 So while deciding the theme for the panel here before the awards, we were scratching our heads and saying what is it that would kind of be the right thing to touch upon as far as brands are concerned and everywhere we're going around we're talking about a lot of stuff which revolves around content marketing and we said why don't we put a panel together to understand what content marketing is all about because I still have a feeling that a lot of us are naive to the whole concept despite the fact that it's gaining so much momentum but what exactly does content marketing entail is beyond like you mentioned beyond digital companies, can broadcast companies, can publication companies actually leverage content marketing to the best of their abilities and we've got quite an eclectic panel that's going to be talking about this informing us exactly about what content marketing is all about and with a loud round of applause please support our panelists here, I'm going to be calling on stage your name one by one, request you to please come up and take your place. Our moderator for this particular panel discussion is Mr. Avik Chathapadhyay, co-founder brand strategy firm Xperia. Guys we only got to start it, we need to get some energy running on the floor and there's a standard instruction to all the speakers unless you're happy with the kind of applause that you get you're not going to start. Are you happy with that Avik? Okay, that's an afterthought. Avik has been in the automotive industry for the past 22 years and now he's started off with Xperia. I'm going to be calling out your panelists names Avik, Mr. Anand Ramakrishnan head content and digital marketing HCL technology, Mr. Radhika Vinani, G-Product Officer Policy Bazaar.com, Mr. Satyendra Joneja, B.B. Sales and Marketing, N.I.I.T. Technology, Mr. Ashwin Anamal, C.O.O. Reliance Broadcast, and do we have Rushmi Kochir at the house yet? I was told that she's here. Alright, we'll probably track her down and request her to join the panel. Rushmi Kochir is the director of marketing and marketing cooperation. We have exactly 45 minutes to spare some time for a Q&A session with the audience. So effectively save about 35 minutes for the panel discussion in 10 minutes maybe. Thank you. This opportunity, the seating of it, and all of you would say exactly where you are. What I know is that it's an extremely interesting subject to be talking about and discussing today. Something that we've all heard of, something which most of us have also been doing in our everyday lives. Hopefully most of us are knowing what exactly we're doing. But before we start, I would request each one of you just a couple of sentences about what you do in your professional lives, and then we move forward. And we know the marketing automation in NCL Technologies. Again, I'm basically a way to be a marketer, a technology marketer most of my life. I've been with companies like Infosys, IBM, and now I'm with NCL. It's been a very good journey. And I think from a non-democratic perspective, it's a very unique perspective to be on the B2B screens because we look at things like you differently. So I'm looking forward to the session. I'm Radhika Bernani. I manage a product and policy wizard. Prior to policy wizard, I started my career with Hindustan labor and spent a lot of time at Citibank doing sales and management. So nothing at all with digital, but now moving to the digital world, I think communicating with real customers is to translate into digital communication. That's all right. So I'm Ashwin Patnaman, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer at the Alliance Broadcaster. We're the network of 45 radio stations, another brand name, I need to point 70 FN. We also run two TV channels, Big Magic, which is Hindi, GC, and the Big Ganga, which is Coach Puri, GC. It's been a ten-year journey for me in the media space. Before that, it was technology, biotechnology actually. I'm now a startup, about 15 years back. So it's been different things, including a photography company. I brought in getting majors into India. That was about 15 years back. So multiple things, it's been interesting. But one thing that's been part of all this journey has been content and content creation. So look forward to what we speak about. Great, Ashwin. So I'll start with you. Given your journey of content, right from images to radio, whatever else you've done in the spectrum, before we get discussing on certain aspects of this pre-annual idea, how would you describe content from your perspective? In a very early, my career, I realized that when I made this mistake, I realized that I don't start from yourself, start from the consumer. And if you were able to understand the consumer and understand what he or she wants, and you were able to then find a point of intersection, which is your brand's messaging and what the consumer wants, you should be able to create content which works. Now, is that going to be brilliant content? Is that going to be engaging content? Is that really going to be entertaining? Is where the creative process comes in. But the strategy part of it is to identify this point of intersection. And usually, in my experience over these 15 years of creating content, I realize that we typically go terribly wrong in this initial phase of content creation and identification of what should be the communication itself. That's been my biggest learning over these