 Hello and welcome to another episode of our special series, Meeting Our Lords. It is said leaders are forced in crisis. A true leader can turn adversity into his advantage. So in these times of other crisis that has left all of us locked in our homes for over seven weeks now, we are speaking to leaders who are working relentlessly to ensure that pandemic doesn't leave a long-term impact on our businesses. With me today are two such leaders, Mr. Harish Timberwala and Mr. Sanjay Mehta, joint CEO of Miram India. Welcome to the show both of you, sir. Did I say Miram directly? Yeah, Miram is like five, absolutely. So sir, to begin with, I was going through, I was doing my little bit of research and I saw this interesting detailed report that you had launched very one week before the crisis. And it said that 80% of the marketers are expected to raise their market expense. Now these were pre-COVID days. A lot has changed in the seven weeks. So if, I mean, either of you, Mr. Mehta or Mr. Timberwala, who so ever would want to respond? How much do you think this figure is relevant even now? Yeah, well, I'll take this question out there and you can just call us Sanjay and Harish. I think we're going to be very, very formal. So yeah, it's just very interesting. We released the report just about a week before the entire COVID thing started. And I'm Mark Reed, the WB Global CEO happened to be in India. So we got him to release the report. When we see this spot as a difficult spot, the Q2 will be a difficult spot for all of us, I believe the second half H2 will be actually very favorable for digital companies, digital businesses and IT companies because the COVID has kind of accelerated the need for digital transformation. It's six months back, there were people thinking whether our company really needs to go digital, my supply chain is completely offline, my customer is offline. Today everybody realizes that digital has to be there. That is like a resurgence policy of these kind of things happen again in future. So people who are considered are going to be investing digital. People who are already investing in digital will see the need to increase the investment in digital. So for me, once COVID, COVID lockdown opens, it's not 80% marketeers. 100% marketeers will want to invest in digital strategy. But will marketers be left with that kind of money because the situation has really affect everybody's businesses and there is a crash crunch likely in the market when it opens again. So you think they'll have, they'll also want to spend on upgradation or kind of things that you're suggesting on market right now. So Nazir, to me, market is the heart of how marketing happens. Marketing is not only about putting money on Facebook and YouTube. Marketing really is investing in these products. And that is where Miram comes into play. Being a market player, we do solution building, we do strategy building. We will guide the client what kind of e-commerce models they need to build. We will set up these platforms and technology platforms which will actually enable them to make the company digital. And then you start spending some money on marketing. If businesses come back, we believe that they will have cash flow. They're kind of handing on to cash for this quarter. We will have less cash flow. But whatever money you have, you want to kickstart your business, you will need to actually invest with money's cost and vision to get things up to top. So to add to what Harish said, basically the question in that survey was that whether the marketers will increase their budgets on MarTech and basically marketing technologies. So that was 80% of them had said that they would be doing so. And as Harish said, we believe that this will only accelerate that. And even the 100% marketers will now feel that MarTech is the way out. So we are talking about businesses that are going to come back, right? So if there was a way, you know, like early stage startup, we didn't have money, you know, that's a different kind of a ballgame. But companies with good balance sheets and we'll see this as a hump to cross. I mean, finally businesses will survive. There is gonna be life after. So for that new normal, it will be even more emphatically clear that what they need is a sharper and smarter marketing piece which can enable them to run even through these harms. So digital, we have seen already in this phase while this car crisis is also going on, the few brands were able to continue some extent of business, whether it is through e-commerce delivery or whatever, are the ones who had invested earlier and had got their engines running. So the ones who did not will only feel that, hey, I can't be left unprepared next time. And this is the way to go. You know, there's not gonna be a huge number of people in the malls. There's not gonna be a lot of people, you know, going into activation and events. So there's going to be marketing monies which would have otherwise been spent in other places available. And those will be diverted to investing further into market, market, you know, infrastructure. So I don't think that that should be a problem. There will be budgets available and that will be invested in the right places. I want to come back to that question on increasing digital consumption and digital marketing. But another interesting thing that I found in your report, which I wanted to understand in detail, was that there will be a report says that shifting of emphasis towards ROI rather than the flat planting approach. Mr. Mehta, can you explain this to me? What exactly does this mean? So normally, you know, any typical marketing budget, there is a part where, you know, you spray and play. So you do a lot of different kinds of, you know, spends across various media and you hope that some of it hits the target and it delivers money. So the additional marketing norms have probably have that factored in that while spend a hundred and some of it will deliver. I don't know which of it is delivering but as long as some delivers is fine. Now, thankfully with technologies like digital technologies and marketing automation in particular, what we are able to do is to sharply define our audience, sharply define our objective for audiences on a literally on a one-on-one basis. So if you are currently in the market for, you know, buying a new dress of a certain kind, I don't want to give you a message, anything other than that. I don't want to waste sending a marketing communication about, you know, shoes, which you're not likely to buy, for example. So if as long as there is sharpness in the marketing, the right audience, the right message at the right time, there's a conversion chances are much higher and which means that of a $100 spend that is due, $100 is effectively spent and the chances of getting conversion are the highest versus spending a hundred and hoping that some 2030 does hit the right target. So that means that your marketing money that are giving you return on investment and more and more, especially now post COVID when people are going to have a belt tightening in a way, marketing will have to be that kind of marketing which can be delivering measureable return on investment and which is what technologies like Marta can even do. Sir, as you just mentioned, I would want to talk about increase in digital consumption. These seven weeks, everyone has more time to themselves, people are sitting at home. There is a clear increase in both television as well as digital consumption. What kind of consumer trends have you noticed in these two weeks, in these seven weeks? And also, what would you advise marketers right now? I mean, should they, because a lot of marketers are shying away because there is no production. There are a lot of other constraints because of which people are not marketing right now. What kind of suggestions would you have for them? Again, either of you can choose to answer. I just, I'm interested in answer, either of you can give me. Sir, two specific thoughts. The first question is that, you know, right now marketers are not spending because there is no consumption. So what should a marketer be doing? Interestingly, we get access to a lot of data points that are happening in China. Being part of a WPP company, you have the benefit of getting this information. And China has been, let us say, ahead of the COVID curve by about three months. They started in January and by the end of March, they're kind of getting out of it. You are able to see what are brands doing in China. Who are the brands who are advertising even while COVID was happening and how are they selling compared to those who compete even silent. And one clear thing we observed is that at a point of time, when there is consumer attention, it is the best time to grab share of voice and actually build your brand. It happens at a lower cost and then you get better consumer time, you know? And a brand is not just a seller of a product. The brand is an emotional connect. I connect with the brand not just because I want to buy something that I believe in the brand. So in times of need, the brand cannot go silent. It has to continue talking to me. It has to be empathetic communication. It doesn't have to be product communication. So when things come out of COVID, you know, I'm still connected to the brand and these brands find a way to pick up market share easiest compared to somebody who stayed out of market for that period. That is one clear learning that we get from the Chinese market, you know? And that will be our guidance to market share. There's a data point which I have read in a report that whenever there are crisis of this kind, brands that have cut marketing spends post the crisis, they have dropped their market share to about 60%. I mean, I'm talking about reasonably established brands, right? So they have gone from 100% to 60%. Those who have maintained the marketing spends in spite of a crisis period, they have seen market share go to 2.5 times what their original market share was. And those brands who increase the spends during this crisis have seen market share go as much as 3.5x. So, you know, what is the reason is that right now, the clutter is lesser. There are not a lot of brand advertising. So there's a chance for your communication to be visible. Also, because clutter is lesser, for the same money, you get better advertising reach. Your reach is improved because for the same money, you're getting even more reach in a uncluttered market. So your marketing message goes much better. But what to communicate is, of course, as he's talking about, it's an emphatic communications. We are not talking sell, sell, sell. So the narrative goes not from sell, sell, sell, and not just from say, say, say, but perhaps do, do, do. So if you're a brand supposing you're a dominoes and you've done some interesting work in contactless shipping, that's what you're gonna talk about. You're not gonna say, oh, my pizza has this flavor and this thing. You know, you're talking about what you've done. Or if you're a bank and you have enabled some interesting net banking feature so that people even sitting at home are able to get some transactions done, you're gonna talk about what you have done, how you're helping the consumer who still has some work to get... It's basically more purposeful marketing, right? Purposeful or more caring. I mean, basically you could just have a care message also that... An empathy. And all those kind of things. An emphatic marketing. It just stood the brand's persona. So not every, suddenly some brand will never talk about caring if it comes out. They'll look not very original. They will not look right. But at least then you can stay close to your business and see what you're doing. Maybe even talk about what you're doing for all your stakeholders, what you've done for your employees, what you've done for your partners, what you're doing for all your stakeholders. So anything of that kind, there is some, there's a connect because everybody's kind of cooped