 Alright everybody, welcome to Martec Fridays. This is a part of the series called E4M Martec League. It's a virtual forum to connect forward thinking marketers and technology companies for a panel discussion on every Friday, discussing actionable tactics to solve marketing challenges, deploying the right market to stay ahead and achieve business results in the ever-changing world of digital marketing. Today we have two panels. The first one is on the topic communicating with today's always-on consumer. Do stay tuned for the next panel too that begins at 4pm on the topic technologies for enhanced customer engagement. Please don't forget to use the hashtag E4M webinar on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. We are live on Facebook as well as our own microsites and other social media portals. I will now introduce Ahmed Aftar Nakwe. He is the CEO and co-founder of Buzoof and also the session chair for today. He is one of the pioneers of digital marketing in an industry and the CEO and co-founder of one of India's leading digital first marketing companies whose clientele includes the likes of Adele, Taj Hotels, Buxlery, Tata Steel, Intermiles among others. So now I give it over to you Ahmed. Have a fantastic session everybody. Great. Thank you so much Sunakshi. Thank you Exchange for Media for holding this and welcome to everyone present on this webinar. You know since the onset of the COVID era there has been such increased focus on business performance and the joke that is going around on WhatsApp is that who is responsible for the digital transformation of your organization? Is it the CEO? Is it the CTO? Or is it COVID-19? And we all know what the answer is and with that increased digital transformation our marketing departments have been privy to it as well. We have all seen how digital marketing has taken this impetus to really drive ROI and connect with the digital on consumer at all times. In digital marketing what's more important today in such times is MATEK, the blending of marketing and technology. MATEK globally has been a $120 billion industry. In India it's around 100 to $150 million right? So this is growing especially in the post COVID era we'll see a greater impetus on MATEK. I have a very experienced panel with me to discuss this in detail and specifically discuss that how we can leverage this MATEK to connect, engage and delight the always-on consumer. It's very important that we focus on that. We understand how this behavior has changed in the past three months. Some of the brands doing and what are the experts of our industry doing to really drive this change. Today I would love to welcome on the panel with me today, Roshni Das who has been championing the marketing for Intel. She has over 20 years of cross functional marketing experience and not just in India but across Asia Pacific and even in Japan. She champions both the B2C as well as the B2C aspect of marketing and that gives a great very depth to the discussion that we'll do today on both ends of the spectrum. So please welcome Roshni. Roshni, great to have you here. Along with that we have Virginia Sharma joining us for 20 years of experience at leadership positions at IBM, LinkedIn and more recently she's been championing the marketing at Jio Sawan. She's been awarded by Economic Times as a woman entrepreneur in 2018. The impact of 50 women marketing and she's been pioneering a lot of industry first things when it comes to marketing. So please welcome Virginia. Virginia, great to have you here. We also have Nikhil Rastogi who's been championing the marketing for Dyson. He has experienced over 20 years in marketing as well as digital transformation. This industry awards including CMO Asia, MVs, DMA Asia amongst a lot more. In today's discussion there have been multiple practices that he's used in his career that he'll be sharing with us. So welcome Nikhil to the panel. Thank you Amit. Glad to be here. And last but not the least we have Sonia Notani who's the member and CMO in their first life insurance. She's a very passionate marketer across domains and she's also been best with the honor of 40 under 40 by Fortune magazine as well as Super 30 CMO owner by IAMAI. So we'll keep the panel today and we would love to have a great discussion. Welcome to the panel. My pleasure. Thank you so much Amit. Lovely. So I think we should kick start firstly while we talk about Maatek in greater detail possibly a bit later on in our discussion. There is this entire misnomer about the always-on consumer. You know who's this always-on consumer? Is he very different from the consumer of the past and has it has there anything which has changed in the past three months with this always-on consumer? How are they different? And I would love to get Roshni into this discussion. Roshni what are your thoughts? Who is this always-on consumer? I think that yeah since you bring up you know an association with the past we've long passed the consumer you know who was satisfied with the passive broadcast and as you say now the consumer's more engaged he's more always-on or she's more always-on. I think the evolution especially is stuck in the last three four months you know in the way that they're making choices about media platforms and in the way that they're consuming it's a more non-linear more multi-media being consumed across platforms. So I think that this has forced a lot of companies a lot of brands during this time to find a method to synchronize messages across different mediums. So I would say that's one part of it. Second part of it is given the fact that many of us have been at home there has been a lot of social and e-commerce upswing and has allowed many of us access to products and marketing you know on these platforms. So to me when I think about always-on consumers you can I think you can bucket them but they're across a large spectrum right. They're these largely social but opinion makers they are information seekers or they're just anxious bargain buyers. So you I think given the fact that they're all at different spectrums we've had to look at the personas and then marry to data. And then the third piece that I would talk about is data right. I think COVID has brought to us very starkly that certain areas have taken a huge upswing at least from a category that Intel watches online learning is that we've had about 300% upswing say on online learning search or we've had 52% increase on gaming based PCs. And so when you look at personas that are you know seeking your brand all the time and you look at data being relevant marrying both the persona and data has become very critical during this time to be in service of this consumer. That's useful I would love to have some of Sonia's thoughts about this always-on consumer. Who are we talking to? So I think this is a very interesting and important question for all of us today right. But I like to see my customers as two sets like I count myself as a digital immigrant. I didn't grow up with a mobile phone right. I grew up in a park and I see my son he is a digital native right. He's grown up with a mobile phone. I remember many years back when he was just a couple of years old he'd actually swipe a screen and even a laptop screen because that's what his expectation levels were right. So I think there is a very simple division between a digital native and a digital immigrant that doesn't