, is it something which is good for our consumer and by that same logic for the country? The answer was yes. Was it something which would have enhanced our brand image because we were talking about a topic which was very relevant at that point? And the answer is yes. Another filter which we apply is that we have to be authentic. And that is even when we did the heartburn campaign, we put our skin in the game and we've said that we will incentivize for every consumer or user who actually brings forward their hand to get vaccinated by coming forward and also incentivizing them for getting vaccinated. So it's a mix of these three things and some of them are well thought through in advance and plan for given they are more calendarized. Some of them are spur of the moment. Like Meera Bai Chanu was almost like spur of the moment. And when it happened, everything kind of, our response to it was closed within 15 minutes. I think that was the big differentiator. The agility of it really made all the difference. We as a brand were really proud of the fact that she had won Olympic medal for the country and we were very proud and we went ahead and therefore responded to her request or her want of having a pizza that day with an announcement of that you can have a Domino's pizza for a lifetime. In fact, we went ahead and actually that same day, given that she was in Tokyo, while her family was in India, we went ahead and delivered some pizzas to her family the same very day in the night which she really appreciated. But it's also necessary to keep your ear on the ground plus you have to be agile because if you don't do that, you miss out on those movements. And some of those moments, if it's almost like whoever capitalizes on them first or whoever responds to them first, they actually kind of benefit the most. So it was a mix of both for us. So that's great to understand, right? The whole notion of it's obviously about agility but also authenticity. So thank you for sharing that, Sandeep. Thank you. Going back to you Ishwinder, let's talk a little bit about some of the iconic properties you have like blender's fried fashion tour which was severely disrupted during the pandemic. So how did you go about engaging with your consumers then at such a time in the absence of some of these iconic properties being able to sort of function the way they were earlier? Yeah, the good thing and I will take a word which Sandeep talked about, which was about authenticity, okay? It's important that we had built credibility in the fashion industry over the last 15 years of doing blender's fried fashion tour. And it had become an annual event. However, with COVID what really happened was that obviously everything shut down. However, the consumer hunger did not go away. So we knew that we had to do things differently. The world of fashion was also severely impacted by the pandemic and in that huge challenge but also a huge opportunity for us. We decided to do things differently, okay? So we went in, we tested new ways of doing things and what we really did was we learned on the go. We did a digital blender's fried fashion tour which has never happened before, okay? With Tarun Talyani in early October, 2020 when he was looking at celebrating 25 years of his iconic label, okay? So we did a fashion show real time. It was a digital fashion premiere event and which basically just was brand new and it elevated the experience of fashion events for our target consumers. So our consumers were hungry for this. They were waiting for this and we came with a solution which basically lashed on to the growing online media consumption during the lockdown, okay? So this year, we went a step ahead and we picked up a digital version of Showcase which is a talent hunt of India's finest emerging fashion talent in association with Fashion Development Council of India. And again, it's been a huge success for us. So we test, we learn and then we expand our consumer outreach by doing things differently during the pandemic. I just wanna share one more example. On a brand called 100 Pipers, we've been doing something called the LegC project. And a lot of people had in fact got impacted because the arts of India, okay? Certain arts of India were under stress because of low consumer interest. And what happened during the pandemic was they lost a lot of their consumers. We again took up the cause. We worked on it with our packaging and we took it to our consumers. Again, we brought it back center stage and again supported the dying arts of India. So again, what really happened was a lot of consumers had an outreach and even the people who were the artists really got supported by the property. So that's how we've done really things differently. We've gone into the digital world. We've also expanded the outreach of our properties and I don't think we'll ever go back to a place where it'll be purely physical or it'll be just purely digital. I think we've evolved to a physical world in terms of our properties. Great, and I think, I mean, that's a great example of how technology has been a huge boon in bridging the gaps that came up in the last 20 months. So on that note, Ravi, do you have a similar instance which you could share where the agility that digital and mobile technology bring has empowered your brand? Yeah, sure. See, as pandemic stuck as Sandeep was saying, we obviously cannot offer free money but we have to look at what consumers were going through at that time. So we did a lot of things for our consumers. Like for example, no minimum balance requirement during that period. You don't have to pay necessarily for withdrawing cash from some other banks at the end. We removed that because people are not willing to travel for a longer distance to go back to an HDFC bank at the end. We had a huge footfall coming into the branches. We have more than 5,600 branches and 16,000 ATMs. So we started working with senior citizens because they were the ones who are most impacted and so we started giving doorstep banking. And in addition, we enabled everything what we could do necessarily physically by way of digital. The video KYC, which the regulator announced, we were one of the first in the quickest to start off with that so that many of the things that require KYC for a consumer to get, we started doing it by way of video case and the adoption is also very good. The challenge has always been how quickly we can come out with many of these stuff rather than how whether consumer will adopt because in my view, this is more of a supply constrained economy on this side rather than a demand constrained economy, consumers are willing to adopt most of these stuff and we need to make sure that we do the right digital tools in an easy way for the consumers to adopt and today the amount of video KYC that is happening in the banking ecosystem is far higher than the physical KYC that was happening because almost everything we added a physical KYC earlier and now with the advent of the pandemic and because of the pandemic necessarily video KYC people