up and suffering and you share your story about how you as a brand have taken some steps. It works well. So you still stay on top of the mind recall with the consumer. So despite all the numbers you just gave me, addicts is all time low. I mean, there's almost like 60, 70% drop in the addicts. People are not, marketers are not really buying these numbers. That's another trend that we have seen. All agency people are recommending that, you know, people should advertise at this point of time, but it's somehow not going in or there are other constraints. Would you want to speak a little more about it? Why, why is it that marketers are shying away? Naji, it's rather easy to understand it at a given point of time when I'm not seeing consumers in the market in the mall and in my whole whole process, first is to hold on to the cash, whatever cash I have, till I'm able to see an end game. I think none of us are able to see an end game at this point of time. And we are completely into long term. But my feeling is the moment you see long term starts opening and people getting back into market place, you'll see all these marketers come back. I'm sure nobody we are trying to talk to using this forum of communication does not understand what we are saying. I mean, all of them understand exactly the same thing. Okay, but they would just like to want to hold on to your cash till you start seeing the market kind of open and come back. Having said that, I mean, look at a brand like Amul. I mean, they've gone all over the place. They're completely bought TV, completely restricting centers in the kind of messaging and communication they're putting in place. You see a whole lot of brands wherever the balance sheet is strong, you know? So what part this is going to do? People have a strong balance sheet or a strong brand are actually going to become stronger because they will leverage their balance sheet well in our offering. Okay, people who have weak balance sheet will actually become weaker because they will not have those well with all to manage this kind of thing. That is how we're going to see this panel when you come up on the other side of the panel. How about if I want to ask you some of your own clients? Have you seen your own clients increase marketing spends during these times? Any of your clients, you may not name the client, but has it happened? So the initial, once this sort of lockdown happened and it took most of us by surprise because we never saw it coming to this extent. You know, if there was a hint and it was a gradual moving into a situation like this, people would have tried to prepare in whichever way. But everybody was caught by surprise. It was the first reactions as soon as the brand were able to grapple with the reality was to dramatically slow down spend. So most of them slowed down or some even completely stopped. But now, as you rightly said, you know, five, six weeks, seven weeks have gone by and people have had time to analyze what's happening and what is it relevant for them as a specific brand. So, you know, classic case, we have a brand whose factories were shut, but I think two weeks back, the factories were finally opened and they have products which have a specific relevance in terms of being, you know, bacteria free. It's a kind of health oriented and they have resumed and they have not only resumed but they are doing like, you know, what is known as an always on kind of campaign which means their ads will be available pretty much like 24 seven, which they were not doing even earlier, but now they realize that that same money is buying them that, you know, the lesser budget is buying them a lot more inventory on advertising. So that as well as that they'll have a free hand. There's no other competitor of theirs who is advertising at this point. And so they are doing it. We have brands in the pharma sector who have very high relevance at this time because there's a lot of healthcare communication which needs to happen. A lot of concern that people have about their health not just around COVID, but, you know, if you have diabetes or if you have an allergy issue, I mean, how does it connect to COVID? There are a lot of concerns, vaccination that, you know, even not forget COVID vaccine, but you know, other vaccination, small babies who need to get vaccinated this time. Is it okay to delay because I can't move out of my house? So there's a lot of communication which needs to happen. Those people, of course, have increased their visibility on digital in all respects. So specific brands who see a relevance to see, you know, there are no kind of fundamental hurdles in reaching their product or the service out have been not only maintaining, but some of them are increasing as well. But it's happened after about five weeks. Initially there was all quite a pause which happened. Now they're learning that how it's going to be. That is not, you know, digital is not just about advertising. It seems to keep coming back to digital means advertising. Digital also means technology. It also means marketing automation. It also means taking care of your website. And in our own business, we have a creative and a media part of the business. We have taken the marketing automation part of the business. The second marketing automation part of the business has been no drop in revenue. Every single client was in the process of building a website or getting the marketing automation setup done, continue to do it. As a matter of fact, I was surprised when about three weeks back, we acquired a major retailer, you know. And my point to my sales team was that everybody shopped this closed. I mean, how come you managed to get a retailer on board? And the philosophy from the retailer side was this is the best side when all our people are free to get the marketing automation setup done and completed. So when we come out of it, we'll be the first off the ground, you know. So when you look at digital holistically, maybe advertising is where people may not spend