take away the fact that the digital immigrants like us are today totally immersed in technology but for us it's a learned behavior right. We don't think starting at the digital step we first think normally and then we transform it into our journey on a digital platform but I think the digital natives just think digital. They don't see life as regular steps to achieve anything. Their first and foremost process or style would be to go and actually swipe or go online or figure it out right. I think we need to be very cognizant of this difference. So while today everybody's online and while today in the last three months we've seen an enormous of acceptance and adoption of technology by people who are not probably there. You know so that actually goes beyond your tier one, tier two. It goes beyond ages. We see so much more interest adoption even on OTT platforms. I mean anything that is more digital today right. I do believe but as marketers we need to differentiate how we present something or engage with somebody who's a digital native and somebody who's a digital immigrant because they call to action, their time for their attention span, their time for conversion or their time to actually disregard you, the timing and the points at which this will happen will be very different. So you make a very interesting point as to how to demarcate between a digital native and someone who's adopted digital over the years and possibly how the strategies will be different. I would also love to get some of Virginia's thoughts on this right. This always on consumer from your lens. How do you see that? Yeah so I'm going to look it in the context of what we're seeing happen on an audio OTT platform right. Music consumption and you know when you think about personas or you think about you know the two types of generations actually that Sonia mentioned. The reality of what we've seen is we've probably seen music has been a companion medium forever right. People are usually listening to music in the backdrop of all the other always-on things that they're doing right. So when you were driving you were listening to music, when you're working, you're working out, you're cooking, it's kind of been there with the always-on person. What's changed that we've observed in the data is that we used to see more time bands where music would be more of a commuting companion right. So you'd see an increase in consumption of audio OTT but whether it be podcasts or even music in the morning and the evening time bands as people are going and coming up from work. Now we're actually seeing it be always on throughout. So the difference is you know 22 percent, 21 percent, 22 percent morning after your need. So what's happening is people's activities and routines are changing and I think it's from what we can tell it's going to change for a while and before we go back to the commuting life of two hours back and forth and you know being with traffic. So I think the interesting thing is going to happen is with this new always-on consumer who's busy in a different way how can the companion medium of music accompany that. So for example we've seen you know 155 percent increase in kids content because parents are home and they need to keep the kids entertained and so it's sort of always on as a companion parents I guess or entertainer. So music is or audio entertainment or OTT has become sort of you know a babysitter in some ways. You find one hour of something to have your kid do while you're doing something else or you know 17 percent more in home workout music or 20 percent more in cooking. More people are doing their own cooking right so keeping yourself busy in your kitchen and like you know about 10 percent more in cleaning playlist. So I don't think these ever existed as companion activities before but now all the always-on we have we have a lot more superheroes in our listeners who are raising their children cleaning their house cooking working out while also working. That's very interesting Virginia and I'll park that thought for a bit the superheroes that you're speaking about and I'll back to you in a bit as to how you really engage these superheroes. But before that let me get to Nikhil into the conversation and some of his perspective as to according to his lens who's this always-on digital consumer of today. In my view in today's time especially with the new normal now kicking in almost everybody is an always-on customer. So we obviously have categories like content including music which is which are predominantly always-on and very intuitively to think about it but there are very interestingly new areas emerging out. For example remote video demo is a service that we recently launched and that's nothing but explaining a machine or giving a virtual demo remotely to a customer because of the way the lifestyles are and the way the work life balance is really mixed up. We have now a lot of requests coming on really late in the night before people are going to bed you know maybe a husband and wife are now wanting to take a video demo of how to vacuum their house. It could be somebody who's really getting up early in the morning and wants to know more about how to keep air clean in his or her house. So you know like Virginia was mentioning there is essentially no notion of a prime time now it's really blurring people want things on demand everybody's schedule is different and people would like to be flexible and therefore brands and services they have to really be present for their customers on a 24 by 7 basis which is essentially what is this new set of always-on customers is. Nikhil you make an important point about being on 24-7 as a brand as well right. Is there any other strategy to really engage with this always-on consumer you know how do we crack the code is this something differently that Dyson is doing or any other brand that you think is doing which should be useful for the audience. I think the first thing to understand is that always-on is not advertising it is a certain view that a brand or a company needs to take about being of usefulness or providing utility to its customers. So if you are an e-commerce company then you need to be always-on and providing the status of the order delivery the status of a return that you've picked up or the status of a financial refund that you've just done. If you're a financial company you need to be always-on in terms of honoring certain financial transactions looking at customers limits etc you know on an ongoing basis there is no end of day bachelors or end of week or a fortnightly review that you need to do it all the time almost real time and you know that puts a very different lens because when you put customers first and you try to be of utility you start to move away only from content and messaging in real context and things like that to what's really of service and when could I you know my customer need it. It could be a late night ATM withdrawal or it could be somebody who's up late at night wanting to see some some some content on demand you know companies brands and services need to be there all the time anticipating what customers could potentially ask for so there is a lot of rule for data as was pointed out earlier in terms of building predictive models and anticipating demand and needs but at the same time there is so much change that is happening in the world right now that you practically need to be as close to real time as possible very recently I saw this wonderful company in India who was actually looking at patients who the moment they were so you know they picked up a swipe at a at a hospital they were increasing the limit on the credit card in the real time basis and that's that's so useful and that's you know so so good but it's also an example of always on approach for an always on that's a very useful example bringing that up I would love to go back to Virginia and Virginia you're mentioning about the super heroes the audiences of today someone really engaged them and has things changed in the COVID era in terms of your strategies to engage yeah I think editorial has actually been incredible and how it's kind of observed the patterns and the needs so you know for those of you who are millennials or Gen X we've seen over a 500 increase in 90s 520 percent so you know I know that there was a whole period where party music and you know those bodshas and this and that were like what all all of us were listening to especially in Delhi I'll tell you you know but actually at a time of crisis people went back to like Mars on and you know with it and and let them engage her like we have 90 percent increase in the Mars Sonu streamings you know 43 percent in other Narayanan 63 for let them engage her so it feels like people you're smiling because all of you guys have actually gone to your your favorite early 90s favorite because people are looking for comfort right and then when you look at simple things like we created a playlist for 20 second songs of like to keep as a companion for hand washing because kids get bored and they don't want to do it and you can many times you're going to say happy birthday so like you just put it on so that's very topical of creating a playlist for 20 second songs right for you know understanding stay at home playlist whether it be cleaning playlist another thing editorials done an amazing job is they've come up with all all of us think that we actually choose the songs we listen to but over 70 percent of us just listen to the editorial picks and we just leave it on right and you let the radio or let it discover let's face it like even though we think we're choosing we're really not choosing so the editors have come up with all day streaming playlist six hours of a hundred songs where you just leave it on and it's running all day like a six hour playlist like that's new as a as a as an offering but then we've also seen that you know people are also turning to devotional music people are turning to soothing music guzzles etc so you know how do you actually make sure that we are continuing to to support that we are not seeing a growth and dance and EDM music is about a 21 decline which makes sense right and that's also a message to brands about what kind of tonality they should be using it you know when you're used to do a product launch you would have used like a high-paced big sound high energy song for a video right to like have the product show up that's the hero but people are are getting jarred by some of the stuff so maybe you need to adopt a little little bit of a more soothing tone and maybe maybe also allow yourself to go a little nostalgic right and maybe nostalgia is not a bad thing right now people are turning to things that are familiar and brands that they are familiar with and give them comfort so that's how we're reacting to this to what we're seeing on the platform interesting Virginia one thing that I really stood out for me is that how people are craving for the familiar in the unfamiliar world right and if content and other activities could be done around that to bring in whether through nostalgia whether through things that they are already comfortable with rather than introducing new things that is what people would resonate with yeah just a point on that you know brands that have been investing in branding for many years like many of the brands that are on the panel right they benefit because they are in the in that frame of mind of brands that I know and I remember versus something new at a time that I'm feeling uncertain about a lot of things so you know a lot of people say why should you do branding you should do branding for times like this in anticipation and this is not the first or last time this will happen so I think we've come off the back of many years of being addicted to performance marketing but it's the brands that really invested in their brand in the last few years that are benefiting right now very useful I would love to also get Sonia into this Sonia what are some of the things that you and India first are doing to engage with this always on consumers you know so I've been listening to what Nikhil and Virginia both said and both resonate so much with us so we're an insurance brand I mean imagine at this time like everything about life is uncertain right now right now one of the things that we as a brand is we actually always adopted our brand communication to include like this full of certainties so we want to play on certainties like this it's more often not that the certain will happen right and we've actually stuck by our mantra and gone online with that and one of the things that we did is we actually launched initiatives like something that we call hermetic insurance for you know for the for the digital immigrants right people who actually have now just come online and they need to get comfortable we all online marketing and online sales for people who are you know natives and anyway interacted online and did your checking and come back but one thing that did happen during this phase is we saw an increase a massive increase in the percentage of people who are actually choosing to protect themselves and their loved ones right so just to give you numbers like a typically our term insurance in the first two months of the financial year is about two three percent right I mean it's not the time of the year that people actually go and look for life cover but this time it was 40 percent of our portfolio so it tells you that and all of this with digital whether directly online or digital channels but it was digital so that told you where people came from right now I think the other very important thing is uh resonating with what Nikhil said is you can't just be selling right we we did a lot of proactive communications around service around volatility in markets on how you secured yourself from other uh downsides right it's not only about life and covid we spoke about grace periods we spoke about claims management we did a lot of relaxing outreach to customers and and then we had to be always on too right if we had a claim we settled it and we said less than 24 hours and not because we were making a marketing claim out of it but because that's what we had to do for our customers at a time like this yes it's been a very interesting last three months there has been more interest from digital natives and we've actually managed to put up digitized processing and engagement online for the immigrants who and of those who actually were not so much online even they've started engaging with us online that's very interesting wait I would also love some of Roshni's thoughts you know there are two spaces one is online education one is gaming and Intel fits in very well for this always on audience to engage with them what is Intel done differently yeah I was just kind of triangulating what you know Nikhil said and Nia said and now Sonia I find like there are two pieces to it right and I did I do agree with Nikhil that brands have to be now in service of the customer and more important now that we demonstrate are leaning through acts you know not ads and so your acts are going to be about empathy and transparency and that builds back a lot of equity back to the brand simply because most people want to know what brands and companies are doing you know to lean into combat you know this uncertain situation so I think what we've had to deal with is I've taken an example of what Sonia was talking about on digital natives and digital immigrants but connected back to online education right I mean if you look at the millennials they are digital natives getting them back on online education or getting them to learn online is less of a challenge than if you look at parents and parents and teachers who are new educators and now living rooms have become the new classrooms right and your dining tables have become the new desks so I find that it has taken a lot for all of them to figure out that you have to play new roles so what we've done is through all the intense signals that we're coming in we're hearing that parents and educators need some help to navigate through this uncertainty so while Virginia talked about comfort we were looking at how to elevate uncertainty during this time so for a whole new way to learn so we launched a program just last week called PC Partshala the unique part about PC Partshala is that it is an online university where we actually get parents, educators, students to come in and learn anything or pick up advice that is useful to them so how do I set up a study space what is the right learning environment what kind of PC do I need how do I even set up a zoom call right have my child not have so much screen time what do I do with security so I think we have tried our best to be in service of the consumer we hope that over 90 days we'll continue to provide this content we've done this in partnership with with the Times Group as well as what's unique is we have a lot of ESPs OEMs and retailers creating a lot of special bundles for the audience that's going to come in so let's see how it pans out so this is one of the initiatives that's I would say in service of the consumer and over time you know attribution will come back to the brand for having been there helping them navigate through this answer very nice initiative there Roshni at this moment I'll just take a step back because Sunya mentioned something about digital natives around loyalty around their attention spans in the first question and I would love to get back to it right and you know sometimes a lot of myths around the digital native versus the people who have adapted to digital how their loyalties are different how their attention spans are different how the people who are called screen ages today have different behavior than others so when it comes to loyalty it comes to attention span so now do you think there's a huge difference between different audiences or these are just myths no there is definitely an overall reducing attention span okay I don't think it is only because they're millennials or they're you know the digital natives I think everybody has a lower attention span how many people are sitting and actually reading thick books today it's it's something that's not coming very naturally right having said which they're also a smarter audience right and there are ways to actually engage them so the brand actually makes an effort and gets to be part of their journey so we did this very interesting you know thing with IRCTC a while back where we actually became part of the capture question right so instead of asking people to put some jumbled words we actually gave something about our company and then we said you know we asked a question and said if you answer that about my company you move ahead and we got the most engagement ever right everybody will need to do it instead of writing gibberish over there you actually we wrote and we actually got very good feedback on this because people were highly amused we didn't ask boring questions and our questions were like half a line right so that's what you need to do with digital natives right you can't be you know uh inclusive to their lives you can't stop them they are used to doing things quickly and that also goes for immigrants and having said which uh yes I mean if you see the attention spans I would say it's slightly shorter for the natives having said which is shorter for everyone and we all need to be really quick all our videos have to be the first five seconds or the first 30 seconds at best and we have to hit home with that I would also love to get Virginia on this topic of the digital first audience having fickle loyalty and attention spans have you experienced that when it comes to you I mean I think uh you know I'll talk about in the context of you know the advertising experiences that work and don't work right so I come from a very high involvement platform like a LinkedIn where actually there were people that or explainer videos would stay on for three three and a half minutes you know we have an audience here who's going to listen to a webinar for 40 minutes you know audio spots are 15 seconds right but audio spots have always been 15 seconds uh whether they'd be back when it was radio the difference with the digital medium is you you have to always uh do companion banners and integrations as they go through the app so what we do is for example our native solution is 15 seconds of audio and for the next 15 minutes they'll actually see that same brand while they're in the app and because we figured out that because their attention spans are small instead of trying to do a 30 second ad or a one minute ad you just have to increase your frequency and variety of how you're exposing your um ad units so they hear it they see it at the top they pick a song they see it again at the top of the playlist then they see it and it's only after and we know that the frequency is six right I mean that's the magic number which is in 15 minutes that's about how long it takes for somebody like oh dice it you know and so it's just what it is so the challenge with these uh these things of us being able to shrink down ads you know it used to be do you now use six second ads and whatever six seconds is not enough to drive brand recall so what else can you do with that six seconds 15 seconds that actually builds it into you know it's heuristics right you're now starting to play with mind games to say I remember sort of hearing and seeing so it's both senses right I'm seeing and I'm hearing about a brand someone said the word and there's a visual right and now we're going to be adding video as well and you just have to kind of give them bits and pieces right it reminds me a little bit of when I used to have doll travel when I was a kid and I was like this is too much my mom would make them into small small balls right like six or eight balls and be like okay two more two more two more and then my meal went faster and then I'm done that's kind of what needs to happen with with shorter attention spans but a but an openness to seeing more frequency I think this example of dal chawal will be etch in our minds everybody thought that happened so and we'll remember the marketers will remember it for their strategies another thing that I picked up you spoke about frequency and variety and you know and sometimes it's also adding different chutneys and achar with that dal chawal you know keep on engaging with this audience if I may add to that right so very well put Virginia I would love to get nickel into the discussion you know creative and intelligent ways in which we can use marketing technology to really engage and delight this always on consumer and not just for the first time but also re-engagement how can we continue doing that hey so that's a that's a big question and let me try and break it into two components I think how to use mark take in terms of engaging with customers is this essentially a combination of how much relevance can you create for your content and service how much personalization are you able to deliver how how real time can you be you know how targeted you are etc etc so that's a that's a that's a really vast topic but but these are some of the key building blocks but it comes to more specifically re-engaging or remarketing I think most people know and they see you know anytime you visit a website and you jump off it you see that you are being chased by by ads you're also being targeted on social media so so my pick can play a very important role at least most places I work we always had the GS suite so that that helps in exactly defining the URL from where somebody has come and jumped off I think what's really important is how do you add context to your remarketing and it and it does not become dumb or does not become you know somebody who's really literally running after you with something and how does it stop once you've actually chosen not to respond to it or you actually bought something you often get chased for products and brands that you have purchased but hey the company who is sending the remarketing mailers never know it they'll keep keep bombarding you and that that becomes irritating after a while and the entire concept of ad blocking and things like that kick in so I think context is important so are you talking about the same SKU the same color the same price point that I came in and checked for are you capping the right amount of frequency so that I don't get irritated have you also put in the kind of mediums that you would want to retarget me if I'm actually consuming content on COVID or learning about a vaccine I don't want to be changed for a t-shirt for example that's not good context so so how can you build that intelligence by using tools such as you know programmatic marketing and things like that so remarketing is a really big topic I think I've always seen that whenever you you try to add context and be very specific and put a reasonable frequency cap it generally works and over a period of time you can actually create remarketing lists you can you can see it almost nurture it like a funnel with some people call as you're nurturing a funnel over a period of time so so don't just forget somebody after a week or seven days because your campaign run out but you know what about the next 30 days or what about next time you got something really good so maybe you could not entice somebody the first time but this time you feel it's relevant the customer has probably come during this time again through one of your channels can you build in that intelligence can you add that layer to the remarketing message at the time so that it becomes more I think these are some of the things that help you know re-engaging better than than standard remarketing techniques and so Nikhil definitely context stands out you know and I think that's an important takeaway for everyone you know as they say that content is king but context is the king maker and without the king maker your content may not be useful some call it queen but I won't say it on this panel great lovely I would also love some sonia's thoughts on this right what are the creative ways in which martin can be leveraged to delight these audiences no so you you're absolutely right you know what you said about the context and the content I think you have to be innovative and today we do have much access to technology like we I'll give you a couple of examples of things we've done so we used one of an innovative technique on one of these discovery platforms right where we actually you know we like actually push the customer without action without saying so to interact with us on voice by saying our brand name and it really really helped okay and the person never felt that it was inclusive right and this is only possible because of martin today right we also did one very interesting rich media ad where we allowed the consumer to come onto our banner and engage with our newly launched chatbot through the banner right so these are small ways of you know engaging them and re-engaging them and these are people anyway coming right and they're following you they're actually coming onto your website so you know taking from what Nikhil said it's obvious if I today just start following my customer and remarketing blindly context and you know the person has moved and you know my category is a little sensitive I don't know why they were searching for me are they scared is there some fear psychosis that has led to it or they're genuinely looking as proactive financial planners and that that is rare so it may be more in the covid times where people are just waking up to the idea not necessarily feared very very scared but they're waking up to the idea but as a category I need to remind a little more subtly in a little more easy going in a comfortable manner which does not threaten people so I also need to invite engagement rather than trust it so I think marketing technologies pay the very big role for us to be able to do that that's that's very valuable Sonia I just want to broaden our discussions slightly and focus on this one important thing which is listening and today listening has become a very valuable tool in the arsenal of all CMOS right and listening not just to respond to your customer but listening actually to understand them and with that understanding possibly creating moments of delight possibly adding something in your business offering or maybe doing a marketing campaign right and that's how today it's being leveraged I would love to you know get washed into the discussion and ask her what are the ways in which listening has helped your brand to do campaigns or to do things differently yes I think you're right I think listening has become a very important tool across most brands and marketers and yeah we do use our own sets of tools I'm sure a lot of you are also using tools like talk walker to make sure that you're listening on and on in fashion but yeah I would step back and say that eventually you know listening to the technology they are just tools they're not a strategy right so I think once you look at what your consumer is saying then you tailor make a solution as Sonia was talking about so what we've done is through our ongoing engagement with our say the game audience because you brought it up a while ago and then we also talked about superheroes right we've been looking at doing something more interesting given the fact that they're all at home again one is that we have a fairly strong fan following because we've got like a sphere of amazing gaming based pieces and secondly during this time as I said you know gaming gaming hours went up significantly but we had to engage them again we you know we're conscious of the fact that screen time becomes a problem not many parents want people to have random you know pubg playing so what we did was we created this whole piece called gamer in the house and we used different kind of stacks pretty nicely so we use the google stack of course we picked four influencers we brought them to the same platform they all streamed live on their youtube channels brought in their own followers and because it was gamer in the house it was a six hour marathon so people could come in engage with the influencers and step out and during the six hours they just started at 5 30 people were on 30 we had some 350,000 collective views over the six hours and you know budding gamers came and asked for tips and tricks how can I be a good gamer what are some of things that you do to be a good gamer so what we were able to do is kept it interactive and then what's interesting also is that you were allowed to engage through your instagram profile so you know we we made sure that they already have profiles they already have you know a place where they want to kind of show what they're engaged with with their favorite influencer so each time they'd answer something in a quirky manner we would send out goodies so I feel like we use different platforms quite interestingly you know streaming platforms of course we had to get you know the back end infrastructure right plus a more front facing platform like instagram and we were able to marry a being at home concept pretty nicely so I think we did that more for the end consumers but I think to pick up from where Nikhil was talking about right you're right I think personalized marketing has to be valuable if you're if you're chasing the customer or at least providing the customer messaging that they want so he's right we have a huge number of stacks whether it's you know google advertising cloud to oracle db on leco to Salesforce the many tools where you can get a spectrum but I think for Intel what we do is we have a custom suite which picks all these data patterns and then you have a live dashboard a self-serve dashboard to see whether you're targeting say uh enterprise that actually wants to look at AI because you know health monitoring is becoming very important and therefore contactless solutions are more important and is that what they want to would find valuable at this point in time or is somebody looking at a cloud deployment because you know you want you want your information to be safe during the times of covid and you want business continuity so we've got self-serve dashboards that pull all of these tech tools together so we're remarketing and sequencing content for our v2b audiences also so it's been interesting the last three months where we've been able to talk to a spectrum of audiences and make use of them that's very interesting how different platforms are being married together to come out with a cohesive solution and that's actually also the beauty of martech right sometimes you look at them in silos but the two two beauty comes in when you create a different platform then they talk to each other really drive value very valuable on that front I would love to get virginia into this discussion because you know listing and insights are important but then listing insights also give us to focus on certain key areas of a business right you know and we've been hearing a lot about how there's an increase of podcast since the food has come in and you know how possibly this may be the year of actually pot has becoming mainstream right and I would love some of virginia is that real is that for real do we think that cast is going to become the next big thing in India you know the funny thing is podcasts are pretty mainstream for you know our tier one types as well as you know in in other markets we've seen an 18 increase in overall podcast streams but I think a couple of interesting observations about the Indian consumer right if you look at the categories in which we've seen the largest increase there's a 245 percent increase in news podcast now you must be wondering like you've seen a lot of like people saying okay you know obviously with corona going on everybody's watching you know the news but maybe they're not watching the news they're listening to the news and I think a lot of what we found is people want the news they want to know what's going on because they want to feel informed that actually gives them comfort but there's something that is quite jarring about the visuals on TV and so what we've seen is initially when when you know COVID first came out and a bunch of other things have been going on in the world that are a little crazy you saw you know increase in TV consumption but there's a little bit of fatigue not just a screen time but a visual stimulation you know people don't want like you mentioned you know children elderly you know they are you know the issues of mental health watching these very jarring images of people dying and and other things that people want the information so where are they going to get the information right they're going to get it on on their screens and so a quick you know if I look at our daily corona virus update you know all about corona that's that's basically seen a lot of growth because it's very bite sized and it's just what you need to know about coronavirus for five minutes there's no there's no back and forth yelling screaming there's no visuals if people dying it's just in Hindi the news or in whatever so that's the one observation is people are consuming news is podcast the second is we're actually seeing a lot of history and you know history and and other categories like history society children as I mentioned earlier and you know film and TV so what people are trying to figure out is how do I create you know opportunities to learn and engage potentially my family members my kids without necessarily them being stuck on a screen so you know how do I actually get to tell them stories etc. I think Roshni gave a great example of parents needing to learn how to become educators one of the most popular podcasts on right now is called raising parents which is parents actually talking about how they're handling raising children which by the way if you speak to a lot of them said not much has changed in lockdown we've always had these challenges you know entertaining our kids but you know I think that people are turning to advice from others that that look and sound like them the podcast that we're seeing less of is obviously like movie reviews because there aren't that many movies right like the filmy stuff and things like that so you know podcasts are definitely a place to listen but I just want to also mention that listening is at this point not just about what we can see in the data and what that is I would actually argue we call you know probably a few hundred customers every week in brand solutions and we actually had a brand last week marketer last week or an agency that actually thanked us for calling them because nobody's called them since since the shutdown because they have no budgets and so a few weeks ago when we started seeing this pattern of everybody will call you when you have budgets and you're doing IPL and you're doing this and that suddenly nobody's calling you when you have no advertising and you know here we are we're the advertising team and we're calling people to check in on them because you know you're just we're just calling and so we came up with something called a starter pack for June where we're actually giving away a thousand dollars of free advertising to any advertising and because we heard the we heard the audiences talk about you know they don't have money right now but that they need to let people know that they're back online you know there's some small restaurants and stuff that people don't know that they're not closed anymore so we said okay you know what what seven days thousand dollars you know thirty five thousand spots do it right and that's just a decision we made from listening to our to our customers by calling them because people stop calling them so I would say sometimes being a little old-fashioned in terms of listening means not only just getting all excited about trends and dashboards and social listening but maybe just calling people uh it actually works nice I really picked it up and I think two things is one is a thousand dollars ad credit there are a lot of marketers we'll be listening to right now and the second one is podcast right because if that's not a part of your content strategy for your brand in today's times possibly have to relocate a bit if it fits in wait I would love also some insights from Nikhil on the this front in terms of listening and how brands can leverage it for their benefit is is Dyson doing something around it so hey I think everybody mentioned that listening is absolutely critical and listening is not only social media listening of course reuse sprinkler here but even otherwise listening is like Virginia mentioned calling your customers and listening to them listening is calling your front line teams listening is going through chat scripts listening is listening to the inbound calls reading up a few what studies it is and really getting a good gut feel about the sense of the situation so one is what all the data and heuristics are going to throw at you and the other is what's your overall feeling what do you sense and a lot of what we do in our job is a blend of science and art right so so gut is really important I'll give you one example that that's we are recently trying so very relevant for this panel so something that so we are also into here styling products we have supersonic and Dyson here that quite iconic worldwide and one of the things is that as women are going lesser and lesser to work in out of home typically you know we thought that the sales for some of these products is not going to be as as good as as for example vacuum cleaners but when we actually listen to this data the listening data which is not only social listening but for everything together you know there is something called a zoom look which is really important there is a zoom party look and there is a webinar look and there are there are some 17 types of looks that the team actually took together which is you know people still want to look good and you know what the biggest look was just looking good for oneself and therefore we really repositioned the entire campaign around that you know hey it's your hair stylist at home we know you don't want to go to salons anymore we know that you are scared to step out but hey we can bring that you know right at your fingertips and to back that what we did was we put an entire stylist army in the form of a video demo really teaching people how to do and style their own hair and and you know for example aduno is doing one instagram live for dyson today at 5 p.m. bog is doing one this coming Tuesday and we then got together with some of these brands some of these large beauty media companies who do this for a living and really position our product there for for women who want to style at home so this is just one example which would not intuitively come to you but if you actually listen to comments and you listen to your customers you know the need for styling is still good the context has changed so yeah that's one example which is quite recent make a very relevant example and very very creatively done to add value to your consumers you know i would also love some thoughts from sonia just from this perspective of listening and our brand is india first doing something differently you know we heard about this entire activation with amazon that india first is done would you love to share a bit more about that yes i'm so glad you've heard of it so what we did is it was a very contextual thing and again insurance can't be thrust upon you you will find it intrusive so we actually connected we did with the with amazon we did a first of its kind where anyone searches for cover our ad would pop and it would not be a jarring ad it would be a software it would not have a call to action it would more be about the category and the brand so this was a very interesting you know initiative we did around december jen we actually got phenomenal results we also did a very interesting campaign with the geo savan where we actually gave we made a small little cover kawali as we called it and we did a small song on getting covered right and it was called jhakliya and it did supremely well on geo savan we were shocked at the results because what we already we had some engagement parameters we agreed on and we went up off the sky and you know on those parameters because it kind of you know hit home so we actually listened to our audiences and we realized what at least the the millennials are actually connecting with but we also did one very interesting campaign that came out of listening both socially and outside right we spoke about listening beyond the net or the web or digital mediums right one of the things we realized is people don't trust insurance they don't think they will get their claims so we did a very interesting segment where we said 100% genuine claims settled and we called it a guarantee so we had a guaranteed sign and we did this whole thing where we did 30 second videos of somebody who's trying to con so you know somebody trying to hide our cigarette or somebody who's trying to impersonate someone else and they were funny 30 second videos and he said look if we catch you doing this you're not going to get your claim so if you actually don't lie you will hide 100% claim settlement guarantee so we did and that came out of listening that was a pure outcome out of listening so these are two or three very interesting things that have come out for us because we listened and they've been very interesting in terms of interacting with our audience online. Nice very interesting Sonia you know today no webinar can get complete without using the three golden alphabets ROI right and what a brand's doing around it. I would love some perspective from Roshni as to what Intel is doing to really capture ROI is it through tools is it through creative use of content how is Intel going about it? Okay I think you know we've talked a lot of different examples right finally I think if you're relevant at the point of what the consumer wants and if your product serves that need eventually it becomes a two-way street and you can look at ROI but you know I think ROI to be fair has taken a different meaning at this point in time I don't think brands and companies can