years. The second thing is that there's a creative part of it. The creative part of it is not dependent upon not just data points of the consumer. My experience says that, yeah, today this can mark a lot of first half. Humongous is more of data about the consumer in terms of facts and figures. But decipher that into psychographics is where I see a bigger challenge. Because content works when you understand the consumer not just as math data points, but as a human being, as a person who's got emotions, who's got feelings, who responds to it. And that's the second learning that we had over this, I had over this learning. And how to map and bring in human emotions, how to map yourself to psychographics, and then create content which works. These are the two biggest learning points I've had. And I believe that if you keep these two in mind, you'll typically get to a consumer or the message you want. Very interesting. Thanks, Ashwin. Adika, according to you, how would you describe content, especially from the perspective of what you do like that? So content, I think, just has definition and bringing out three or four points which I'll advance in a little more. So basically it is relevant communication, consistent and measurable communication that we give to the customer along with lifecycle. So relevant in some sense, what Ashwin was talking about in terms of consumer personas. So when the guy is 50 years old, I don't want to be talking to him about how you should start planning for your retirement. Or again, there's a 20. I have to look at the right age for me to start talking about how somebody can manage their finances. And consistent, it's not only about brand imagery, brand communication consistency. I think from a marketer's point of view, keeping the go at communication is not about developing 100 videos, one short, putting it in or some 50 different infographics and putting it in. But how we can consistently keep the pedal on content and throughout the lifecycle, that's quite important because we always keep them talking about content. Or content is good for top of funnel, or it's not very good for bottom of funnel. But for example, if the guy is going to buy a mutual fund or if he's going to buy a term insurance policy, I need to be able to communicate to him through simple calculators or simple, say, infographics which he changes to a comparison and buy-in. That's the reason of our existence. How you can compare various financial products and make it relevant to the customer. So these are three key points, relevant, consistent and throughout the customer's brand journey. Interesting. Anand, given that a large part of your life or the most of your life has evolved into being in any of the interfaces, how would you describe content? I think because, you know, I think of a lot of companies are now moving into while something can say that a country like IBM has been doing auto marketing. It's not really true. There are lots of things about auto marketing but it's not there as far as the tradition, not much about people. So I think all of us, you want to know where we are in terms of how many years we have spent on marketing. I think all of us are learning this part of what is going to be marketing in a sustainable way and how to basically get results out of it. It's here that the content marketing journey has been relatively new. It's like basically one year since we have set up the auto marketing team and as part of my role, I have to go and meet a lot of delivery people because, you know, that's where the actual work happens. The delivery folks basically work without clients to deliver work. So one question, and my role was to advance lives on demand to the team and one question I got asked quite a few times was what is auto marketing? Is it losing content for marketing? Absolutely it is but the fundamental difference that I wanted to drive home was that it's not about having a brochure, a solution we described on the website. It's about looking at it from the other way from the customer's point of view. What is the taking point? What are the ambitions, what are the fears of the customer and how do we create content and find that intersection that we talk about? So that's really key and it's an ongoing journey. And the second problem is we have to realize that to do content marketing you need to have scale. If you don't have scale, you won't be able to deliver work. And to have scale, you need to have systems and processes in place and that means technology to us. So we are at this point in the middle of an implementation of a framework and we are really looking forward to really getting more out of it. Okay, so empathy, relevance and consistency and scale. Interesting ways of looking at the same, at the same, that's at least for the same problem or the same opportunity. We wait for Rashmi to come in and she's from Amagi so she will have also given us an extremely interesting perspective to content marketing from our side. But Satinder, you are in the same space as Anand. Now, would you look at this entire concept as the same way that he has or we have a different perspective or would we have something to add to Anand? And our goal is to work together. First line you read in your marketing course book is to be different. So, yeah, my idea is a bit different. See to me, few, few, few elements here or few thoughts which I try to connect. So first and foremost content