 So, ladies and gentlemen, our next panel discussion is going to be on the changing landscape but of marketing. Are we ready to take the big leap or marketing in the realm of complex consumers, multi-platforms and multi-screen world? How to make it effective? Well, the session chair for this panel discussion is going to be Mr. Vikas Mehta. He's the CEO of 0.9 Lintas. Vikas has worked with the Global Mulan Law Group since 2006 in various leadership roles. At the age of 31, he was named Managing Director of Loaf Vietnam, making him the youngest country head in the global network. In 2011, he was named Regional Growth Officer for Loaf Asia Pacific, where he managed businesses, agencies working across 15 countries. Please, Vikas, I request you to please come and join me on stage. And he's going to be your moderator for this session. The food was good. I'm sure it would have given you some energy, a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. Now I'm going to invite our panelists for this session. I have a request, Ms. Anika Agarwal, Senior VP and head marketing, Digital and Direct Sales Max Bupa Health Insurance to please join me on stage along with Dinesh Shorora, Digital Head, Angel Broking, Prashant Varma, VP Marketing, Grofus and Ms. Tripthi Bhandari, Global Lead, Base Horlicks and Boost, GSK Consumer Health Care. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your panel and I am now going to hand it over to Vikas. Can you folks hear me? Good afternoon. We'll try and keep you awake. So thank you so much for calling us here. I think it's lovely to have the session right after lunch. It's the most exciting time of the day. So we're talking about how the marketing organization needs to evolve to respond to what I like to call and most of you like to call the VUCA world. But I think the emphasis we'd like to keep on today is how the whole equation of, because effectiveness is a subject we all talk about and I think the, it's probably one of the most bandied around terms in our business that was it effective or not. So what we'd like to do today is spend the next 30 minutes, A, trying not to bore you and B, trying to talk about the aspect of return on investment which makes up the subject matter of effectiveness. So I think to kick things off, let me just set the context from one or two observations which have come as an outcome of the environment in which we live today. So digital Dutch points pretty much were born let's say 23 years ago when Google became a part of our lives. And the promise to a marketer was that digital is going to remove all the intermediaries between brands and their customers. While that promise has come true to a large extent, an exactly reverse thing has also happened that today between platforms, aggregators, display networks, search networks, trading desks and to deal with it the horizontal as well as the vertical screens in our lives, there are actually thousands and thousands of layers between brands and their customers that are also equally come about. So how do you measure return on investment in such a disparate environment is something that I think we should spend the next 20 minutes thinking about. And we have a very, very interesting mix of industries here with us. So let's set the ball rolling by asking each of the panelists and I promise this is the only question I would ask all of them to answer is in their industry since the marketing mixes have become a lot more complex. If you could each just talk about the primary component of your marketing mix today and on that specific element, how has the subject of you measuring return on investment evolved over the last few years? Could we start with you, Anika? So hello, just to give you a quick context, I work in the health insurance industry. Two words there, health and insurance. Insurance are very, very traditional industry where the distributor is actually the consumer and it is that distributor who actually goes and talks to your customer about the product. That has changed significantly for us. And health, a general topic of interest I think today for all Indians but today a health insurance company which finances your health or bad health if that happens, I think that's the customer that we are dealing with. You look at the category which is slightly under penetrated and was a distribution heavy category. In such a case, you know there's been a tremendous evolution for us as a category first before a brand and you know the lines are blurring. So yes, we have an omnichannel experience, we have a lot of data about our customers today but if we talk about marketing effectiveness and attribution today, the approach that we evolved over the years is that we've got a lot of data on our customers which is a good thing about the category but you know where do you attribute it to? Is it the last click or is it digital? You know where you're spending crores and crores of money today but finally the distributor says that you know I went and sold your product. There are only 2 or 3% of customers who go and buy end to end online. So I think the approach that we are taking on attribution and we'll talk about it later is that you have to be where the customer is. It's not so much about whether it's TV or whether it's print or whether it's digital. I think it is more about are you present where the customer is and that's the line of attribution to follow versus just media channels. So it's a more channel agnostic approach. I think that's very interesting because now if we superimpose the niche your industry on it which is your offering is largely driven into stocks and I'm assuming a large chunk of your business comes online. Would you want to talk about how's the measurement environment in your industry like? Just to give you a little idea about my industry so it's broken. We all talk about this industry and we said okay this is the industry where we can make money easily. That's what the term that people say a lot of time. And now I heard a lot of people say that okay we would like to open a broken account that can help us because stocks is easy money. But I see adaption of this industry is not that easy till now. I think I've seen very few people actually go ahead and actually open the account. But the main opening account is maybe easy but the issue is that investing and continue investing in this industry. Where I see that we are still in a very easy and we are still too far that we have to go to that people get very aware about the industry and actually they can think that how they can actually invest and how they can use this particular medium to double their money. Now adding that part the major thing that we see as a marketing objective we see is acquisition