look at ROI in the traditional form anymore you know because today return of return on investment is not coming as an immediate you know outcome it is going to be series of steps that a brand is going to take so while we were thinking about it you know we did this new mantra literally called ABCDE of marketing today to derive ROI so one is awareness like I said right I mean how do you want to rethink your awareness do you want to give more than get you want to be top of mind but the joy has to be in giving so eventually there's going to be ROI because you will bear during the time the consumer wanted or needed you I think budgets have become like a very central focus on brands but if not having contextual messaging is not relevant at that point in time maybe you want to look at budgets to relook at your databases you know clean up go out and talk to the customers a little more like Virginia said so the way you look at your budgets for ROI has become different I find like the sea of marketing is the compassion part of it right and a lot of people talked about it I think at this point the right attribution will happen if there is empathy but if there you know it is with a certain amount of action and then yeah a lot of data has to be seen differently now right is is the data being used to sequence the right messaging anymore is it contextual so I feel like we've had to look at the ROI very differently across you know the marketing stack and you're right I think a lot of it has come together to see how we're you know preparing to listen to our customers to our consumers to our ecosystem because Intel is about talking to a varied number of audiences right from end users to OEMs to CSPs to ISVs to you know and different audiences as well so having taken time to be in touch with them and re-looking at the marketing stack has evolved to look at ROI slightly more long-term I would say and then point-in-time actions that we talked about through the conversation so maybe not a straight answer but I do think ROI has to be defined slightly more differently and less commercially during this time. Roshi any other advice that you would have for brands and marketers to win in this new world or what is your one line mantra which you always follow while doing any marketing or any activity? I would say two line mantra one is actionable insights listening is only valuable if you can do something about and second especially during this time acts not ads people see you do things you have to walk the talk so empathy with action is a mantra that we definitely follow it into actionable insights and acts not ads you know would love so that's that's wonderful would love Nikhil's thoughts on this right Nikhil ROI as well as what is your advice to brands and marketers and what is your magic mantra? Okay lots of questions in that on the point of ROI I think it's both long-term and short-term for us it's gone completely in a different direction so there is a way more pressure in terms of generating immediate returns I think cash is the king and that's undisputed so companies are in survival mode and people are really going short-term in terms of really asking hard questions about the investments that they are putting especially on the area of marketing this is you know this is a disposable line for many organizations therefore all the more responsibilities for CMO to really defend their lines I think overheads and marketing budgets are two most discussed items today in every any corporate board room so therefore how do you actually establish the attribution of a certain marketing action and link it back to sales was never more in my opinion than it is now I would also like to comment that you know in terms of awareness now whom do you really reach out to you would potentially reach out to somebody who's engaged with you in one way or the other before because you know that's that's potentially going to give you high return in the immediate sense and you know what kind of offers do you do how do you personalize stuff all of that focused through this phase for survival and then you know really getting back growth and then potentially thriving so my view on ROI is slightly different though I completely agree with Roshi that in terms of an overall organization's point of view I mean return on marketing expense stroke investment is also is always you know something that should come with a the long term view in terms of my mantra it's very simple I think brands at this point in time there's only one word for me that's that's being authentic so the brands should be transparent the brands need to own up and the brand needs to generate trust I think if brands do that this is this is what really customers are looking for correct no we can very well put I think in this virtual world what people are craving the most is authenticity and if a brand can be authentic I think the relationship will be very deep thank you for that I would love some parting thoughts from Sonia on this aspect of what is our advice to marketers and one line mantra for so my one line mantra is get the try and be a part of the customer's journey rather than asking the customer to be a part of yours and if you manage to do that you anyway want the customer okay I think I think there's very well put very short very actionable and keeping customer at the center of it some thoughts from Virginia on you know what is your month and what is your advice to brands and marketers which are joining us today on this webinar yeah actually my my mantra has been the same for about 10 years which is marketing needs to be a service not an interruption and so exactly what the others have said which is compassion action you know in terms of being part of their journey and right now what we want to do is you know the service that we want to provide is comfort and also lower people's risk because that's what we're seeing is that I think you have to figure out for your brand what is that service that you can deliver at this particular point because people will not forget what you do good or bad or nothing at this time everybody whether it be your future employer or a future customer will say where were you in these times and what did you do and I think this is a very career defining and also sort of life cycle defining thing for brands on what they do right now very nice people Virginia very important moment for us for professionals for brands and today I think collectively we learned a lot of things obviously we learned the dal chowal example but we also learned the power of authenticity the power of frequency and variety right and how to keep customer at the center of everything that we're doing we also learned about acts not ads and driving actionable insights and I think all of us are richer with the experiences that all of you have shared so thank you so much for this we have a lot of questions coming in and due to paucity of time you know we'll be addressing these questions on social media so please you know on the exchange for media linkedin post all of you if you can put in your questions and then the expert panel will do its best to answer it back over there for all of you so thank you everyone thank you so much for joining us thank you exchange for media for inviting all of us to enter the audience thank you so much thank you Emma for being a lovely panel moderator thank you thank you thank you