 The first speaker of the day, Mr. Sudeep, is the Managing Director and CEO of MoFridge. He gives me an opportunity to be speaking on the topic of the new marketing table. And we are pleased to have him here with us today. Of course, keeping in touch with us in other ways, we will be joining us digitally. Thank you so much for your valuable time. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give him a huge round of applause. So we'd love to hear from you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. We can. Thank you. I'm really sorry for not being able to join live. I think I have an recorded video which will play. But I just want to say that since for many years, I've been an avid leader of the Pitch Management Report. The first time, actually, I'm very sensitive about it. And I really enjoyed last half an hour listening to it. And it's such an exciting time for our industry. And for media, both in terms of the kind of rapid growth and the transformation of the channel makes that it's really a privilege to be here today. A video for my keynote address. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sadeep, joining us right now. Thank you for that. Well, this is such a perfect evaluation. He's joining us virtually yet. He saw our evaluation. And now I'm going to bring you in for the video to be played for this session over the technique. We're after you to all of you. I must first leave. If you see apologizes not being there in person to speak to you. It's one of the problems in the hybrid world. Sam first invited me for a real meeting. I said yes. I was invited for another one which I said no to. Then this became virtual. And that became virtual. So I said yes to both of them. The other one which was out of station became real first. So I said yes to that. And said I do this virtually. And now both of them are real. The others are now set to speak to you virtually. I do hope I can make up. And I do hope that in the question and answer, we can try and be as engaging as the virtual world allows. Sam asked me to speak about the new marketing table. It's something that I'm usually very likely to talk about because I'm also usually very wrong. Most of my predictions regarding marketing have proven to be completely wrong. But I thought I'd still take another chance at it and speak to you about three things which I think will exemplify the new marketing table. I have a group called this year with a lot of my ex marketing team, a lot of brand managers that I work with, marketing managers that I work with. And we exchange ideas and articles on marketing with each other. And generally talk about the future of marketing on that day. A few days ago, I received an article there called Expiring Business Permanent Skills. And it was a blog on the page of a private entity or an investment fund called the Collaborative Fund. And the article was written by Morgan Housel. I think if you can, do have a look at it. It speaks about in business what skills will be permanent and what skills will be inspiring. In an extremely interesting case about how in the 19th century the most renowned skill for energy cadets graduating from West Point in the US was drawing and painting. Not because drawing and painting opens your mind but because soldiers fighting in Africa or Latin America needed to draw maps on the fly. But technology is obviously not really a skill needed now and that's why drawing and painting are no longer the skills we require of soldiers. So the article got me thinking about what will remain unchanged in marketing and what will change. One of the points Housel makes is one of the skills that will remain unchanged to get to the point quickly. So let me get to the point quickly. I'm going to talk about three things. One of which I'm reasonably certain won't change. One of which I think won't change but I could be terribly wrong about it. And one thing that I think will change. What I think won't change and absolutely won't change are the fundamentals of marketing. Are the fundamentals of marketing are insight, positioning, proposition and the big idea. These things have changed in the last 150 years and there's no reason for it to change in the future. There are plenty of examples of great brands. In fact all great brands if one scullies is there and lasted for a long period of time have basically remained unchanged on these four. Take the example of GCPI's iconic brand, Synthop and have a look at these two advertisements. One with Vivo Khanna in the 1980s some more recently on Synthop which is body confidence is one of the best ways to express masculinity because masculinity is body confidence is probably the insight. It's positioning is not an explorer it's the archetype of an explorer. We have a proposition of freshness and it has a big idea of masculine men in the wild. This is fundamentally structurally remain unchanged for the last 20-40 years. However, the definitions of masculinity have changed. So from being masculine the new masculine is more metrosexual but leaving these peripheral changes the core of this great brand like many of the great brands have remained unchanged. In general fundamentals are 90% in the marketing game and therefore I do believe that 90% of the marketing game won't change. There's another area in marketing where a lot of people think it will change but I am now coming to the conclusion and with the caveat that this is still local but it won't change. I'm not quite sure that the digital revolution will fundamentally change the way we do media planning. Digital does allow you to do mass customizations too but I don't think that mass brands need customization. Mass brands by definition are mass because they gave it a few fundamental mass units. I remember in 2004 as a brand manager we had done a segmentation study to see what were the various segments in India watched on TV. We ran a study around the richest Indian the middle class Indians, very poor