is maybe one objective we see but the major is that how we actually keep the retention going on. That's what the major thing that I have and when I see my marketing mix and the channel I say that how can I actually try to get more customer who would keep on investing and continue investing in this space. Right Prashant your business is I guess as minute by minute measurable as it gets. Is it easier or harder when it comes to measuring and attributing the impact of what worked and what didn't. Wow that's a good question so yeah our business as such as you know Grofer's is online grocery it's different from other e-commerce in the sense that rest of e-commerce is a want-based business this is a need-based business and hence the frequency of purchase and everything and the ticket size of purchase is very different from the rest of e-com. Measurement for us is see we've what we've done is what we observe here is the marketing funnel is no longer linear at Grofer's. What do you think you're doing for consideration major drive intent to purchase right that's something it's it's actually a very cross matrix for us so measurement for us as and I would carry on from where Dinesh left off it's essentially it starts off with acquisition and in our case retention takes precedence over it because it's the lifetime value of the consumer who's who you're bringing on to the table and you eventually end up optimizing for that right so when I go back to your question about being harder or easier it actually becomes harder because we can measure everything to the T like we know who's buying the preferred brand of toothpaste what I what have been the purchase patterns we can actually classify who's purchased let's say we have we actually end up creating more more like a hundred consumer profiles and our consumer journeys on the platform and off the platform essentially how we target them very as per these particular journeys so from a business that measures practically everything to a business that sells products that we've known since we were kids to be how is it different for your scenario hello so good afternoon everyone we look after health food drinks which is the brand's Horlicks boost mentioned here so a very very traditional brands been around for more than hundred years so our form of marketing is also quite traditional in that sense and media forms the most important chunk of our marketing to reach our consumers what I would say is over the last few years however the proportion of media has gone down and we've started experimenting with a lot of digital a lot of content PR and some of the other avenues to reach consumers now but well we would still be 80% media and if it comes to measurement I think because media has been around for so long there are techniques and tools which are available to measure the ROI having said that because the other methods which is the digital marketing and stuff that's where we are really struggling still and while we would love to say that we understand the ROI that these vehicles give I think that's the place where intuition plays the biggest role so sometimes you try to layer a lot of stress on quantity and that's where you know that okay you've got 80% reach at two times frequency but the moment you come to these newer age marketing vehicles that's the time when you need to stress a little more on quality and though you know that the numbers may not be high you try you judge bases your intuition that I'm reaching the right TG and therefore the convergence will be the highest so that's where we are right now and hope to evolve the ROI method better but we are struggling I would say you make a very interesting point about how the ROI methods are evolving and I think in a business where and let's let's look at some of the platform businesses where there are dashboards available to pretty much measure every aspect of your marketing dollar and where it's going now here's here's a point where I would want to finish your perspective let's talk about brand equity I'm I'm assuming in the online broken business a lot of energy goes behind customer acquisition and repeat transactions is sometimes a reflection of loyalty but at times it can just be a reflection of a habit so at your organization how do you isolate transactional success versus building loyalty and what are the things you do to think about the aspect of brand equity and measuring it to answer that point acquisition is one way but retention is not easy for us and how we ensure that the acquisition and retention work separately I generally measured two team where you know the one team is exactly only focusing how to retain the customer give them the right experience and ensure that we are listing them what they are looking for and how we can actually address these things now loyalty in our industry is also is not a very it's also confused what that we say because loyalty depend upon the kind of offers and the rates that you provide that is that is the case right now and with the competition where you have a full service broker and the only you know just the you know managed services kind of a thing in that case you know where you find the lower brokerage people move so you actually kind of keep on segmenting your user and figure out which one are the profitable customers and the customer who are very active in performance how you actually learn from them and kind of give them same advice to the other user and how can you make you know elevate them to more premium customer for you and that's what the team on keep on working so that we can actually you know keep them happy with us so let me take an example let's say from because let's move from one under penetrated sector to another which is health insurance Anika in your in your experience which are the I mean initiatives that probably are geared towards building preference versus initiatives that are built towards building a transaction how do you put your finger on where to spend which part of your marketing dollars on so that's an interesting question and I go back to the you know the summit team today which is starting with complex customers I don't think customers are complex the challenge today is that you know earlier as marketers we used to think information is at a premium so you know I am giving the information and I am controlling the narrative today the narrative is not controlled by us and I think that's the biggest sort of discomfort that all of us as human beings and marketers have that someone else is to you know controlling the narrative so I think when we talk about word of mouth it's all interlinked we talk about you know the detractors that we have currently and that's the worst sort of you know conversation