is an experience. How that gets discovered, how that gets consumed, how that gets reacted to is a different story. So content is an experience. Second part which I have seen over the last 10 years that I have grabbed up with content. So that is when I, I believe in the rest of my colleagues here, we are still learning. We are still creeping with the piece and trying to figure out the size and the shape of it. So that's the second part. Third part is that technology is a huge enabler as well as a challenge. The problem in the life is the enabler part people probably know or the challenger part. And this is true for any content. You put your sweat, blood and dollars in the content but you don't know how is it getting consumed. Just give a simple example. I was going through a study by Edo and they say that over 63% of the people while watching TV, you know, indulge in something else. 49% text, 53% do something else. Imagine somebody has put the content on TV to do this and he more experienced on this. So destruction is humongous. Last part, last 5 to 6 years I am seeing our patience levels have dropped. So I tell this to my team that remember the patience level of your leader is 140 categories. So if you get the justice to that, then your home, last part, is the storytelling. So experience and storytelling are the parallel elements of how do you deal with content. So this is these 4 or 5 tenants. To me, if you handled it well or you are trying to handle it well, probably you are moving in the right direction on content marketing. Interesting, on the subject of storytelling that you mentioned, because when I also in my professional life and now I am entrepreneur, so when I have heard this term content marketing, I thought to myself, what should you do about it? And you have picked up storytelling. And I said, listen, I mean we have the concept of storytelling. That is possibly one of the first great instance of creating content. And it was focused on content. It was targeted content. And it is content that has actually gone across the boundaries of my land into being one of the most translated books on earth. It was first translated into a similar version. And then it was all languages. And I have seen the concept of it being read in France. I have seen it being read in Italy. In their own languages and we enjoy it. So what's the difference? And why is this sudden or thought, is it that we are creating hype around it and we are creating this term content marketing? You may have thought, possibly according to me, what's really changed over the years is, earlier it was a one-way process. I create content and I go out and I disseminate it through the media or the channels that I eat. I eat. So it's all dependent on me. Now it's actually become a two-way process. And that's what possibly makes our lives that way more challenging. Because today what I do is completely in the context of where I am and which is the context of who my heart is. But taking this up, I would come to you, Radhika, given again more of the space that you are in and also given the fact that you through policies are a great service to the average man and woman in the street. Do you think content marketing now becomes so structured that it becomes almost like a science more than an art? There might be the fear of control of brands when we control minds more than actually wanting to create which is the way it should be. I disagree. I think control is a very strong word, I think, as marketer. We don't want to be seen as controlling customers who want to influence and positively influence towards your brand. But in terms of the other problems, in terms of current context, the difference is that earlier there was one Panchatantra you might hear it from your grandmom's mouth. Then there might be some books which I hand with me down and then there will be libraries. And these are your dissemination points and just staying with the same Panchatantra. But today the discoverability is so wide and so accessible to people and that's what is causing the problems. So to read a Panchatantra, would I go to Google to read Panchatantra or would I go to a YouTube? Though I go to the same companies. But I'm not here for different formats. You would go to YouTube to look at a video or would you go to a specialized storytelling science to talk about it? So in terms of discoverability being such a big issue, I think we are trying to make it more factory-oriented, so in that sense more scientific so that we know that we need to put in so much investment and the investment is creating the content and disseminating the content. Both are as expensive as each other. And hence because of the problem of discoverability so when the customer comes in, you want to keep him and keep him for life and hence that control is a word that comes to our mind. But I think what I would like to believe, the customer comes to your site, it's about how you've laid it out for him starting with what is he really looking for. Saying, are you in your 30s? Here's what are the five things that you need to do to become, to get a million dollars in your bank in the next corner. If that's what I'm going to tell him, I'm sure he would be my customer for life and I don't mind controlling it. Ashwin, you were smiling when I used the word. Yeah. So Anand was quite disturbed. Because I was smiling. You know, the word control is irrelevant in today's consumer