Indians across various states of India especially rural India and we figured out what the media really happened was because clearly still all of them saw K.O.T.Sasmi for me bothy. And I think that's the truth about a lot of us when it comes to mass products and mass brands we are unknowingly similar to each other. Take for example mosquitoes how many needs do we have in killing mosquitoes? Some of us are scared of negi, malaria some of us want good rights some of us want mosquito protection in India and some of us want it out of us three or four big demographics so how many segments are actually there so even though we have the ability to reach every single individual Indian with many of the digital tools available I think that's the benefits of mass marketing in this school to continue the way it has for the last couple of years I'm not being like about it and saying nothing will quite the contrary in the next 20 years things will change about the way media is playing and mass marketing for instance and you have a look at this lovely audio for the last 20 seconds of it playing the first recorded brand phone of a classical song a classical concert now I played 120 years ago it took me two and a half, three hours but the brand phone allowed me two and a half or three minutes and gohar jaan played the entire raag in three minutes signing it off with a great branded statement saying I am gohar jaan again so while gohar jaan plays the new medium brilliantly branded he did fundamentally change the nature of classical music it was still the same raag also the same raag and in that sense I do feel that digital will require some adaptation and some improvisation it will not be a long game of digital media it will fundamentally go to a six second YouTube bug word or a Facebook static that's my bet and these will read this you have a twenty second TV or a sixty cc great ad but it will still be wonderful I had a few years ago when the digital world was still in its infancy and I was talking about seven or eight years ago we were all very excited and we tried once again we had 60 different ads on Facebook to 60 different cohorts and surprise surprise it was the same ad and one more cohorts and that raised the point I'm not quite sure that consumers really want or need it I think one area of marketing that will definitely definitely change is the way we organize ourselves in marketing I think we will move from people making judgments to people being aided to make judgments using algorithms a brand manager can brand ten times the media brand that is counterpart twenty years to do with the help of relatively simple algorithms even pre-COVID I would spend two days or three days every two weeks traveling to remote parts of the country meeting consumers and I still do that but I could go advance in two weeks I don't pass in a month and actually every week I spend three or four hours on Friday afternoon meeting consumers in remote parts of the country digitally so that saves a lot of airline it saves a lot of organization a lot of agency time a lot of overheads for us I remember earlier on when we had a proof of a printed advertisement to be released in times of India the next day early morning nine o'clock some of the agency would come with the printed proofs I looked at it and made some comments send it back with her she'd go to the office and make some corrections perhaps once more I'd send it back then she'd send it I'd sign it and give it to the assistant brand manager then the agency would go its own back end work and send the final positives to times of India at 11 12 o'clock in the night I'd just use the process imagine how much of that process is now done I think the point I'm thinking is that marketing is starting to a whole set of overheads which are gradually disappearing but I feel like the OV way will ensure that these overheads are in their equation that's a good thing because what we really need to pay in marketing our few skills each with a different example I think the role of big idea is significantly more important or at least as important in the past and I think there'll be competition for great creative people who don't come to a lot of building space and a lot of people as overheads with it there are three skills I feel in the future the first is clarity some kind of strategic clarity that you must have and what should be done two is problem solving people with clarity will set the problem set the agenda people who are comfortable with algorithmic decision to take it and third is creative people who have the ability to drive and generate big ideas I think if you have one of these three skills you are in the game if you have two you are in a couple of parts but if you have none of these I think companies, agencies people all of us need to be skill ourselves with these three skills not with these three skills I think they were always important but it came with a lot of overhead camouflage and that overhead camouflage revolution is going to break through and the three skills that were always these are kind of skills charity, analytical ability and creativity are kind of skills but you are just not going to need a powerful area around these skills I guess my bet on the new marketing playbook is 95% of it is going to change but the 5% that is going to change is all of us the skills that we need that we have to sharpen and that is what is going to change and how the government skills and how it talks about in his lovely blog is the willingness to adapt to views that you wish your government but you have to accept that they run their course and I think that a lot of the extra skills in marketing that were there we have to understand that there are no longer required and the three core skills of marketing analytical ability and creativity are all at the task and I guess that is my big bet on what will change in the new marketing playbook thank you very much we should have a great event thank you