that they can have about me as a brand today so when we talk about you know marketing investments I think we are placing a premium on customer experience so if we spend an X amount of money on acquisition and it's a high growth category I mean we grow upwards of 30 to 40 percent which is not to be said for many categories today it's a sunrise industry I would still spend half of my money on building customer experience today because that is where my brand narrative is also controlled so to take a case in point in terms of investments in technology infrastructure or marketing if I were to invest in acquiring new users today I create lookalikes of my existing customers so we have a lot of data we have health data we have demographic data so you know you if you have that kind of data for your customers you can create lookalikes and you know target the most profitable customers in terms of acquisition but that's one part of the story the other large investment and if I talk about my personal time structure investment at least 40 to 50 percent of it today is going in controlling the customer experience for us so whether it is a digital customer experience or even experience let's say at hospitals where you know finally the promise is fulfilled a large part of the team energy also goes in there so the question again then comes back to you know structure skill sets within the marketing team if that's the kind of focus that we are building but customer experience for a category like ours even though under penetrated is key so look that's actually I think that brings me to another point that if we go around this table I think we have three organizations which the nature of your business is very data-rich and in a manner of speaking the real-time pulse of consumer behavior is available to you almost at a dashboard level but let's look at a large business where through you don't have the luxury of so much real-time information in case of but we all know that it's a brand that we grew up with and probably building affinity is as or more important than building trials how do you define your mix to especially the efforts that are built towards building affinity or emotional equity have the measures for those aspects changed in the past few years if you look at our TG the TG is really the mom you know and the product that we give her is something that she uses to be able to grow her child most comprehensively so the involvement is extremely extremely high and given that she is in today's environment she's also very informed because earlier she was believing the products which were handed down to her by her mom by her grandmother but today because she is so informed she is while on one hand she knows that there's a legacy product she's also seeking information constantly so therefore it is very very important to be on her right side and the tricky part is it's it's a combination of both rational as well as emotionally trying to appeal to her so to that extent it's not just about the product benefit but what is the emotional payoff that she gets and when you come to that obviously there is a connect that you need to create with her so while a lot of our effort goes in getting in new users you know because as new age trying to be contemporary and relevant to the new mom lot of effort actually also goes in still staying relevant to the existing users connecting with them so that they become advocates for the newer moms and you know passing it on to their family and friends especially in today's time when there is so much of influence that works this mom is no different so I would see a lot of our effort actually goes in creating the right language for the brand so that the mom is completely convinced and proud of being associated with us so let me bring that now to another perspective which is measurement in ROI come naturally to all things digital Prashant in your experience are there any learnings from the digital measurement models which might actually be useful in modeling of ROI for some of the more legacy and traditional medium so what we've done is actually measure TV ROI that may sound complex and that may sound different but when we start at TV planning we start on the classical principles of reach frequency duplication etc but when we measure our TV it's it's based it's on the basis of of actually spot analysis I mean we've actually set up an in-house data team and set up an in-house modeling team for that what we've done is let's say a spot plays at 8 30 p.m. on star sports what is the ROI of that particular ad which is played at that point of time we actually end up measuring it on the basis of the hits that we get on the website that that's the incremental visits the incremental installs which we gave on the on the app the downloads which we get overall on both iOS and Android so that's that's something which we've tried to develop on our own and that's the kind of measurement which we do like at grofers like because as I said earlier the computer has become has become a lot more complex people bounce around so while you may think that television was for awareness it ends up becoming for intent and purchase too and and that's that's the kind of modeling which we end up doing and and our TV planning as such is actually changed week on week right we end up creating a plan based on reach and frequency but then post that we end up modifying a plan week on week as for the as for the results of each week that's very interesting and have you had any experiences of legacy businesses probably borrowing those learnings from grofers or vice versa so I think legacy I think once e-commerce penetration grows to a higher level that's when legacy businesses can actually end up seeing the impact of their advertising which goes on television because that's when a bulk of the sale which happens in the e-com platform will actually see up right so here's what I'm hearing and it's there's a part of it that's bothering me a little our view of effectiveness seems extremely myopic around this room right now and I say that with all due respect to the environment that we live in where I guess the quarter is the new long-term and of course there are pressures as well as priorities for delivering instant results and measurable results but I think one of the fundamental things of the whole subject of marketing effectiveness is also about the long-term impact on people's mindsets that you make as initiatives so shall we let's spend the next few minutes talking about work that your organizations may be doing in terms of measuring the long-term impact like and I think companies like GSK for example where your own brands that have been around for a very very long time there is of