context. You can't control him or her. You can't control the consumer. The consumer has his own mind. If we believe that we can control them, I think we are supporting them. Seriously, you can't control the consumer at all today. The access to information, like you said, is so much. The first thing that, what do you do? You know, you're just sitting there and you're like, you spoke about this company. And as I'm speaking right, I realized unconsciously what did I do. I put them by phone and did a Google search. That's, I didn't even know I was doing it. I was doing it. So the consumer chooses what they want. Where do they want it? And they also choose to discard it. There is, which is why what we're trying to do is not really control but to create upon them. Yeah, but I would ask you specifically in the context that you would like the brands or shapes and sizes, various intent throughout your journey. Have you seen or have you ever felt this urge in the organization is what actually you want them to control? There will likely be a lot of influence. Yeah. And actually you want them to control? No, so clearly obviously you won't get your message across, right? I'm trying to make it very normal. You have to get your message across. You're right, we work with different kinds of customers. So on extreme there's a comment that we work with. We don't even go to the past one year. Very interesting project. And they surely want to showcase what they've been doing in their room. They want to also showcase the change that they've brought about. And we have used the story in the format to actually bring that out. The messaging there is literally embedded. It's almost like a sci-fi movie that you would even know that the message is embedded but it gets to you. And so it's actually subtle. Now they were paranoid about wanting us to not do it on the face. Because they were smart. They were sensitive about the fact that the moment I do it on the face the customer has been rejected. But that's not the case with a lot of other marketers that we work with. Their first demand, so to say, is to be on the face product information being seeded into content that we create. And it is almost always a disaster. We were not part of this project but it was a project run by a brand from South. It's a kitchen brand here in a TV show. It's called the brand name. And the brand was extremely excited about what they did. What they saw on the show. The brand was all over the show. Their products were all over the show. And they were delighted when it was happening. A year later I met the marketing head and I asked him, we did that show. What do you think? Did it work for you? He started saying this was the biggest mistake of my life. I said, why? Because you did this? He said, no, because I had lost the plot. I wanted to see my lower way. I wanted to see my products everywhere. I forgot that the completely screwed with the storytelling. So the show won. Nobody saw it. So I saw my product there but no consumer ever saw my product interacting with the consumer there in the shows. That happens with a lot of marketers. When you fall in love with your product and you forget the consumer, you actually covet it again. Yeah, I've also felt so. In my own profession of life even in organizations where I have worked I've seen in people in individuals and also unfortunately, in a few organizations that there is this immense understanding. You want to control people's minds and their hearts and you think you can do that but actually you won't end up doing it at all before faculty will fix. And as we were talking about consumers get to go home who just went out to Google and checked the name of the organization I have reminded of in the 1980s a very famous Indian historian because our honest Trivati had created a very interesting statement where he said when he was asked about the future of history and he used a statement he said as facts pile up on facts we get to go more and more or less on this. And so in that context technology obviously plays an extremely important role today in creating content in curating content and then disseminating it. So do you ever see technology becoming the big daddy or do you think content always takes control? Content always manages technology instead of technology becoming the Leviathan and content almost being the slave to it. There have been a couple of students who have learned their knowledge for sure. So it's actually technology is a huge enabler and in fact you already alluded to the fact that in the last few years with more knowledge it's coming to the fact it's because technology has permeated it. So two are three things here. One because of technology today and this is very true in B2B happening in B2B to see also is the audience of one is a reality thanks to technology. Now one of the phenomenons that has hit us in the last 10-15 days is Pokemon Go. One of the things that Pokemon Go is huge because it talks to the audience of one. Yet being at a scale in millions of the numbers and huge interactions which are taking over Twitter etc. So audience of one is a reality. So that has happened because of technology. Another thing which a smart marketer who by leveraging technology is trying to behave. So I differ with you on control but I am not firm believer that if you know your audience well if you know your customer well which is somebody mentioned here about customer journey