 Welcome to the second episode of E4M Tech Munch, which will soon be a topic for today is very relevant and something which everyone is talking about. We'll be discussing, is digital marketing the best bet for marketers? As we have seen, a lot of people are spending and consuming content on digital. And it seems like digital was waiting for this particular moment to happen. We always thought about going digital. But I think this is the land of the present. I may call that domain. That we all are forced to look at digital. I would first introduce my panelists today. I have with me Anushree Bosch, Head of Digital Strategy and Media, ITC Limited. I have Gaurav Kapoor, Head of Digital Marketing. I have Zahed Anushree and Head of Digital Content and Social Media Marketing, HDFC. And I have Shruti Khanna, Deputy Manager of Digital and Retail Marketing for India. Hi, everyone. I hope you guys are done with this lockdown so much that going to office would be really a struggle after this. Possibly. This is inertia, lockdown, inertia. You don't like to move? Yes. The format would be that we would have one hour of action and 15 minutes for night Q&A, which I'll be sharing with you. So I can start with you, Anushree. My first question is, I'll come to all of you for this answer. Can we now say that the era of digital marketing is... How have we been bounded off this file? Well, actually if you... Yeah, this could be one of those watershed moments which kind of give the inflection point to any media. So I think perhaps the lockdown could be termed as one of those. But actually if you look at since the last one year or so, I mean ever since we got into this stage of slowdown, digital has kind of become a go-to medium for brands that have been, it has kind of attained enough scale for it to be comparable, whether it's cost per reach or whether it's from pure play region frequency numbers. From an effectiveness and frequency perspective, I think digital has gained scale in the last two years. Last year, I think we did an analysis and there were various papers floating around which basically spoke about how digital did not really witness the flattening or did not really witness a decline when it comes to advertisers spend while every other medium did. So slowdown did contribute, you know, monies to actually move towards digital, that's more from effectiveness and efficiency standpoint. But the lockdown essentially has moved consumers to anywhere content is being served. And digital happens to be one of the largest such mediums. And you know, whether it's from a time spent perspective or a reach perspective or the variety of content perspective or digital being, you know, that go-to medium for seek out behavior because, you know, we all today live in micro moments. We have these questions of how to that we want answered at any given point of time. So digital happens to be one of those mediums that kind of becomes the starting point of all consumer journey. So yes, I guess this is one of those watershed moments which we defined as, you know, the inflection point for digital. Gaurav, I want to ask you, if you're going for a toss in a way, is this the opportunity for digital marketers to establish their cloud? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think as, you know, Anushree has also mentioned this is the right time and the from past two years past two years also picked up. I would say digital has been a part of all the strategy which, you know, brands are doing. But going forward after seeing the situation what is happening now, absolutely, this is the right time for the, you know, companies that previously did not fully develop their digital strategy. The opportunity which cares and transform the loss into, you know, potential by, you know, making is on their website, you know, payment gateways on their website. I'm talking about the some, you know, traditional companies, basically, you know, upgrading their content marketing strategies. You know, search engine really come into play. Most of the people, you know, it's friends and all those stuff, but there are certain things which, you know, you can utilize free of cost, which is, you know, one of them is search engine optimization and engagement on your social handle. And, you know, very much aware about that, you know, recently these guys have activated their you know, Instagram page where these guys are sharing recipes and that's the best way of, you know, connecting with their customer, engaging with their customer, sharing recipes. So that's a very good things, you know, these brands are doing, especially Mondele's. Mondele's initially, you know, recently they have activated their, you know, delivery channel. And now connecting with customers directly which is the future of, you know, e-commerce, I can say. So definitely this is the right time for the brands and so that they can explore the, you know, opportunity in digital medium. And the best part about digital is, obviously they can track the performance. They can see what customers are. What is the kind of, you know, so I think, yeah, definitely this is the right time to utilize digital for future perspective. Definitely. Shruti, your thoughts on it. Do you agree with what has been said? See, digital is definitely the go-to meeting. The go-to meeting has been up tremendously from the last year, the second half of the last year, specifically, so to say. There has been a certain change that's coming. Even when you're working from home and you see a lot of people who are at home today, traditional has not gone down, but digital has still increased. So that shift is really coming in. So you can see that, you know, coming months are going to be very critical. It's going to be the primer phase up point. People are going to be really consuming content as they are now. The curve is not going to flatten immediately. The curve is going to increase and the curve is going to increase in a more equated fashion. There's going to be an increment in digital and there's going to be an increment in television, so to say also, because that's what we're consuming now and we're getting habituated to it. So digital is definitely on the up-rise. There is no, there's no two ways about it, but it's when we're moving over with this and when the lockdown, and when people start moving on to offices, what is the timings that the consumption is going to really get back to? Because the consumption patterns will change. But yes, the consumption will remain and it will still see an up-rise. That's what I feel. A little small, I will request everyone to turn off the phone still. They are, when I come to them, so that our audio levels are audible. I mean, there's a little glitch in that. Zain, I want to come to you with the same question. Has the moment for digital marketeers arrived? They have worked hard for this item. Are you trying to... How are you seeing this? Well, Rohail, let me tell you this way. There's a twist over here. It's not so clear the way we are generally seeing it as. First, when this topic came to me, it seemed to me as if like, are you asking me, do you need oxygen to stay alive? Oxygen to stay alive. That's how it's spelled. But let's slightly... Out of which, let's say, the main age group is around 73%. That's 73%. 