course the equity measures that have been in place and there's a lot of pre and post evaluation that has been done for a very long time what I would want to hear is from some of the under penetrated categories let's take health insurance for example how do you measure the long-term impact of initiatives which are beyond instant results so I think two things and taking his point forward when we talk about digital measurement and this era of digital measurement the pressures are always there of saying you know why should you do this this doesn't see any shorter movement so what we've actually started to do our build-out models which take you know one digital metric as a core which is let's say search volume so today there's a search volume growth that I have there's a category search growth volume and there's a brand search growth volume so anything that you're doing today what is the impact on the brand search volume because that's where you're really building you know going down to the funnel and building preference so on everything that we do even for a you know for a lead or an ROI for example we measure that now and we're in very initial stages right now because the data collection itself is such a huge ask but you know in categories like ours where people don't want to have a conversation with us right so you know taking GSK example as a mom I would want to have a conversation with boost but health insurance is a black spawn category I don't want to talk bad health with you so I think we always keep aside you know few initiatives which are linked to our purpose so you know building the brand with a purpose our purpose for example is building healthier more successful lives the conversation is around how to keep the customers healthy so about you know 15 to 20 percent of the marketing spent today is actually going in having that good health conversation or allowing our customers to stay healthy so we have initiatives like walk for health we've actually recently launched a product which is you know rewarding people to stay out of hospital so that's a lateral position we've taken as a brand it doesn't have great takers it's not as if it's 50% of our product portfolio but these kind of initiatives actually keep the brand purpose alive and you know have a meaningful conversation very interesting point that and whole subject of innovation every time you come up with an innovative product where there isn't really an existing benchmark of where to evaluate success from Dinesh in the broken industry let's say you're in a situation of launching a product initiative or a product format that doesn't exist or doesn't have doesn't have mass adoption today how would you go about benchmark creating the right benchmark for success so if you're saying that I'm launching a new product that is not there in the market so initially I don't have a benchmark for this actual product then what I do is that figure out the product that is near to my product let's suppose if I am thinking of broke mutual fund and I don't have any benchmark for it I'll see what is the adoption rate and the industry benchmarking for broken for that matter and I try to put some number using that and then I think about my strategy and and then I see how can I reach toward those numbers but initially when I have don't have the benchmark I have to think about the nearest possible category can give me some idea about the benchmarking so we have last two minutes I have one quick question for each one of you 30 seconds or less advice for this room if somebody is at let's say ground zero of building their measurement infrastructure in their organization what's the bare minimum it takes to get started on putting your company on the path of being able to measure and act according to the information and become an effective marketing machinery 30 seconds so I would say three things incentivize contactability for the customer I think that's always the first step invest in having at least the right people to analyze data that you collect and tell you in advance or data scientists in the team I think should be a part of every CMO structure today and third I think across the organization just that data awareness in terms of collection of as much of data as possible analyzing it in real time and and you know sensitizing even the top management to it because a lot of times all of this conversation remains within the marketing teams and you know your CEO for example is like you know what the hell are you talking about today so I think that's something that you need to keep in mind it's a fabulous point the nation so if we can you organization I think what matters may that instead of focusing on the end goal you should also try to see how your channels are working with each other and things and try to have an integrated marketing in place third I agree with the conductivity part that we should have it here too and forces that ensure that whatever step that you're taking it should be planned from across the channel point of view not specify for one channel if you're thinking of a team it has to be implemented across the channel I'll try and do it in 15 so one set up your data team to define the role of each medium three act on it okay so I would say three things for me are first of all focusing on building long-term equity and not just short-term gains and to us that being really authentic to the consumer because they see through and if you do that will you be able to build your equity and lastly is taking calculated risks because the more safe you play you will just keep doing what you were doing all those years fabulous let me just instead of summing this up let me actually leave you all with a question and I think the whole subject of measurement is think of every touchpoint as pretty much a platform which has its own dashboard and if you compare that to most probably the car that you probably drove today what a dashboard can tell you is a lot of information about how your engine is performing what's the temperature of your car what's the rev what's the speed so on and so forth but remember that very few dashboards will ever tell you where the car is going and I think the whole crux of the effectiveness subject is about starting with the clarity of the destination and finding milestones and measures along your way and another piece of advice which I have learned the hard way over many many experiences is I think on the game of measurement and effectiveness let's all be open to failing but failing fast because eventually it's it's a game the more you played the more the better you get at it do we have any questions from the audience excellent you've been a wonderful audience thank you my panelists thank you so much