have started adopting. So in a way it's all about leveraging for the benefit of the customer, whatever you see as the context in which the businesses operate. Yeah, and I think like you rightly said, I think regulation also was forced to keep up with this disruption because there was literally no option. I think we've heard some great examples of digital innovation, use of technology. So Anjali, over to you on what innovation are you most excited about from a brand perspective when it comes to digital because there's a lot happening in the market, right? With now live commerce, with new identity solutions, building immersive experiences for consumers on things like gaming and OTT and so many things. So what's really exciting to you from a brand perspective when it comes to these innovations? I think first of all, the evolution of digital itself in the market is happening so rapidly that keeping pace with that itself is exciting for us. But having said that, I think from a CPG perspective and a brands and business perspective for us, couple of things that I think are going to be disruptive is one is that for people like us, we will be moving from more probabilistic audience based approaches to more deterministic audience approaches. And we can see a lot of e-commerce platforms today enabling that with their own BSPs. So that's an exciting space for us from a business standpoint. The other thing is that largely we view social for driving brand equity and with the emergence of social commerce, that will be another great space to watch out for. And unlike Sandeep and Ravi who sit on rich data capital of their consumers, CPG industry has been a little slow on that front. And we've been reliant on third party data. So the industry itself will shift towards first party data requiring us to have our own consumer data, capital, our own consumer data platforms. And that's another space that I'm really, really looking forward to. So yeah, that's where it is for us. So Anuj, what is it to like? What is it like to get e-commerce ready when you're pushing out new products in the short time spans that you talked about earlier? Because it's different in building brand royalty and gaining share of wallet in an environment like mobile commerce compared to an offline consumer experience. What has your experience been on this? I think it's been a steep learning curve, Asita, particularly for the FMCG industry, which has always been extremely heavy in terms of its dependence on the general trade. What really happened and why general trade continues to be the largest contributor even now. But I think just the scale of behavior change that we saw during those, I'd say, six to nine months from even the consumer end of adopting e-commerce and M-commerce particularly, towards meeting their needs, obviously meant that we needed to change our pace and vector of thinking. And instead of thinking store placement and large stores, literally imagining the brands and the category as a very digitally native entrant and being mobile first versus adapting for mobile. So this was no longer a time where we were looking to adapt our offerings to the M-commerce ecosystem. Rather, we were actually sort of designing for that system. And when I say we were designing for the system, right from the product categories to the way we were looking to target the consumers on various ends of the funnel, right from our mass demand generation, whether that be search led or sort of, let's say contextual targeting even some of our middle or lower end, bottom of the funnel marketing interventions were all very targeted at eventually, leading to conversions on mobile commerce. So everything from the way we kind of built out our websites in a manner in a matter of literally about two to three weeks on some of our new brands was everything very mobile first. And I think in that sense, it's been a steep learning curve, for all of the marketing fraternity, but I'd say it was a much needed, I think it was much needed jolt also, right? Because we knew always that the digital ecosystem was moving ahead at a certain pace, possibly the rate of acceleration became phenomenal at this time. But I think the fraternity and consumers at large have adopted very well this entire new experience and obviously as marketeers, we always kind of follow or possibly preempt where the consumers are going. And in this case, it was really about enjoying that we were matching footsteps with the consumers. And this also meant that we partnered very closely with the mobile commerce ecosystem partners. We understood trends from them, we understood how consumers are making purchases, our purchases for the hygiene category becoming any different, whether it be frequency, whether it be the way consumers are making the brand choices, are some of those sort of drastically changing? And they obviously saw a very different funnel of purchase evolve after during this time, which is surely, I think here to stay as a trend. Yeah, absolutely right. I think the disruption that happened, the pace at which it happened is not a short term behavior anymore, right? I think it means it's a shift in the landscape and consumer behavior, which has happened. And we will see that continuing in the next couple of years. So absolutely, I think this was not a one-time shift or a one-time thing. Before we go, I think it's very rare to have such a great panel of people behind India's biggest brands. And I'm sure a lot of inspiring leaders are keenly listening into today's session. So if you had to share your top tip with them on building resilient brands, what would you say to them? Anujya, what's your take on this? Vasudeva, I've answered this question a couple of times. So pardon me if it sounds like deja vu, but I think I really stick by my experience on this one. But I'd say these are also times when sometimes as a marketer you might be tempted to or almost feel a little pushed to try to change the brand narrative. And I just say that it's extremely important all the more in a time like this that you stay very true to what your brand stands for. We saw a lot of brands actually jump out of character to try to play to the gallery during the time of COVID and it was not very well received by consumers. So I think authenticity of your narrative, I'd say to all marketers and to all young marketers, particularly authenticity of narrative is something that you have to ensure you always hold on to. And I'll just give you a quick example of that, Vasudeva. We've got a brand called Sintol, which is all about exploration. It's all about seeking the best experiences that the world has to offer. And obviously at a time like the lockdown, exploration was far from reality at that point. But what we continue to do is that, we said the brand still will continue to stand for exploration, but instead of real, sort of encouraging people to reach out for real explorations at this time, how about we actually get the entire community together because what we also heard from all our consumer emotions