money, but are they going to be spending money, building the backend, printing and stuff? That is still happening. If there was strong manage sheets, are actually investing in doing all this. We have asked, we have exact six minutes to close this now. My last question to both of you is that in times of such crisis, you are both leaders, you're running for big enterprise. What kind of moral support, I mean, how are you keeping the morale of your employees high? What kind of initiatives have you taken? What kind of communications conversations with them because it's not very easy for each one of us to walk from home or you know, there's so much uncertainty. So how have you helped your teams, your employees, fight through these crisis? I can start with Mr. Timberwala, yeah. You can start and then Mr. Mehta can close. Sure, sure. So, Nazia, just like we said that brands need to have an empathetic sense of communication, I think this is also the time for empathetic leadership, you know. This is not the time for leadership to think only in terms of profits and operating margins and cash flow. Leadership needs to realize that only when you have those 200 or 500 people working in the company does the rest of the business manifest. Setting in our own offices, we cannot deliver any of the revenue or the operating margin. So this is the time that empathetic leadership step up and say, we'll do whatever it takes to take care of our people. We want to protect our people and be sure that they come out on the other side, you know, we have a strong team in which continues to work and deliver our needs to build up. Some of the things specifically we did over in, we kind of started remote working even before the government announced lockdown. We were already working from home for almost a week before it happened, you know. So people were completely set up. There was no panic when the lockdown was announced. Our HR team has the concept of a cocktail art where every hour at six o'clock in the evening, the company stimulates like a town hall and somebody does some performance, some talk, something happening to keep the morale high. We came up with the concept of street data, you know. Normally, when you're a member in a very large company, you don't know people in other teams. We thought this was a great opportunity to get five people randomly from five different teams into a virtual room and get connected to each other and make friends. Just keeps our motivation going. All our heads of department, including Sanjay and myself, are doing town hall with smaller teams. You know, this is the time to overcommunicate. You need to overcommunicate. You need to be out there. You need to demonstrate empathy. And you need to show your people that as a company we are strong and we'll come out of the sooner or later. Mr. Mehta, would you like to add to that? Yeah, so in addition, you know, as a team, we've somehow managed really well to collaborate in spite of being remotely set up. So we're producing some really good work for our clients and that itself is a huge, you know, motivator to people because the fact that they could pull it up, it's like a challenge, right? You're not sitting next to your copywriter is not sitting next to the art director or the video guys somewhere else and videos have been shot different places. Some of them are shot at people's homes. Some are being shot over Zoom calls, interviews are being done. And then piecing that together and then coming out with a production which looks like you would have done in a proper studio with everybody there. I mean, just to the satisfaction of getting that out and then client appreciation and appreciation on the social spaces now is a huge motivator and the fact that you're doing that. So that's one. And the fact that we keep celebrating these things, you know, we have our internal newsletters and stuff which happened, acknowledging and of course there's a lot of one-on-one speaking. So there are a few people in the team either the family, somebody has not kept well, somebody's taken to hospital. I mean, none of them, thankfully on COVID but some of the other reasons. So we take time, we try to be sure that, you know, even at a one-on-one level whoever be the person whether they're in our direct reportees or not, we're talking to them, we're empathizing, we're giving them room that look, you know, if you have a problem, it's okay if you need to take a few days off just make sure you get sorted. So I think all that is appreciated. You know, people sometimes have some infrastructure issues that, because now we don't have an IT guy who can come and help you quickly with your laptop or something. Again, figuring, finding ways, supporting them in all through all these ups and downs. I think all that, you know, comes sort of naturally because that's, I think that's a cultural organization. We're not doing something which is one off, that's how we always think. And people appreciate, I think mostly we see that people have managed to stay reasonably upbeat in spite of all these challenges. And I think delivery of good work is one of the big motivators as well. You would surely would be interested in watching these videos at a pace. That's the work that has been done at home and looks like a studio to tell your team to share with us. We want to put them up on our side. So thank you both of you. Thank you so much for taking out time for us and speaking to us and keep inspiring all youngsters and keep us motivated by your thoughts and stay at home and stay safe. We wish you good health. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge that you're doing a great job in, you know, keeping up the show, you know, remotely in this manner. So, you know, like you guys have adapted also brilliantly. I mean, I've seen some of your other work previously. So good show and keep it up. I think this is great content for people while they're sitting at home. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Mr. Sopriwan. Thank you. Okay, bye.