so you really can try to behave and that is where content plays a beautiful role. So you have various form factors of content various shapes and sizes of content. If you know your customers or consumers well enough you can try the behavior I mean I would just want to recite a couplet here in Hindi which is very true for content marketing which is you know this is what content marketing is all about. Terrific. Nothing more to say. Anand how could you take it forward from here because we are now in India we are also getting exposed to new terms like hyper-local marketing. I personally had an interaction with Nielsen where they are working on one is to one kilometer winds and through thermal imaging and heat farming and geostationary satellites working obviously with various departments and functions in the government they are actually going to go exactly within one is to one kilometer which household is being bought when. In that context when we are actually moving into this kind of an era where our lives are not actually private anymore where you see the opportunity and you see any fears in us. And opportunities both as an auditor there are opportunities but when I put myself in the shoes of a consumer yes so you know I made a point that I will implement it all and you can see how much information we have on you and decide what information you want them to have and what you don't want them to have. So because of I think a lot of laws that are in place and discussions that are happening companies are convinced that they can't cross the line so often they need to do the fact that the government has opened up their database of you for you. So I said that I think it's going to be a join some of these guys going forward open as I said working with those guys really make that theory more important. It's in technology how much do you really invest in technology maybe as a percentage as a ballpark percentage of your overall let's say zoom on and expand which is very large we also have a lot of people this is what I was trying to say in terms of scaling up because if you want to start you could have one person writing three blocks or two people that's fine when you're a six billion organization or two or three whatever you're trying to do you cannot produce that you need to have some place in the company that's like a factor piece in what we're making section you need to have some place in the company that is always coming into the processor in the competition but it has to be technology systems that capture ideas not just from marketers but from sales from the delivery people and from outside and go back into marketing ideas and where and what and push that into different channels and then measure so that's the scale that I'm talking about this is just a tool you need to have the supporting systems outside of the tool you need to measure how can we measure this I mean is there just one way of measuring it or are there various ways you want to measure it are there any structure whether time is coming or do you see them actually coming so a lot of content like we created on that we're on TV already especially in the stock market we've got brands most of the times there are two ways in which brands have seen it has been effective for a long time one is obviously intellect impact on the product moving off the shelf the showroom is a worldwide maybe the second is something that we spoke about are you able to create advocates for the brand people who start believing in the beat and in fact you spoke about the use of figuring out the insights for me the engine that you developed because it insights mining engine in a way and we work with the company called advocacy it's a relation of where we have used radio and digital together to run a new through a process where we showcase let's say 1,000 people who enroll into a program and they give it games to play the last part of content marketing I also believe is engaging with the consumer so we create engagement games which they play both on radio as well as on a particular platform and as they keep on playing games they learn more about the product Radhika how do you go about measure the content that you create so when we're doing a digital campaign so one of my ways of evaluating a digital agency is like how would we measure we'll give you views we'll give you clicks the agency is all because we are fortunate to be an online company so we measure every marketing endeavour through how it is resulted in the bottom line which is in terms of incremental visitors that come in and out of those how many of them gave us revenue how I view whether it is a TV campaign because we can measure how the traffic is moved as soon as the advertisement is aired through the increase in traffic for the next 8 minutes we know it has an impact then any digital campaign of course we measure and then we go down to how has that incremental visitor converted what's the conversion rate on the visitor so that's something which we are maybe because we're not as big as billion dollars company because you want to make every dollar we measure it of course we do realise when I'm measuring content I would have different benchmarks I expect it to perform two weeks worse off than say if BBC so I have those internal benchmarks which I'm comfortable with there is no set pattern we keep refining it and we talk around I'm sure there is no mantra as long as the marketing as well as my CEO is that I think they're doing good my background is actually and I'm over the years with my experience with whatever I have for my civil place if there is one way of measuring the content it is the simple measurements when automobile companies service your vehicle or what your vehicle you typically send the question 3-4 questions forget 3-4 questions one question would you recommend Volkswagen to your friend or would you recommend this to your friend if you say yes I'm not sure to bring this discussion sorry you have to bring it to an end somewhere but to bring it to an end I would just ask each one of you one minute each for you what is the one big thing that you want to do I started with the experience so I would want to go down to the extreme section of the experience and to make sure that the experience of my content to the audience of one is memory in whatever form factor flavor that it is given out so that experience through pre-regulability, discovery pre-consumption has to be well I think that's also the experience of our department which is not a big factor at this point there is no motto I want to exist now I want to present the addresses so if you want such a motto I think it's going to be a portion for this to bring more investment from management right now when we go and talk about marketing for investment there is obviously a question and it's very very hard to justify that so it's long it's a long trade yes there are some leaks about that but it's not a very short time so then understanding how to translate that into actual hardware industry can benefit from it something that Dr. would experience is how to nanotip I think I would pick co-creation so in that sense cloud sourcing of funding finding out ways of scaling content and lining up vendors who can give you videos, infographics etc but it's not sustainable so something new we have nanotip advisers on it but how a standalone business an operating business can prove that I think that's something which I would not expect co-creation interesting question we are the business of content so it's not an investment for me it is an investment I think all of this is what adds up to what we do and what I would like to what we try to do every day we spoke about co-creation one of the biggest assets that we ever created in the recent past was this character called Jyotkin Shokilore this became a youtube page about a year and a half this gentleman called Gaurav Kehla used to be the actor who created this short one minute 30 second clip out of his iPhone it is a selfie character and he used to post it on youtube edited on his phone posted on youtube and he became within a few months he had 2 million followers we got him on and we started working with him closely today what you spoke about Radhika we are doing this on a real time basis we work with content creators across the country today to create content for us on their phones these are audio clips these are video clips frankly the whole broadcast is changing today all of you in this room are potentially broadcasters all of you can create content which can be seen and heard and consumed right now by all of us across the world as a broadcaster that is the power we are looking at I think what Radhika spoke about is actually of the paramount and the most important technique we are looking at at this point I guess that is the best way to conclude today's discussion which is each one of us has the power to create so we have the creator and each one of us and as long as we keep doing that and creating better experiences which then can be analyzed and created better I guess content marketing is not something that we should be discussing about any more which will be implementing much better I don't believe me I think the lesson is that you don't need to be a specialist on marketing everybody in this room can be about marketing you can create content you don't even need marketing much into marketing today thank you very much I am sorry I am rushing you because we have our chief guest here right here we want to hear from him we also have Anurag Bhattra editor in chief but thank you all so much for your time and of course we set the ball rolling there is a lot to learn did you want to see the Truman show Jim Carrey I think that is a perfect example of content marketing which came about three decades back as far as the movie is concerned so much I would like to invite on stage we are going to acknowledge you formally sir Mr. Ranadeep Chakravarti head marketing and product strategy first close to please come up on stage and offer a token of appreciation on behalf of the exchange for media group for the selected panel to have taken the time sharing their insights as far as content marketing is concerned with a lot of groundwork much for moderating this particular panel we got Radhika Vinani our product officer policy was our dot com we got something to do later from NID Technologies we also got another of a Krishnan head content and digital marketing in CL Technologies and of course Ashmit Patmanathan COO Reliance Broadcast thank you all we will read about tonight using hashtag top 50 brands we can have a group photograph right up in front before you all leave like I said content from this room will not be contained within these four walls it's going to be carried across on all the various platforms that exchange for media hosts both online as well as offline