25% 25% is only 27% consuming online. So for them, the preliminary thing is TV. If you see Ramayana crossing Game of Thrones, so it's still TV. However, if I divide the word digital, there is digital marketing and then there is digital assets. So if you ask me, is digital marketing going to have a thing? I'll address that later. Overall, the entire digital infrastructure needs to change now. Let me give you an example. Let's say for our business in the BFSA industry, in-person meeting is very important. We need to close the deal or to close the KYC document. That entire downstream process has to change. We have been... I think Gaurav... The CTOs, the CIOs, the IT team, we all have been struggling to do this because it was like somebody has whipped us and told, now it's time, it's now or never. So everybody now is the entire back-end. The back-end is getting stitched up so that the entire end-to-end network can be spread. How Aadhar can be used in a digital way so that we can do the entire end-to-end business without even going and meeting the person. We are trying to get more of video calling done so that the KYC can be done over there. So these thought through the little nuances to end the call or to end the sale which we should have been doing earlier. I think this is the right time that we are trying to get a digital asset. I think that's how the whole world is getting redefined. It's not only in terms of digital marketing, but all assets in a banking perspective or any other organization's perspective, all assets... The overall merger and acquisition has gone down by 8% but Apple went ahead and bought in 100 million dollars this new AR organization. That's because the new wave that's coming up be it in terms of the whole offline part will be AR based. So I think that's how people are kind of upstreaming themselves in terms of fine-tuning their digital assets so that I don't need a physical touch point at all going ahead. And I think that's going to be the new normal. Digital marketing will stay and we'll talk about it later that digital marketing is staying but acquisition has completely changed to more of brand-led communication. So that's a different context. Anushree, my next question is that while we are seeing this spike and people are liking and consuming digital but there's another fear. A fear of once the lockdown ends and once the other traditional platforms open up again will this get reversed what we have seen? What is this here to stay? We'll go back to where we were earlier. I think a couple of points that I would want to make here and when we call and I completely agree to the gentleman who was speaking right before me and digitization is a really large conversation before we even kind of tend to speak about digital marketing. So that's a large important conversation to have. But yeah, there are a couple of things which have happened thanks to or probably because of the lockdown which have perhaps created a larger habit change. So of course there's going to be a correction. For example, news as a genre is really surging today and over a period of time news as a genre is going to correct itself. Similarly, digital as a genre the time spent is disproportionately high. So is the time spent on television. If you look at the bar reports, it's actually all mediums. All content platforms are witnessing a huge surge when it comes to reach as well as the time spent. However, on digital there are two things that have happened and I'm just going to kind of pick up one of the habits which have really shifted is the content platforms or the OTTs have suddenly seen this surge of consumers who have now witnessed this possibility of video on demand. So earlier consumers who are used to viewing content from an appointment viewing perspective they have now been exposed to a new way of content consumption which is video on demand. So it could be from a free, premium or paid subscription perspective. Now that's a new exposure that is likely to kind of perhaps stay on because video on demand essentially has its own virtues and hence there's a lot more control that the consumer has on the way you consume content. That's one piece. And I was also reading somewhere it's around e-commerce, right? So right before lockdown, I think the first week which is the week of 25th of March and right before that, I think in two weeks e-commerce apps put together just in two weeks saw around 8 million downloads put together all apps put together which essentially means whether or not they were delivering which essentially means you suddenly became comfortable with this idea of ordering online over an app it could be an app or B Mart it could be a Kirana store app it could be Swiggy grocery, it could be Somato grocery any of these what essentially happened was that you opened up to your mind to accepting groceries vegetables being delivered to your mind. So these are two large habits which essentially shifted which perhaps is here to stay. Other times when media consumption I think it's going to kind of correct itself and it's going to kind of reach its status quo levels but there are certain larger habits which have kind of changed and I think one of the habits I will actually talk about when we speak about content so to speak because there is this emergence of creators which has started to happen which essentially means my competition to branded content is not another branded content it's actually competition from theater content which I think we should delve a little deeper when we are speaking about content but there are these quasi brand ambassadors all over and we are really emotionally connected to these people whether it's in the media space whether it's in the recipe space whether it's in the music space or ed tech has become really large telemedicine has become really large so you are suddenly opened to these possibilities of remote consumption of guidance or some kind of solution so I think there are some larger behavioral changes that have happened which are perhaps here to stay I think you are a mute Can you hear me? Yes So I said I agree with you it takes 21 days to form a habit they are well into one and a half months so yes the habit is there Gaurav I want to come to you Do you think from the certain habit of digital going digital and marketeers will benefit it and it won't go back to where it used to be it will be slightly higher than that Yeah absolutely I think everyone has mentioned that people are getting used to the new normal now they are consuming more content they are very much comfortable in using delivery apps and all those stuff if I will give you one more example so I was reading somewhere that recently on Google near me related queries had decreased and the delivery related queries has increased during this time so like more and more people are searching about these things and they are getting comfortable with online delivery because this will be a new normal considering hygiene, safety and all those stuff so I think the curve will remain there in terms of consumption obviously increase and also that Zahid has mentioned that instead of digital marketing digital will be there definitely I can tell you from my personal experience so recently 6-7 months back we launched chatbot on our website for basic stuff like itinerary, downloading itinerary flight status check and all those stuff so during this time during the lockdown we have seen a 5x increase in queries on our chatbot which is phenomenal and now we are thinking of expanding that chatbot into different parameters as well so definitely digital will grow in terms of consumption digital marketing is an outcome of that particular consumption money you are spending that depends on what is the kind of TG you want to target what is the kind of reach you want to see on your particular plan so I think digital will remain there and consumption pattern will definitely push this digital marketing further and people are enabling voice search on their website because that's a new millennial thing most of the new millennial are comfortable with voice messages so I think all these patterns will definitely give a boost to digital and hence your digital marketing will definitely grow so digital marketing or digital it's a holistic view digital is huge and you can segregate it by different content types you can segregate it by different mediums of how and where you are communicating but eventually it's the consumer consuming the content and the consumer base is really increasing and stay at home has become the new normal which is very true and I agree with Anushree and Gaurav and Jai when they say that the downloads have really increased the app downloads have increased and it's very true you know whether it's the local Kirana shop everyone is coming up with a digital solution you have governments who are bringing out apps which are in very quick turnaround times which is to take much longer earlier just for the convenience of the consumer and the consumer is using it consuming that content and that is acceptance of the medium per so to say so the acceptance of the medium is really increasing and which is exactly the reason why this is going to really go up now virtual virtual drives virtual home showings if you want to increase if you want to buy a house the new normal could probably be where you are seeing a virtual house you have someone who is doing a virtual video of the house and taking you doing a full 360 turnaround answering questions for you online that could be possibly the new normal you are taking a virtual test drive of a car that could be the possible new normal until now you wanted to physically touch and feel a car you would still want to do it it could probably be doing a virtual look and feel if you really want to be there instead of risking going out and really being there and getting a worse to a factor of yes or no you might want to do it online because that becomes the new normal and I was reading somewhere and there is a friend of mine who put up a post it's very true said that never say never there was a time when we said digital is never going to take up digital is never going to pick up digital is never going to kill traditional media and it's very true to say that never say never because digital is really picking up now and digital is the new now so it's about the content that you are serving everyone is serving content today if I open a channel on YouTube or on Facebook and I start creating content I will have viewers if the content is relevant to people staying at home to everyone it's not only a brand it's every consumer is becoming content driven on his own so yes it's it's here to stay Zai let me reframe this for you so once the other once the lockdown opens up and other platforms are also there is there a fear also among market years that digital market years especially that you know I lose a certain amount of spike that we've seen are you also prepared for that so it's never either or odd story it's always an right I think you know though I'm very sensitive to what's happening and why the lockdown is happening but if I may take a leeway and if I just make analogy like this is for digital marketing or for digital this is like God's way of enforcing a demonetization into the digital world right so if you were not this is the time do it or you lose your business and that's why I think everybody the IT is the marketing guys everybody is running from pillar to post to get themselves digitally enabled right and so now let's sell out now real you mentioned 21 days to form a habit I might just ask you 100 years of traditional habit versus your audio is muted sorry it's a very great point sorry yeah so it's 100 years of traditional habit versus only 10 years of digital habit which takes a more time to kind of you know get rid of so it's a lot of ifs and buts you know but what the way I see the best part of the the best part of lockdown if I have taken a very positive way okay is is that see you know when I I'm sure all of us have come from the sales side and then we have evolved ourselves to marketing the first thing that we used to hit in sales is we have to go out in the sun and then reach out to the customers and then the customer might say I'm not even present meet me tomorrow okay let's take a how much of time the guy can efficiently do sitting at his own house so the virtual meetings we generally take eight meetings to our eight times eight touch points to set up a meeting that's research says right rain says that the number of touch points might increase it might be that 12 touch points to set up a meeting but it becomes a more progressive thought process the sales guys are sitting at their home the work-life balance increases right you know real estate might the real estate prices might come down organizations infrastructure will be nicely placed there's a lot of positive you know impact that will be there in the ecosystem at large then just talking about you know that digital will be of a great boom and not others are what I feel is you know post lockdown things might just still come back to normal slowly you know covered is a dormant state it's not that it's gone out of her body's company it's not okay so covered is that a dormant state it might just relapse might not relapse is very futuristic futuristic to comment right now but what will be interesting to see is with digitally equipped every organization how well and see Indians were never Indians especially Indian organizations never had the concept of work from and that's why we are struggling where 24 hours and virtually become work from now slowly we are finding ethics we are finding the etiquette of working from HR is slowly rolling down in fact they also now cracking what are the etiquette of working from now see when these things are progressing what's happening is we are rightly using the missionaries that have been given to them or was lying with us were not using them to use our time most efficiently to use our you know workspace most efficiently and I think that will be a very good mix to see how digital will be a digital juxtaposed against traditional infrastructure gives me the best of combination and hence I any organization can leverage these two tools they've been the best way and as I said market digital marketing part of it is a very small demands you know that's always there to see but this infrastructure will be very interesting to see how it should so I want to make a small announcement that we are live on FB Twitter Insta exchange for media website and we're getting a lot of questions so you can tweet us with FB for a webinar and send us the questions a lot of questions already started coming in should we all now come to you with my next question is going forward you know we always heard in the last few years about digital getting a lot of attention from brands in terms of the budgets going forth as we move from here do you think this is going to be the digital will figure more prominently in the marketing mix than what we used to see in terms of budget allocations yeah so I think digital is going to hold a higher share in the pie of the marketing mix it's always been there for us for example for Ford digital has been a high contributor in the share of the marketing pie for us overall but I think all brands are going to slowly move towards it because it's not like I said earlier it's not one phase of digital or one part of digital it's the entire media consumption right and that is going to increase that is increasing it's on the spike right so it may the curve may slow down but it will not stop and it will steadily keep improving so the mix has to include digital it's not going to survive without that definitely traditional media will remain because Jai said very rightly it's a choice between whether you form a habit in 21 days or you lose the 100 years old habit which is easier you will most likely lose a 21 day habit that you form sooner than the older habits that you had since your childhood but the ones that you have formed now will remain not that they will go out so your mix has to include it brands will not be able to survive and that's again from experience and from the way we've been dealing with digital in our industry and in our company at Ford digital holds a major share and we believe that digital is the way forward to come because brands need to be online consumers are consuming content everywhere you're in a metro you're online you're in a car you're online you have the driver driving for you or you're listening to some content online right you have music apps which also give you content now and if you're not there where the consumer is it's very difficult to catch hold of the consumer just on a print in the morning or just towards radio let's say two times in a day which are the peak hours when you're traveling or just on television when you're watching it probably prime time news in the evening or in the morning so digital is the way forward and brands have to have to add that in the share of mix otherwise it's going to be difficult for survival eventually it's not going to be competition it's going to be content that lives and if the brands that deliver the content with the right mix are going to survive Gaurav I want to understand your thoughts on this yeah absolutely so I think I think digital if we'll talk about the digital ad spends it's been increasing y on y adex is increasing digital y on y so that's something which is that will continue in future as well but the only change which we are seeing at this point in time as I earlier mentioned that habit is getting changed on you know on daily basis so we have seen a you know increase in consumption close to 30% during this time people are consuming more content digitally and all those stuff right newer and newer people are coming to you know e-commerce website or the e-commerce app they are you know making purchases they are searching for you know where can I get the delivery at my home or something like that so these are the queries are increasing so hence if you want to you know capture these intent if you want to reach out to these people so obviously you have to spend something you know extra on digital because consumption pattern is already there so once you start spending on digital at least the best part about digital is you can see or what is what is the kind of ROI you are getting on that particular campaign or the you know particular channel and you can you know easily figure it out what is the kind of buying pattern of user is showing what is the high you know what is the lifetime value of a user and you can personalize your messaging that's the best part if I talk about the main line so you can't personalize your message with a respective user so I think definitely digital ad spends will continue to increase but in terms of priority because in a typical media plan digital is one of the line item of the media plan which holds like 10 to 15% of overall spends but now onwards I can see that digital will be a central medium and the rest of the things will revolve around it supporting items and it will take a first priority in the media plan so that's the best part about it so a lot of questions coming so after this round we will go to the Q&A round initially for you you know what a lot of people are saying is that digital is fine for the media and the targets and everything else but the issue is that there's no impact through a physical experience you said that AR and you know compensates for it but tell me how do you explain that you know the budgets would go here you know when some of them are saying that the impact is missing sometimes the long lasting impact you would just forget about it so budgets is an outcome in most cases I'm talking from a CPG perspective in most cases media plans actually try to reach out to where the consumer is so if I identify a target audience if the consumer is on digital ideally the media plan should be able to reach me on digital and similarly other mediums so the budget is pretty much an outcome of you know a more consumer centric planning approach but what needs to kind of then come into the picture and I think this lack of digital impact piece actually comes from the lack of you know digital measurements so to speak I think digital measurement which is the single source where you know where you are able to kind of understand the attribution or the role of each of these mediums in brand building I think that's the piece which is kind of missing so I think you know before we actually talk about critical mass of investment on digital it's essentially kind of having a more robust measurement of impact of robust you know single source planning mechanism which can be adapted across industries because I think television became television simply because the organization you know are a more condensed view of multiple mediums coming together so I think digital is still siloed, digital still has you know their own bims and fancies each of the platforms are you know kings in their audience hubs in their own rights, everyone wants to become a garden so all of those concerns actually make a digital medium which you know a lot of mass marketers question in terms of impact so I guess it's the back end or it's the digital infrastructure from a strategy planning and measurement that needs to kind of come to the fore if you really are looking at digital investment at scale Zahid I mean your category is already one of the most mature players in the way they use digital BFSI but tell me I mean from here do we see further strengthening of those digital budgets in your category as well so let me take this in two ways first of all you know when let me draw parallel this entire lockdown scenario to 2000 recession okay we are going through now a lot of organizations are doing what they are telling wow wow it's like no business cut down your media cost forget about digital also it's like overall media cost okay now this is the right time to actually take a step back think through because 65% of consumers have told that this is the time brands can relate to me this is the time if you don't go media dark and you know in a very positive way talk to me then when post lockdown these brands will see much more incremental effect from the same consequence okay so first of all I think the most important thing is not to go media dark but to constantly obviously how much of the budget is coming is like the CFO's call and the CMO's call how much the CMO can convince the CFO okay but it's organization should ensure that they are present in a very nice way in the entire digital spectrum and maybe ATL's TV because I think there's the two mediums that's very significant only at this point of time now coming to digital see what's happening is what will change like let's say we used to have those traditional events and like let's say auto car show Shruti will relate to it right we used to have these big events and all these to happen people used to come in we used to have leads right now let's say after spending X amount we used to get like X leads hence you can obviously draw a parallel to the cost per lead now that now just think that entire thing will shift to digital okay instead of having instead of having a well spread let's say you know auto show you might be having a completely auto a virtual reality late auto show okay might be saving the whole making cost of a virtual reality is one time and hence having it multiple times will save a lot of cost and then you have the leads now following up on the leads also becomes very easy you know you block the calendar be persistent be polite but you can continuously follow on it so that's how the digital spread will change now coming to the part of digital makes you know it's not important that how much budgets will gonna give I think there was always a question that was asked to digital that will digital means measurement so how will you give me the exact measurement and what digital is doing I think this is the time the entire digital team should step up put the measurement matrix even if it's like a 5% or 10% of their cost they should get all the tools embedded so that they can prove to the senior management that yes digital is actually the way to go ahead both in terms of brand visibility as in creating awareness and in terms of downstream into and you know sales because if you can prove at this point of time I think then this is the real go ahead and you just you know take it with open arms and if you can really prove to your senior management that digital can do both not only sales or not only visibility it can do both and if you can really help out with a good media mix and attribution model I think then the gates are open to you even after post lockdown nobody can take that from you so I have a lot of questions coming in I think we'll start at the Q&A round and I want everyone to kind of have their questions answered I'll start with you Anushree the first question is from Rishi Jain he's asking what happens like real estate which is high involvement of an experienced base category so you missed some part of the sentence so Rishi Jain is asking what happens to sectors like real estate which is a high involvement experience base category how would digital serve them so there are I think two ways and I think the largest use case of digital is personalization and today we are seeing personalized experiences being served to consumers based on the data that gets generated or garnered by multiple players so I think personalized offerings to real estate players from real estate players to when you actually reach out to consumers such that whether it's from an experienced perspective that entire funnel I think the entire experience can be brought alive right from awareness with a particular property to making someone aware of the area that they are in possibly the budgets that they would potentially be looking at so I think there is a lot more information that we have currently to kind of and I think real estate anyway if you have been heavy on digital in the past you would be sitting on a mine of data like that so I think personalization at scale becomes a very large use case for any of these larger higher involvement categories so whether it's automobile, whether it's real estate or even BFSA I think personalization at scale would be a large use case for digital especially in this time since this is related to real estate and SDFC does a lot in that space I mean tell me a little bit about this your perspective on how can digital help the real estate so see I think players like Anarok they had almost taken that step to digitalize the entire end to end process in real estate but I think what Rishi might be asking is how do I have a look and feel of let's say if I used to go for an open plot they used to have that in a sample house created out over there to show me that take a tour of this house and though in a later case 25% might not be matching the real house versus what the sample that was shown that's a different story but I think that's what Rishi is asking how will I ensure that what I am seeing is what actually in real estate I need to see the house before I buy how do I get into that so Rishi to answer people are again that's why we were telling that we have to be prepared with digital as an asset digital marketing is a sub part to it and believe me though again I was telling this point that merger and acquisitions are dropping by 8.3% but during this scenario also Apple acquired an ART tool called NextVR with 100 million dollars just to ensure that the entire VR space is geared up for this things like auto, things like even like household things like furniture is very well prepared you have seen lens cut how they have ensured to use VR to actually see your face using the spectacles which you are wearing and then you can choose that yes I need to buy this or not so that's how we have to gear up in terms of our digital space so that I can really have a very good feel in fact I am forgetting the site's name where you can place yourself inside the room and you can have a complete feel of the room as to how it's shaping up and that's how real estate is set to gear up Shruti here's a question for you this is from Siddharth Sharma he's asking what happens to auto industry where dealer involvement is fairly high the real physical stores are really relevant so what happens in that fashion right Siddharth so this is where digital comes in place again and this is where virtual reality really comes in place though dealers are very important and like I mentioned earlier that the touch and feel of a product is very important but so is personalization and if this continues as is and the thoughts on this are that we should become more visual and more personal so you have to show yourself and you have to be personal so the thought that Ford is going ahead with and I'll talk about it from the point of view that I'm working on currently is that a consultant when you want to go to buy a car you want to see the name of the person you want to know the name of the person you want to see the person individually so that you know who you're talking to right who's selling you the car is it the right person or not and this is just a small example so some things like you do virtual test drives things like you have a consultant for a sales person actually doing a virtual demo of the car while giving you a personal introduction and addressing you as let's say you know Siddharth hi Siddharth I'm Shruti and I'd like to show you a car now for a test drive so that's a personalization effect that comes into place which is virtual as well as audio so while you are not really there but you are you are you know you are giving a face to the name you are giving a face to the brand and that's more important in this space to not lie low to not die down in the darkness of the media you have to look for non-traditional mediums to really come up and with the opportunity in the video content space that we have today this is a big way that we can change the way we really come out and talk about selling or buying products so yes so virtually selling cars is the new try to be and if I may just add to Shruti you know are we telling that you know that dealers and going and personally visiting dealers will be completely out of context certainly not but you know what if you go to the dealers and you say ok red car is good but my color is blue do you have the blue sample to be shown to me he will say sir that's in factory workshop you can't even show it but this is exactly where the VR will come in place you can choose your color you can choose your sitting arrangement and you can actually have a and that will be a great help absolutely it's like a 360 states like you are virtually there you are seeing it all and then when you see a face to someone who is actually showing that to you online it just adds to the wow factor so it's a combination it's a combination of people it's a combination of product it's a combination of place and it's a combination of acceptance of the consumer to that particular piece so yes that is the new you and in fact you know generally people also do offline to negotiate on the price beyond the product remember Facebook Flipkart had created a bot called Haggle which was completely on negotiating further the price that was already mentioned on the ECOG portal okay so if you can create that kind of a personalized bot which bases your internal data as in I can only negotiate and give you a better price after I understand you so if you can create that kind of a bot which can understand it's obviously it has to be AI and AI led I think it's pretty much doable it's pretty much doable Gaurav I want to come to you the next question the center has not it's an anonymous question but with attention span of less than five seconds on digital and only few eyeballs run outdoor and print and TV what should be the next step of market years in digital platforms yeah I think as you correctly mentioned that time span is only five seconds so that's where when you know content strategy come into play keeping customer empathy in mind because that's very critical your messaging has to be very precise and you know during this time if I give you one example during this time most and more and more people are you know they want to know what exactly airlines are doing from my perspective I can give you my example from a hygiene perspective from a safety perspective what steps we are taking to make sure that you know passenger will have a hassle free journey passenger will have a safe and you know hygiene we are maintaining all those hygiene parameters and all those stuff so that's very critical keeping customer empathy in mind and if you stretch your entire content strategy around so that will be a you know communication strategy you should have so that you can directly connect with your customer and certainly you can send a message and what exactly the offering you guys have that's very critical at this point in time Anushree for you there's a question from Mohit Chablani he's saying how do we see FMCG brands plan their media spends during the lockdown are they planning to use digital media and will it be standard or interactions on engagement so I think it's a very it's a very pertinent question and keep kind of struggling to kind of strike that right balance so while one wants to be really really relevant while one wants to be really really topical I think from a business perspective there are certain thresholds which can be very well met today from a reach and frequency perspective so I think capitalizing on those parameters should be your first priority I mean if I were to kind of if I were to prioritize I'm not saying that each is removed from another but you know if you have the opportunity to capitalize on this elevated reach and the time spent I think the first thing to do is to maintain thresholds when it comes to kind of your reach numbers and then I think the other thing that you need to do is to develop and availability which essentially means that you know being contextual being relevant so you will see a whole lot of engagement based conversations or working with creators you know today I think someone spoke about content which is the content strategy which is right I think the largest competition to branded content is essentially content from creators or influencers as we see so if we pretty much know how to kind of use that content or use them to your advantage or use them in a sustainable manner to build larger or long lasting associations I think that is a larger strategy to look at so I think if I were to prioritize capital by all means CPG brands capitalize on the elevated reach and frequency if you have more money left then kind of explore the space of being topical engagement led or if you have a really large initiative to talk about just do not kind of jump on the bandwagon of becoming really really topical because you just want to kind of write the way I think if you don't have really something interesting to talk about I think the simplest and the most hygiene thing to do is to kind of communicate your brand message Welcome to you Gaurav and to Zahid that's the same question to you what is your take on OTT content being aired on GECs as there are repeats as they are repeats movies being aired since shoots are on hold what would be the impact of this repetitive content this is to Gaurav and Zahid this is from Pushpa Anant Raman Gaurav you can start yeah okay so I think OTT as we have already mentioned that consumption is already increasing on each and every OTT platform be it your Netflix or any you name it and consumption is already there so more and more people will continue to consume all these contents and all these things if I will give you one example I think if I am not correct so English media movie was released on one of the OTT platforms in recent days so that's a big move in terms of I think all the cinema halls and everything is currently shut down so I think we will see some kind of increment numbers on OTT platform and it will continue to do so after this lockdown as well what do you say Zahid, what are your thoughts on this? I think OTT is going repetitive OTT cannot be repetitive because it's an ocean of content out over there right so I think what's best done is it's a connected TV experience that people are loving to do at this point you know it's be it via Firesteak or Google Chromecast what you are doing is you are watching OTT on TV okay and then it's the ocean is wide open for you okay choose whatever you want to see and we are seeing data it's 40 to 50% content that's getting consumed is only 16% is English okay so that's the kind of content that's being consumed today yeah I think work from home was initially perceived as maybe a short term holiday okay so people love the content okay but slowly realization is setting in no this is the new normal and they are trying to do so maybe some part of it sometimes spent will be reduced but I think yeah OTT is being explored like never before and the best part is at the cost of OTT you are getting TV advertising I think that's the best part should be for you there's a question from Tanvi Daswani he's asking that the supply chain of products is in like you know it has been disrupted how do we communicate and promote our brands in a time when we have nothing to sell actually so I think we need to Tanvi we need to look at this period as not a selling period but as a being there period specifically now it's not the time to sell honestly if I may put it it's the time to emotionally connect and to show your presence to just be there to talk and to convey your communication in a more subtle manner hard selling is not the key as of this point but if you're present now there will be more you'll be better remembered and you will be top of the mind when the shift moves from just consuming content to actually buying the content so that's the key and we have to remember that we are not ready to spend high value right now the spend currently are mostly on groceries or home related items which are more often emergency seeking right now right so if I'm present the brand to just be top of the mind to the consumer to be able to consume my content to ensure that I remain there and I don't right I mean the person recognizes me at a brand when they actually want to buy the product when that shift comes in place that is most important right now so be there be communicable be pass your message be subtle and don't oversell your product is the key you can and you can go about actually talking about messaging on what your brand does it could be just related with what your brand stands for and how you stand with the consumer through this period just being an emotional support is is more viable at this point of time to be around rather than talking about selling your products hardcore so I have another seven minutes so we'll quickly have a couple of questions this one to you Anushree what will change in the way brands use digital post-covid I mean how would the digital strategy be different from what it used to be I think it's going to become more consolidated in terms of media strategy so to speak so there is no digital strategy and there is no traditional media strategy it's you know consumers actually straddling across multiple mediums I know that the time spent on digital is a little higher than time spent on mediums like television in fact television has probably delivered the highest reach possible with some of the nostalgia based communication so you know what's going to happen it's the importance of looking at single source planning single source measurement more consolidated means media approaches more consolidated you know storytelling so one you know assigning roles to multiple mediums you know if mediums like for example online video and television are upper fundal mediums how do we kind of stitch upper fundal mediums with lower fundal mediums which is your buy now campaigns and commerce led campaigns etc I think consolidation is going to be I think it's going to become like an imperative there is no there is no shying away from it there is no siloed planning or siloed strategy that can be adopted I think it's just going to be the most important thing to do for marketers is to kind of think you know integrated I mean I know it's a very passive term to use but it's to kind of think of the entire consumer journey and that the consumer is likely to kind of traverse and how to be relevant and be salient across the different points of that consumer journey I think that's going to become you know I think it's been important always but the importance is really really going to be more pronounced now right there's a question from Meera what would be the impact or role of digital marketing when your voice is breaking your voice is broken I can't hear the question could you repeat that for me please can you hear me now yeah so there's a question what would be the impact of digital or sectors where auto is kind of an auto relies heavily so how would you create digital so if I understand again your voice is breaking but if I understood your question correctly it's about how would you rely on digital in spaces like auto is that correct creating experiential experiential marketing in spaces like sectors like auto yeah so like I mentioned earlier also experiential marketing is about how you want to provide the experience right so the consumer is there to grasp the content that you want to give out it's a question of whether you are you have the capacity to deliver that experience so today with digital and I'll give you a small example of how Ford is doing it we have our dealerships and people are working from home and they are actually delivering the experience of the product and test drives by recording their own videos and sending them to customers to tell them that we're there for you we know it's a tough time but because you showed interest in a product we'd like to share product information with you and they're doing product demos from home so that's creating a different personalized experience so when the people actually when the lockdown opens and people are really going down to the stores to buy the product you know who you were speaking to who was making that effort to really give you that experience or give you a positive feel when you were away so experiential marketing is a way of looking at it it can be in view of product it can be in view of marketing it can be in view of a video it can be in view of content and Ford is currently using the space in content so I think content is the biggest key here like we've been talking and we can deliver the content experience however we want to we've got videos and the consumption of videos has increased drastically so that's a positive point for us to look at where we can really deliver experiential marketing through personalized experiences that's what's going to really be the highlight and positive point here Zahil I want to come to you there's a question from Jay Gopal how are clients going to measure ROI from digital campaigns what gets measured I think I was mentioning this point this is the time that God has given you to all digital marketers please take it with both hands so see all this while a lot of these guys which is online and offline dependent the online used to be considered to generate leads there was no measurement matrix of end to end that these are the leads that were finally got considered a lot of organizations don't even have the digital integrated with the CRM end to end to understand that okay finally which lead got closed by which channel but this is an entire activation so this is the time we have to get the attribution modeling right this is the time we have to get although like do you have an entire end to end analytics in place we might have we let's say for banking guys there might be analytics pre net banking but if this guy is coming inside net banking what is he doing what is he not doing in terms of is he dropping off if he is dropping off do you have a hit map analysis to understand why he's dropping off these are the times we should invest in the right tools to ensure that we understand the drop of journey the way a sales guy see see digital is the biggest branch possible the way for a let's say for a car dealer or for a bank if you go to a bank branch a sales guy will know the everything about the customer because they have been observing it and for them sales is passion and the customer has got to them okay in the same way in digital we have to know everything about the customer why is he dropping off what convenience can be given to them the way a lot of e-commerce and you know the travel guys have done the journey I think that's what we have to this is the right time that we have to put these tools in place to do the entire measurement but having said the question was that measurement is important and this is the time I'm just going through the question once yes I mean what gets measured and how do we measure from digital so see so first of all we have to have the right tools in place second we were telling and Shruti was also mentioning this is not the right time for tactical campaigns this is the time where you have to take a step back and really understand why what is your purpose of the brand why are you existing okay and hence talk to customer in a very emotional way which is helpful hopeful and inspirational then when you go tactical and now when you're talking about this part this is where top of the funnel content takes place like let's say in a banking scenario people are looking at when moratorium came in people were clueless what moratorium is people did not know that the impact of moratorium is good or bad for them people did not know that the principal amount can be paid but interest will actually get okay so that was the time either we could have just told do it but we took a steps ensuring to educate the customer right and these things can always be measured by online online BLS you know the way we have brand track offline can we establish an online BLS survey so if you see the entire movement of your campaigns have moved social so can we have a BLS you know activated for every post that you do to ensure that the kind of communication top of the funnel communication that you're doing is showing a lift in your brand or not and in digital you can do a BLS basis you know state basis geography you can do that so so every funnel of your campaign that you're doing at this point of time should be measured different measurement matrix for different part of the campaign but they have to do because this is the right time that we have to show the impact either the brand is increasing or the top of the mind recall is increasing or the end to end business is increasing very important yes so this is my last question to all of you same question but only 30 seconds for this I will request to give it for 30 seconds I'll start with you Gaurav you know all said and done we have digital and everything and people are ready to accept the messaging but we cannot sell to them directly you know so one you have an opportunity but you cannot use it at the same time because nobody is in a mood to kind of buy things so how do we kind of negotiate with this this different difficult situation what is your advice you know how to deal with this situation so I think so first obviously if you are not you know there are certain brands which are you know which were not able to utilize the opportunity of going digital and all so I think this is the right time going to a you know drawing board back again and they can you know sketch their digital journey that how they can further optimize and all those things and as Zahid has clearly mentioned this is the right time to optimize you know digital in terms of ROI because that's the best part about the digital that you can you know calculate each and every single ROI of your spends beat any of the channels but you just have to you know write set of tools with you where you can you know optimize where you can you know see the entire user journey across your website and all from which page that person is getting dropped off and how you can personalize the messaging so that that person can connect with the things so I think this is something which is very critical search engine optimization is something which is most of the companies they don't even you know bother to invest time on that but that's very critical because you can you know kind of optimize your campaigns you can get maximum ROI from the you know search engine optimization channels when person is coming to your website so I think all these things it's very critical in terms of implementing all those things quickly your thoughts on this I think CBT brands have managed to kind of really really you know get past this curve ball that you know the world has presented so you know if you look at the way there's this entire challenge of overcoming this supply chain you know issues I think a lot of CBT brands have piggybacked on existing models so I think you would have seen whether it's a believer or an ITC partnering with the most unsuspective partners like a domino's delivery engine to directly kind of reach out to consumers similarly you know there are many initiatives for example ITC has ITC on wheels which kind of directly kind of takes products from factories to consumers and basically kind of reaching out to or creating these direct to consumer kind of touch points so I think this has been the time that you know it's kind of given the opportunity to really rethink your entire consumer journey and how do you kind of truncate it so that you are able to kind of come up with these very startup like ideas so I think all large organizations have suddenly become so agile and and they've moved all sorts of their entire red tape that exists in the middle to kind of completely truncate this journey from production to you know sales so I think this is one of those periods that you know all brands have kind of large CBT brands have adopted the startup way of operating when it comes to sales should be quick words from you I think I would stick to the facts that it's very important that you keep your house clean so when you get into your house you have to see what the basic make a checklist and what you need to do in order to first stay top of the mind and then add on to the measurement metrics that you need to do so that you stay there right so it's very important do not forget to do your SEO it's very important it will help you in the longer run it will not help you in selling right now but it will help you because when you it takes if it takes two months to bring into effect so by the time things start stabilizing things start coming into pace it will help you when the consumers are really seeing you to buy the products make sure your house is clean make sure you have your measurement metrics in place there are very simple tools available Google there's Adobe there's a lot of stuff available which is easy to access and you can learn online you can pick up those stuff and a lot of the big businesses are really going for the simpler tools to be able to give the cleaner metrics so clearly cleaner metrics is very important now and that's what we should stick to so I'll keep it short that way so I have final words 30 seconds so I think customers are our love and when the love is in a sad state we have to act like friends you know we cannot be opportunistic to sell products at this point of time we have to behave like friends that means we have to show empathy we have to show that we are not opportunistic and I'm there to stay with you no matter how much longer time it takes for you to recover just be there to be with him or her okay that's I think that's my brand with obviously whatever your brand purpose is I think that should be the goal of any brand having said that very important to get ready with the digitization of your process digitize digitization of your tools and two important aspects in terms of channels video will increase programmatic will increase because programmatic can easily get connected with OTT also finally top of the funnel content very important this point of time tactical is the least thing that we should do thank you all of you we still have another 40 questions unanswered but we cannot I'm sorry we don't have time for it but we'll be putting this video on YouTube they can always come and listen to it and post that question on Facebook and Twitter and we'll try to reach out to you with those questions thank you once again for being part of this virtual second part and thanks again for joining us thank you thank you thanks everyone