 So that is the starting and we're moving on to the next session that we have for you up next We have an accomplished global media leader who has been responsible for both the growth of the clients businesses As well as the growth of the agency in the APAC region We are pleased to welcome our keynote speaker Gordon Domblija CEO APAC wave maker Who shares his insights on building brands that truly matter Gordon is joining us from Beijing and I'll hand it over to Gordon Thank you so much for joining in the screen is all yours Thank you so much. I I'm actually in Shanghai and but yeah, it's just close enough It's still an external perspective Right. Let me please try and share my screen Okay, how are we doing is that visible? Absolutely Okay, there should be a heading that says building brands that matter how we positively provoke growth for our clients okay So firstly, thank you very much exchange for media For the invitation. It's an absolute honor to be here And I'm delighted to be able to share with you today an external perspective from outside of India on Brands that matter I'm Gordon Domblija. I am the CEO of wave maker Asia Pacific Okay, we'll jump straight into it I've you know, there's there's a few slides a couple of videos which I wanted to share So it's a bit of a step change from the fireside chat But hopefully there'll be enough time for like questions and debate afterwards. So We've seen an explosion in purpose during marketing. You know, this is undoubtedly happening across the world But I'm doubly accelerated by the COVID pandemic Nowhere have we seen this like more prevalent lead than in India which Continues to be the home of storytelling and advertising and also in emotional connection in advertising So today I'm going to talk about Why purpose is now table stakes? It's your entry point into building brands How brands that matter deliver growth What communication can do to enhance purpose for brands and I'm also going to land on a positive provocation to make meaningful innovation a core tactic for purpose driven advertising Okay I'm gonna have to do that manually never mind Okay, so throughout the pandemic consumer confidence has been eroded The Reserve Bank of India consumer confidence index has actually dropped to 48.5 in May this year That's the lowest ever on record At the same time digital transformation has accelerated for marketers and for brands and of course for agencies Who bear a lot of the brunt of like driving that transformation? So we're all striving to deliver deliver daily targets We're trying to overhaul legacy business operations and models and roots market and also create sustainable relevant purpose At wave maker. We believe there is always a better way to grow and our mission is to help our clients find it In good times and indeed in challenging times The way we do this is through positive provocation. So what that means is we uncover knowledge We uncover insights we uncover Data that helps us challenge status quo unlock new ways to grow And so what I'm going to do is you share with you some of our positive provocations For brands that matter, you know those trying to find their purpose firstly Let's define what makes a brand matter You know brands like I mean firstly for me, you know, and again, this is this is my personal take on like You know what what I've seen in my experience The brand communication is aligned to core values core values of that brand Brand taps into a universal human insight or a universal value and thirdly that the message has some sort of societal value So while functional benefits may still be communicated The brand goes beyond these Centres on a message that is relevant and distinctive to their purpose It's really interesting quote, which I really like which I'm going to share with you, which is from BlackRock Investment Management CEO Larry Frint It goes the public expectations of your company have never been greater Every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society Without a sense of purpose no company either public or private can achieve its full potential So I think is like an incredible statement, you know, it's potentially for an investment management firm but I think it also points to the reality of Of what brands now stand for for instance, like you know, brands have become duty-bound to fulfill Probably this void in society left by governments and administrations It's telling that people now believe That they feel they have more control over brands than they do about governments They can shape the purpose of brands They can shape the direction of brands and what they stand for much more so than they can do about the political parties That are supposed to represent them At WaveMaker, we are incredibly proud to work with brands that matter We've got many companies who are building brands for purpose-driven advertising There's just a couple of like few examples here a couple from outside of of India and one very specific India example But Huawei, I think, you know, everyone knows for certain reasons However, you know, what what we did with them like, you know, they this is a really interesting interesting case They they developed an app called StorySign What this app does is essentially it turns children's books written children's books into sign language They didn't produce this app for any like financial purpose for any revenue purpose They produced it because genuinely it helps them and it helps millions of families around the world to help their children learn educate read learn phonics and learn and understand how You know and to share experiences which were previously beyond their their ability to share You know, so what we did with them is help them really distribute this to hundreds of thousands families You know genuinely changing lives with this app again not driven by profit not driven by any revenue Driven by purpose, you know, they have created something that needed to be shared DoorDash is an interesting example in in the u.s. It's a company built by immigrants really Tapping into like the diverse food cultures that we find in in really big cities particularly in the u.s But now across the world we're seeing we're seeing them grow So what we did with them is it shifts what was a very focused acquisition investment budget Just about getting acquisition always like, you know, trying to build performance Drive sales and what we've done is shift a huge chunk of their advertising And and their investment into into brand campaigns, you know, which particularly hit during like during the covid pandemic You know running the campaign from which was open for delivery, you know, when everything else was shut down Here's how we connect people to the food they love to the restaurants. They love to the To the cuisines and the taste and flavor. So they still feel part of the community now this not only increased the market share But it made DoorDash one of the top five fastest growing brands in the u.s. In 2020 Here in India, you probably all know we partner with monday's building authentic campaigns for their brands Our thank you campaign here, which is which is featured for categories There's a real rallying cry prompting people to share their thanks when interacting with merchants with like the social service industry workers So looking at these examples and and the rest of experience we have across like, you know, vast wave of global and local brands We believe having purpose is becoming table stakes. As I said, this is like your base level entry point into the game It's now a core pillar of building and growing the brand However, this brings with it a need to understand how to execute How to grow now and this becomes even more important, you know in the delivery of it So to understand How brands are battle work We unpick, you know the things that are inside like no this storytelling. So let's start with meaning Purpose provides a differentiation and meaning that brands seek With their consumers with the people by their products, but also with the brand's mission And then if you move to connection This must be much easier to create a relevant connection with people when you talk about a topic that really matters to A recent Accenture study found the 81% of Indian surveys What companies to take a stand on social cultural environmental and social political issues close to their hearts Now this is way ahead of like most other markets in terms of the need for people to see brands behave in a certain way And it really puts India at the forefront of working in in in in the world of brands that matter Third part this delivers growth Brands are over invest in in brand, right, you know, we've seen this with our Early example on doordash, you know a performance business which moved into brand advertising with purpose You know accelerating their growth and driving And driving market share and and driving revenue for their business Cantor research shows that brands recognize for higher commitments purpose have grown at twice the rates of others Now, you know, there are multiple examples many examples across multiple different categories You know look at Nike look at Google look at GE If you look at the data the Unileve shared in 2019 It shows their brands with purpose. So these are the ones that are built around Sustainable living grew more than 50% faster than the rest of their portfolio So we can see that developing a purpose lead brand does drive growth if You can connect people with a deeper meaning So i'm going to take my jacket off right at this second because it's 38 degrees outside And unfortunately the air conditioning in this room thinks it's still winter So At wave maker we create communication strategies for brands that matter by focusing on free things personally insights So how do we connect purpose with audience? Secondly imagination or maybe innovation Thinking differently about our understanding of what purchase behavior is What is the disruptor in the purchase behavior and the purchase journey of people in category in brand Finally ideas the power of ideas to bring brands meaning to life I'm now going to show you two ideas from our brilliant team in india. Let's do just that India turned to more than six small businesses and they've been fighting for survival after the coronavirus outbreak and the lockdowns presenting Not just a category ad we advertised not just for ourselves, but for thousands of small businesses across india The idea was innovative, but the technology and execution was challenging Most of the stores in india don't have a digital presence So we had to manually feed our system to create a database of local retailers Mapping them to their location, which we identified through pin codes As the ad was served to an individual an algorithm grow located the pin code And then map the various local stores in that pin code and serve the one closest to the individual in real time The ai enable system created thousands of commutations for the localized version of the same ad So many that it is even impossible to track This resulted in the first ever hyper personalized ad ever that saw the ad supported a local store The campaign was truly appreciated across india as it was picked up by major influencers The campaign was a success even on the dark social as it appeared on countless whatsapp groups across the country It was also covered by national and international press Generating free pr for the campaign and it also organically trended on twitter When all of us support our local stores all of us can have a happy Diwali not just a category ad So in that first example of the categories you see the connection created out of an immediate and universal societal issue What i'm going to show you in the second example is is one of the most memorable and lasting examples of activations by Tata T under the Jagora umbrella Power 49 set up to change the patriarchal way women voted By empowering them to make informed and independent choice during 2014 elections There's a really nice film here to to demonstrate how that works India is no place for women We cannot tolerate this kind of Incidents of crime Just look at the life cycle of a woman in india the female fetus side numbers india has ranks amongst the highest in the world Problem is does the political class of our country care? The political class had to take action we decided to strike at the roots the indian general elections Politicians have forgotten the 49 percent of the voter base that is female We launched the power of 49 with the ambition of getting 100 million women of india to cast an informed vote, but how? For the campaign to be successful, we had to target two classes of women voters Research showed us that indian television had a major role in shaping society Indian women consider real-life women protagonists on tv as their alter egos and emulate them We brought together the largest television networks of india on one platform to mobilize this cause We identified tv soap stars as key influencers for the women of barat And news anchors and social commentators as influencers of women of india women are 49 percent of the voting population in this country With the power to make or break the government the power of 49 when women vote women win Using the power of television we integrated empowerment stories into india's most popular soaps This inspired women to table their issues And draw the critical political debate in news with women issues experts The campaign also received unprecedented support from high-profile bollywood stars We brought 1.2 million real women together to build the world's first-ever crowdsourced political manifesto Given by you the indian woman We now have a women's manifesto which we are presenting to political parties across the country We presented this manifesto to some of india's most influential politicians But we didn't stop there We gave the women one final push to make their journey up till the ballot box Every woman needs to go out and vote if you don't vote you don't have the right to complain So for all the women out there empower yourself for the women The results were staggering 49 49 percent Hissa Kinnukar See Mahila we are deep push I mean it's incredibly inspiring and humbling to see It's incredibly inspiring and humbling to see what impact advertising media can actually make when working with the brand with purpose You know that aligns it so closely to its own values and its own And and its own way of thinking in its own way So we talked quite a bit about what works Um, what doesn't what are the sort of potential pitfalls that we see? Uh, this is a really interesting visual. So like most people, you know around the world are fully aware of The dub campaign for real beauty You know, um, and you know, it's been hugely successful, you know, particularly in the uk but across the world Um, but you know, even a brand that's done so well in driving, you know, their agenda and their purpose Uh, can make massive missteps make huge mistakes So taking their campaign for real beauty into packaging of all shapes and sizes. I mean this Completely offended so many of the people they've worked so many so hard of so many years to actually influence and win over What that shows us actually is is much harder to get this kind of purpose Driven advertising to work Functional advertising, which is, you know, traditional and very well codified is so much more easy and so much easier to get right You know, another quite example is, um, you know, very, um Closely all in india is around tide for time focusing on the challenge modern parents have in finding quality family time You know, if you look at some of the consumer response to this It's been that, you know, the execution and the delivery has been preachy That it's been lacking in insight or that there's no tangible actual benefit You know when this happens and it happens often, you know, it can actually push brands the other way I think it's quite interesting as well. Like, you know looking at what happened in can quite recently I mean, obviously, you know, the the pandemic and everything that's happened is create a lot of purpose driven advertising But, you know, you see many observers and jurors coming out saying that now actually, you know There's been a bit of a purpose parade A very worthy brands all trying to jump on a bandband without Creating any sort of distinction without creating any sort of like actual value or tangible benefit for for consumers and for the public So this is a massive watch out and It leads me to our final provocation when he clicks it That brands and and to build brands that matter we need to work harder You know, we saw the way cabriolet used data the way they use technology to support small businesses in an acute time of need Tata has consistently consistently leveraged influence developed trust for a platform that encourage us to be awake to the society and the events that are happening around us You can't just tell people we have a purpose. You need to land it in a tangible way That's from insight from understanding through authenticity for execution And every now and then I think it hurts to have a little bit of humor and a little bit of entertainment Okay. Thank you very much I am open to questions Thank you. Thank you, Gordon. So I have a few questions here and a pretty interesting one set that too Let me quickly start with the first one So the first question that we've received for you is with most brands trying to do a hyper local and personalized messaging How does a brand ensure that it's not adding to the clutter and really standing out? I think, you know, the the key to this always starts with like Your understanding of trends of society of the insights that will make you stand out And I think, you know, that that has to be our start point on everything, you know, there are multiple, you know challenges, you know every day in everybody's lives, you know, that that that affects how they behave How they purchase even, you know, so understanding what your brand and, you know, what your brand or even what your category can actually bring Like, you know, and and what the connection is to that like to what it brings to to individuals And to people at large that that's the key. I think to stand out from the clutter Because it is it is a parade at the moment of people like, you know, everyone has to have a purpose, you know And like, you know, and, you know, this this is true whether you're you're an agency or a massive multinational or like consumer brand No, it's like to me it becomes just noise if everybody paints their logo, you know, multicolored in In response to to pride like, you know pride month, you know, what's the differentiation there? What is that? What are you actually building? That's not so you don't do it But bring something to that which is like tangible which is around your brands and show that you're actually doing something That is that is connected to this. It's not just a washing of like, you know, of a brand every month for the whatever the next course is Right. Thank you for that, Gordon. Another question that I've just received now is Malls have the focused and deceptive customer set along with their family friends But still mall branding and promotion featured at the bottom of brand media promotion pyramid across agencies I believe your group and wave maker should elevate mall media in the preference list. What's your view on that? I think that's a that's a good question. I think, you know, increasingly You know, if you look at the the drive across the world to to diversity to inclusion to equity in the way that we behave that that covers absolutely everything within, you know, um Within the business world as well. You know, so for us, I think there's an important step in terms of understanding, you know How we direct like money, you know, and I think this is not just on on on agencies. This is on on brands as well I mean, you know how investment works like, you know, like a lot of marketers would still believe that You know, you spend your money on facebook and google. You're not going to go far wrong Right, you know and and and for us there is an education in like, you know, how we actually spend Where do we actually spend that money to actually grow? You know, not just alternatives, which are obviously beneficial for agencies and for advertisers But demonstrate that we are supporting other businesses But it's not just about these huge monolithic companies and I think this is an absolutely critical part of um, the responsibility of brands and of agencies to demonstrate that this is what we're doing This is how you grow diversity. This is how you grow equity and this is how you grow inclusion It's not by channeling your money into into the same channels Uh, you know who genuinely don't need our money at this moment as you'll see from From the results they posted over the last couple of weeks I think this is something that we are genuinely I was looking at this the other day because I'm actually seeing this come through on on pitch requests From from clients as well. How do you actually spend your money? Where do you actually divert these funds to? How are you promoting diversity and equity and like, you know, and this is going to become increasingly important And I think for us we've been pretty slow at tracking this But I think you'll see that like there's a massive step change coming which is necessarily accelerated by what's happening in the world now Right another one. No, it's interesting what it says that as a young brand manager What are your what are the trends that I should anticipate to ensure a greater ROI? Oh Firstly, I I forgot the second part of that question because I was just overwhelmed by young brand manager Oh Oh, I love this person whoever this is. I love you. Thank you Look, I mean But the one thing yeah, I so I've been in china for 14 years. This has been like my my home for 14 years and like, you know partially Because it's a good place to live but but mostly because if you're any In the communications industry if you're in the Interested in digital technology industry This is like a fantastic place to be and the one thing it teaches you is like, you know, trends are incredibly short-term like, you know, where we You know our ecosystem in china and you'll see increasingly across the rest of the world It's um, it develops at such a rate. It develops at such a rate I think that the key to staying ahead of that is that as an agency You know, we work very closely with brands and with platforms and I don't just mean like, you know the the monoliths And we also work very closely with with clients because we need to be agile We need to like understand development. We need to test and learn and and for me there is no like, oh We're going to jump on this trend. We're going to throw it up and get it and it's going to work It doesn't work like that. The only things that work are testing utility trying to understand what works what doesn't work, you know, and and to me that is You know, that that's the role of the agency, you know, we work with media channels every day We see new media channels come up every day, you know for us, you know, we have to be fully aware of like everything that's going on in this, you know And and try and track what these societal trends are and how communications are doing that now Like, you know, one of the one of the, you know, key provocations that I give I give to the people at wave maker is that, you know, we're at the forefront of shaping what digital technology looks like Yeah, every one of the people who works for us. They spend like, you know, their entire lives in their phones, you know Like, you know, I'm mostly I see the top of people's heads, right? You know, this is this is how You know, it's works and we have so many young people in our industry. They are actually creating these trends Now it's what's interesting to me is like when you like how many time it takes a little while But when the penny drops that like what we do in this industry is actually changing the course of communications changing the course Of like how technology is developing how brands communicate, but how people communicate as well That to me is like, you know, like really inspiring really powerful and probably what keeps me a little bit young Right. So we have a lot of questions here, but sadly we only have time for one more So you can actually go ahead and head to God and up on the social networks if you really want to get into the other questions The last question that I would like to throw your way God and is how can retail evolve? How do you see exponential on ground retail planning out? I mean, this is really interesting like, you know, the one, you know, we You know, I live in a You know in a country where it is dominated by e-commerce But retail and physical retail has never been healthier You know, and like, yeah, it sounds like a, you know, a complete contradiction that like, you know, everyone shops online But what we found is that like the retail experience is absolutely critical to everybody and I think, you know, as we come out of pandemic Now that's going to become even more so, you know, you have to build an experience online You have to build a real physical experience as well. If you look at the investment by brands going into Going into physical retail into experience centers into like things that actually develop like omni-channel O2o experiences, this is like the future of of retail And I think, you know, the examples I'm seeing spring up across china in hong kong in korea You know, which was intended to be I think at the forefront of developing that that that sort of You know real real and virtual world and integrating them. They're just incredible and It won't stop. You know, and I think, you know, people You know move away from like thinking about e-commerce and and physical retail because there is no distinction You know, so it's it will all come down to experience It'll all come down to how you can provide that and how you can link the two And I think that that to me you'll you'll see that rapid rapid development in india very very soon Okay, um How do I do this? So I have questions pouring in like a hot cakes right now. I don't know what to do about them So I will try and hold you out for five more minutes. If that's okay with your garden Everybody is just dying to have you on Okay, so the next question that I have just got is you mentioned over 80% of indian consumers want brands to comment on What is happening around and also on socio-political events? However, this may result in backlash from a certain section as we've seen How should brands kind of walk this tight rope of balancing out? Convey the message as well as trying to not really offend the the greater population out there Yeah, I mean, so this came from a recent absentia study So, you know, and and it's it's not really a surprise. I don't think because you know, this is you can see the the history of Advertising and communication in india has always been about You know storytelling or integrating like people's stories, which are which are exactly about society They're about like, you know real-life environments and that storytelling has always been I think a very distinctive feature of of advertising and media in it in india now You know, just because people want something, you know, doesn't mean you have to do it You know, you don't have to like, you know, just you know have to stand for something all the time Sometimes you can just entertain, you know Sometimes, you know, there is room for functionality in in what you do and like unless you actually have, you know A reason a purpose to be involved in something and you see that there is something that your your brand like, you know Works with and there's an insight that drives it That's that's what that's what will make it happen And it doesn't have to be like the the tartar tea like, you know platform umbrella, you know, which like which to me is just like just sensational in in terms of You know the linkage of awakening the linkage of the product the linkage of the brand what it stands for and like, you know And it's distribution across across india the importance of tea to people in in terms of like how they start their day How they awaken and then what's happens in society around them to me You know that you know that comes from like one single insight But as I say, there are so many examples which are look at something that's happening now What is our role in this, you know, how do I actually understand what my role is and like, you know And to me again, it comes down to understanding comes down to insight and it comes down to authenticity If you don't have those things, you're never going to be able to execute well So, you know, and to me like, you know, a good agency would also tell you, you know what you're going down the wrong path here Because this this will cause more alienation than like you actually not embarking on it in the first place Right, uh, another thing that that's really fascinating and hearing you speak about this is also prompted me to ask this question So before pandemic as such happened a lot of brand was a lot of brands out there the marketing or the communication that was happening was directly Balancing around the product or probably the need around the product But after the pandemic, we've seen collectively throughout the industries. There is a Conversation happening around empathy or emotional quotient where brands are trying to dig deep into the nature of humanity as such and coming together So how how important firstly that is in terms of building a brand around the things that matter and secondly How where do you see the future of this sort of communication going? Yeah, yeah, I mean as I said, I really do think that uh, india is quite advanced in in in its storytelling and it's in the emotional connection it builds through advertising and free media now, um You know it again, I have a really interesting contrast the living living in china where You know advertising tends to be incredibly direct incredibly functional and incredibly focused around performance You know because everyone's just looking to grow sell like you know and and you know You are stuck in that lower funnel all the time just like pounding pounding pounding What did you sell like, you know, not just like today, but like, you know this minute this second But how are we doing so? so to me that's a You know, it's a massive contrast to where india is and and there is a balance to be had You know, and there is always a balance to be had here, you know, there is you know, all of us live under Excruciating pressure of delivering daily returns. You know, we have to get our viewership up We have to get our clicks up. I have to sell more product I have to like, you know and and people are looking at this daily So you have to balance that, you know But you know for us and like, you know, a lot of the The the tools the systems the intelligence that we apply to brands is about finding that right balance Where are you in your product cycle? Where are you in your brand life cycle? You know, what what sort of like a legacy heritage do you have? How can they actually help you make the most of that now and and for the future? And like, you know, there's no there's no right answer. It's totally, you know set At this time for this brand in this category with these consumers in this market This is what we do. And then there are even nuances, you know between, you know Indians of our country, Chinese of our country, like the nuances of how we communicate, you know, always there Yeah, I'm doing a really good job to say it's incredibly complicated to split 100 into two numbers But it is trust me And that's and but that's that's what we do, you know And that's and that's, you know part of the joy and excitement of what we do as well That we know that we can actually influence how brands grow how consumers feel about them how they connect to them Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Gordon. I know we've taken much more time than we actually initially asked you for But thank you so much for being so patient and answering all the questions that we had for you It was a pleasure to have you I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much and I hope everyone enjoys the the rest of the afternoon