was that the one thing that people were only craving and missing was travel and exploration and heading out on holidays and so on. And this was an interesting time when we built a very large community called the Sintol Awesome Explorers and we kind of got these travelers together to share nostalgia, to share just about some of their past travel experiences and just to reignite the love for travel and exploration amongst the larger community. And to me, I thought there was a very strong point of view from a brand, despite the fact that exploration was far from reality at that point in time, but the brand didn't really lose its essence. So I'd always say that, given whatever the scenario may be and more so I think in times like these where consumers are extremely discerning to see through a brand's narrative stay authentic. I would actually just give two, maybe that's what something, and both of them marry each other in a way. The first and foremost, I think if you want to build a resilient brand, you have to have a very, very good understanding of your consumer. And by the way, that understanding changes. Like for brands, and maybe Angelique envoys vouch for it and even every one of us can vouch for it that two years ago, what was our understanding of consumers and the understanding which we have today is very different. And if you miss out on these pivotal moments or Black Swan events or whatever that case, maybe with change consumer behaviors forever, then your brand is as good as dead. So as a marketer or as someone who takes care of brands, you cannot ever take the consumer for granted. That's the first one which I would have to say. The second one which I would necessarily say and part of it has been covered in today's discussion is, your brand has to be authentic and your brand has to come across as a meaningful, authentic brand and make the consumer's life better in any way. So for example, Ravi talked about all those things which HDFC did to make KYC better. Angelique talked about small businesses. Even Ashwin talked about many things. So all of these brands have actually made consumers life better. They are really impacting their lives in some way or the other, in their own spheres, of course. Not every brand will be able to influence every sphere of the consumer. Whatever the chosen sphere which they have, you need to make sure that you impact the consumer in a positive way. Those for me are the two things which can really ensure that you have a resilient and a brand which is there for ages and brands which consumers love. So completely echo what Sandeep said. Yes, be invested in your consumer. You need to have authenticity to your purpose. But I think the other thing that you need to do to build resilient brands is to be invested in your brand strategies and build on your distinctive assets. Very often the temptation is there to kind of move away from what you have been doing and try something new and disruptive. Consistency is very, very key. I think the building resilience for your brands and for your categories. So that's my perspective. Building on authenticity, but also consistency and building, taking up the assets you already have and taking that to the next level. Ravi, your take on this? Just a point of view because I think what pandemic taught us is this resilience is not the word to use anymore. It's antifragile because resilient only allows you to bounce back without learning anything and you're just not breaking. Whereas antifragility as Thaleb calls it, it's all about what did you learn because of which you'll be better off going forward. And obviously the foundation doesn't change whether it is the authenticity that you require for whether it is the distinctive assets that you are created or you want to do. So the most interesting thing and important thing for me is like, how are you going to marry in this data rich world? The human insight in which people seem to miss a lot nowadays. Because I think everybody is moving towards the data, data, data, data. I keep telling my team that there is a flesh and blood behind the data, do you know them? We feel them, we have a feel about what they are feeling. So how I'm going to mix empathy and digital and that's the biggest thing that I'm looking for in terms of how do I get empathy in the digital world? Interesting, interesting. So to authenticity and consistency, we also add the element of empathy in digital because you cannot get too carried away by data as well. And you need to maintain that element as a brand. Ishwinder, from you, any comments on this? Yeah, I'll have a go at it. I think I agree with everybody on the panel. It's extremely important for brands to address a consumer pain point. And you have to be purposeful in that. The empathy portion which Ravi talked about is extremely important. And authenticity because it is your unique proposition to the consumer, which has to come from a authentic consumer insight. What is the unique thing you're addressing in a consumer's life is something you have to take into the consumer. Please add a dose of creativity in today's digital world. Data is too much, but creativity is what breaks the clutter. And please create a narrative that is relevant and consistent over time, but also agile to the changes which happen in the market around you. So a lot of things which have been pulled out, but I think authenticity, purposeful, empathetic, okay? And a consistent communication over time is what builds resilient brands. Thanks Ishwinder, thank you for that. With that, I think we'll call it a wrap. I think we talked about a lot of interesting things today. I think the whole notion of how the pandemic disrupted but caused a lot of innovation in its wake when it came to marketing. It was very evident in all the examples that were shared today, whether it was about moment-based marketing or how regulation and customer behavior changed in the banking industry or how consumer inciting and media planning itself went a massive change. Or even in the alcohol beverage category, how properties which were purely physical moved to the notion of fidgeting. So, and then I think some interesting examples came out on marrying creativity with technology. But I think at the end what you guys wrapped up in terms of what builds resilient or antifragile brands is really things around authenticity, around consistency, around being purposeful and empathy. I think these obviously will stand the test of time, no matter what the situation may be. So thank you guys for sharing those thoughts. I hope that the audience will really benefit from the insightful and rich discussion that we had today. And thank you so much to all of you for joining us today and making time for this discussion. It was really, really great to have you on board for this inaugural discussion of Masters of Marketing Roundtable for 2022. Thank you once again. Thank you, Vasudev. Thank you, Vasudev. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Vasudev. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone.