 Is a keynote session the topic at hand is the changing face of marketing in an Increasingly digital world. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our keynote address deliverer Mr. Atul Raja executive vice president global marketing Vada Vani Foundation It's known everyone It's a pleasure being here, and I must thank the E4M team And current to have invited me here to share my views On a topic which I feel is extremely critical today And it cuts across all the verticals of the comms industry And when I say marketing you realize, you know that it is applicable to some component or the other of marketing how the digital transformation has impacted marketing and And how marketers have to reinvent themselves I'll start by saying there have been two defining changes Change number one the strategic shift from brand centricity To customer centricity is almost complete. You know the pandemic has changed the world So why won't it change marketing? And point number two is a logical corollary of point number one Obsession with the customer is the new normal now So with these two thematic components, I just like to highlight what I think are my top ten Transformational elements of marketing as impacted by the increased digitization that has taken place During the pandemic and post the pandemic it continues First of all the very economics of marketing has changed You know So even small players now can enter what I call is the advertising dogfight and By no means I'm saying this that the bigger players with deeper pockets You know don't have the advantage. They have the advantage, but they no longer have the decisive advantage So it's like a level playing field today. So from a marketer perspective, you know higher the spend need not Result today in higher ROI So when I'm speaking to you about these transformations, it's quite fascinating You'll realize there are challenges. There are opportunities as a marketer, you know, you may want to look at it either way Secondly inbound marketing has taken center stage You know With the media landscape virtually exploding The footfalls to various platforms of organizations has also exploded Now these are the footfalls that are doing lots of research You know, they are very pre-purchased savvy So inherent in this is that there is a tectonic shift from what I call as brand push To brand pull, you know, when I started in my marketing and advertising career We used to focus on print ads electronic media, you know, and Perhaps a few radio FM channels So what was happening then we always wanted to communicate what we wanted to say But the trend is reverse now. You are actually you have to communicate what the customer wants to hear, right? So that's what inbound is actually changing the face of communication per se Thirdly, somebody mentioned it in one of the earlier panels Content has taken pre-eminence over creatives, right? So my induction into the advertising and marketing field First we used to conceptualize creatives with our ad agencies and You know, the content used to come in as an afterthought Today, I feel the situation is again reversed It is the content that is driving the creatives. Yeah, so There are three types of Content tasks that take place create curate and cultivate I think amongst all the three the curate version is really exploding now and there are Brands that I personally feel are content-driven brands as umato is one You know, it has a one and a half million followers on Twitter It has close to two million followers on Facebook and you'll keep wondering like Zomato should be focusing on footfalls to its app from where the business comes in How come they are getting so much traction on these social channels? Simply because they are using a lot of humor in their content They are Using the cultural aspect in their content They are using trending topics in that content and I personally feel content has made that brand to a large extent Look at Oreo when Oreo came into India You know, it was struggling against established brands like parley, Britannia, right? And they did a lot of outreach to consumers But it was finally their content strategy that helped them So if anybody has followed Oreo, there is something called daily dunks, right? So they have this daily dunk content like if it's a June 21, which is the longest day of the year They'll have a stressed Brand of or the packaging of Oreo, right? If it is July 1, which is doctor's day They'll have Oreo Packaged, you know in in tablets where the tablets are kept So that's how they created a lot of traction and the brand is really doing well now The fourth element, which is absolutely critical is data has come into marketing in a big way now, you know, so it is helping marketing and smart decisions and informed decisions and intelligent decisions and You know, if you look at scenario based marketing, it is also helping you and you know measuring the You know the ROI of your marketing effects in a very scientific manner AB in Bev the liquor major very recently I was reading it has gone on record to say how they're using the data of their 2.5 billion customers To a and they've increased their sales by almost 80 percent, right? Nike's Snapping up tech companies now because they want to get into the mind of consumers They want to You know just understand what is the consumer psychographics and how it will influence incremental purchases in the future Point number five is you know, if I may use the term Consumers are now Increasingly promiscuous in their brand relationships, right? Whether it's a manufacturer or a retailer or an organization If the finding it marketing departments are finding it very difficult to understand What it takes to get consumers stickiness, right? Because where he's getting influenced and where he's moving out of your value chain It's very getting very difficult to understand and hence Consumer loyalty or brand loyalty. I personally feel will be the bane of marketeers in the future It's going to be the most difficult task that marketeers are going to face now Another aspect is ad blindness Which is again pretty fascinating 50% of the internet users today consciously subconsciously or unconsciously You know, they just are averse to any pop-ups any advertising. They just don't see it, right? and When the you know Initial internet banners came up in 1994 when 80 NT came up with the very first banner the CTR at that time used to be 44% and imagine today a CTR of 0.05% which is still Considered to be very healthy. So that's the kind of challenge in front of the marketeers as to you know What happens whether they should actually advertise or they should start looking at Some other media apart from pop-ups Point number seven is the shift very shifting nature of the consumer Engagement when I was growing up in the field of marketing the typical marketing funnel Used to have a wide base at the bottom, right? And that used to be the area where we used to call it as the considered set So that's where we attacked the consumers first You know, then you narrow down his choice go down to the next level attack them again and go to the apex of the funnel Where two three brands are there and your marketing efforts used to endeavor That you know, you are part of those two three brands, but it's all gone topsy-turvy. There is no considered set today, right? the consumer starts by having just two three brands in his considered set and You know, if you want to So it's a challenge like how what do you do to just hit him directly to be there in his initial list because there is no second opportunity Point number eight is the massive clutter How do you avoid clutter? I personally feel you know To avoid clutter today is to be become part of the clutter itself, right? High-frequency is high engagement You can't avoid being part of the clutter and you can't avoid the high-frequency You know, I am personally actually doing in a six months time I must have done more than 600 creatives, right? There was a time when we used to give a front page ad in Times of India or a front page solar sad You know or a back page premium ad in Hindustan times and used to feel like it's a job well done for the quarter But that's not the case today. You virtually need to have a creative factory You need to turn out one creative after the other perhaps three or four creatives To achieve that kind of deep penetration and reach and to become part of that clutter to actually avoid that Clutter in digital space today Point number nine. I think with the digital media exploding today being human has become paramount you know In 2020 when the pandemic was at its peak You know, there was a co-commercial Called, you know the human race which caught my attention It sets things like, you know for every boundary for every barrier that is set up There are boundaries that are torn down For every classroom that is for every school that is closed that are class There are classrooms that are opened up hundreds of them and it went on and on and It ended the commercial actually ended by saying thanks for filling a glass with kindness and hope, you know So consumers today are actually valuing or they are looking at the brand values They are looking at the values of the organization or the brand that they want to associate with it's not just the functional feature And that's what the digital explosion is actually doing. It's bringing the human side of the brands to the fore today and finally 360 degree view of the consumer is Paramount today You have to dissect your consumer and understand The consumer, you know, your target audience from left right center or from whichever angle you look at the consumer It's all about deep Customer intelligence, it's all about insights. It's all about initiating in immersive conversations because If you don't understand your consumer today, perhaps he will move out of your value chain very soon And marketeers are increasingly warming up to the fact today That deep understanding of the consumer translates into unprecedented levels of customer engagement, right? That's the bottom line today Look at Starbucks, you know, how it uses the loyalty data of its consumers and Gets into very specific behaviors and past purchasing patterns to give them very specific offers and to give them an Experience that is unforgettable. So maybe the Starbucks consumer will always go to Starbucks and perhaps avoid a cafe coffee day That's the endeavor So these are, you know Top 10 changes that I felt that the digital Explosion has brought into marketing which marketers need to brace up both as challenges and as opportunities And having said that You know, I would just like to end this You know my speech by saying that we need to attack the consumer today At every stage of the consumer decision journey, that's where we are going towards and That's the difference between omnichannel marketing and what we call as multi-channel marketing Where you look at a consumer today, you talk to him at the call center Then at the next stage you drive him to your chat pot Then at the next stage you drive him to the social handles and hence to the you know Call-to-action page on your website So you are actually living the experience at every stage of the consumer decision journey and Folks I'd just like to end by saying that the changes to marketing because of Increased digitization are not just incremental. They are fundamental and so please brace up for the changes and You know because it's all about new learnings new applications and New ways to reach new consumers. Thank you folks for your time and have a great 2023 Thank you very much for a lovely keynote session ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. Mr. Ruhi almond senior editor BW business world to need for M To present a small token of appreciation to Mr. Atul Raja. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen