 Well, marching ahead now to our next session. Well, I'm sure that all of you remember the girl who became a sensation through a series of Airtel ads. More than the girl, what grabbed our attention was her messages and the challenges she used to deliver in the every ad on behalf of Airtel. Well, Airtel has definitely conveyed a very direct message in a very disruptive world of audience. And we are going to understand that how they managed to do that. And I would like to invite on stage Mr. Shashwat Sharma, the Chief Marketing Officer, Bharti Airtel to please come on stage and share more about on this campaign. Shall I? Please, please, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hi everyone. Good evening. Am I audible? Okay, excellent. Thank you so much. It's a real privilege to come here and talk to this audience today. Airtel, thank you so much for that talk. It was really inspiring to hear what Baiju has been doing. Echo fully your thought process on performance marketing. We can chat about it later. But after that, I think one of the things I wanted to talk about today is really the topic that we picked up is this area of transparency and the relevance of brands in the new world. And I think one of the things that got me thinking was what are we talking about here and what's really the new world? What's changed? And I want to start with the first thing that came to my mind is what's the biggest conjure of that marketing's done in the last 50 to 100 years? And actually, if I had more time, I would have done a bit of a quiz around it. But the reality is the biggest conjure of that marketing did in the last 50 to 100 years was the story of sugar and sugar being nice for your kids and creating a whole host of world for fats and lipids being the real villain to be able to sell the entire confectionary industry, which was the biggest conjure of that industry did for over 100 years. What's changed and why is all this coming out in the future is coming out and in the open and everyone's talking about it. And I think that's the important thing that I really want to talk about, which is really. I think the history of the world is was all about information asymmetry. There's a few people who knew the information the rest of the world didn't and they were dependent on marketers telling them. And I remember when I joined marketing, there's a very big belief that what marketers tell the consumers, the consumers parrot that back. It's it's the same thing. By the way, why we have a whole host of world of middlemen, agents, sales representatives, things and people that really had a bit of semblance of information and spoke and made a commission out of selling to people who didn't. And that was the world we really belong to. And that's where the marketing came from. And that's the world that's changed. And the whole digital revolution that we are all part of today has really removed this this middle layer. It's everyone has the power of information at the back of their hands. Everyone knows what the result is, what science is, what various different people across the globe are talking about research is done across the world. And people are getting more and more involved into any of these things. In fact, the role of marketers is what you say leads to even more bit of searching and researching into the areas that are really available across the globe. That's what marketing is leading to. And that's what pushes all of us as marketers to think differently about what we are doing as custodians of brands and what we take to do our brands forward. And that's something coming from a brand like Airtel. I think we've learned it the hard way. And I'm going to talk a little bit about our journey of how we are trying to really shift the brand that we had to a new age brand and do it in a different way. And that's what the story is all about today. What's happened to the consumers? Obviously, the consumers today are exceptionally vocal. Everything comes onto social media, Twitter, Facebook, everything. All of it is out there. In service industry like ours, the consumer complaints and the call centers are loaded with feedback from the consumers. More and more digitally aware as something I spoke about. People are engaging now with brands offline, online, physical products, online presence, personas. All of that is now becoming one contiguous feel for the brand. And a lot of problems and resolutions are happening real time. It's all in the digital world. It's happening at scale. It's happening in the public eye. And I think that's the space and the environment that we have all moved into. And some examples of it. I'm saying what happened to United Airways and all the service failure they had, everyone knows about these things. And many other case studies which come to mind of various places, various cases that happened in various parts of the world to various brands. I think it's a case in point of saying this is a real threat and a real problem that all marketers really need to reset our thinking on the brand. You just cannot fool the consumer anymore. And I think that's the crux of what I'm going to talk about today. The other part which is very critical and what's changed is the audience are bored about being bragged to. I think there was a time when we used to put out and that once... I remember Nitin Paranjpayar, CEO of HUL speak once saying the biggest marketing that HUL used to do 30 years back was to find the 9 AM spot on Ramayana in 1988 and get the core main brand that needed to go there. Just put it there. Your job was done. The world's changed. People are not waiting for this one content. People are bored with content. Ad avoidance is on the right. And really there is a change in the way brands have to think about what they're doing today. And it's no longer what you have to say. There is a bit of say in what we're talking about. But there's a lot of brand do. And I think there are many great examples around us. I've just picked up a few. These are not necessarily the best. But just a few which came to my mind up front of brands have done really great work in terms of the brand do leading to what the brand positioning was rather than the brand say. And I think this was some of the inspiration that started the Airtel journey. And this is not my journey. As I said, I'm very privileged to come here and present to all of you. But this is a journey that started four years back on this brand. I want to really talk about this journey of what Airtel started with. So Airtel, as we know, is a telecom brand. It was the first telecom brand which has stayed for the last 25 years now in the country. And it's gone through various phases where we spoke about relationships, connections, talking. A lot of storytelling was the history of this brand. Till in 2015, with the new technology of 4G coming in and a competitive context changing, Airtel actually went ahead and for the first time went into a very activist mode of advertising, trying to tell about what Airtel was really good at, which is delivering great 4G network. And that's the time when you guys became familiar with this face of the brand and some whole host of challenge format advertising which came into Airtel. I just am going to play one ad as a reference of just to jog everyone's memory back so that the rest of the story becomes clear. So Pratik, can we just have the ad, please? Airtel 4G Challenge. If you get a faster network, then lifetime mobile bills free. A lot of rethink on the brand started happening. The reason for that was the customer reality was very different from what was being advertised. And the reason for that was data was growing in this country and still continues to grow at a rate at which infrastructure just couldn't keep pace. And there was actually the, while we were the fastest network and we have been the fastest network all this while, the actual user experience wasn't always great. And that was the biggest reality that we were facing with. For various reasons, as I said, data prices were too low, growth was unprecedented, infrastructure was not able to keep track with. And all of this kind of advertising was leading to a lot more of credibility questioning from the user rather than a positive reaction. Although there were a lot of early adoption that happened with the ad, but that's what over time, over a year of doing this kind of advertising really took us to. That's when, and all of this was happening in spite unprecedented network investments. This is like a graph of how much network investment went in. And this is after the year after we put this campaign in, our investment went up by 40%. But the quality of, because of this data surge that was happening, the data was growing at 200, 300% analyzed growth in the country. No infrastructure was able to keep track of. And that's when there was a big, big shift and we paused and we really looked at ourselves and I'm saying, guys, what is it that we really are doing? And I think that's when one of the biggest thoughts within the organization came through, which was the thought of an open network. And we went ahead and put a manifesto for ourselves. I don't know how many of you can read it, but I'll just read it out for you, everyone. I think it's about open questions. Sometimes a big step starts with an open question. We asked ourselves, too, are we the best network we could possibly be? Honestly and humbly, no. Do we want to get there? Fervently and definitely yes. So for starters, we have decided to become India's first open network, which means you have open access to our tar maps, our internet strength, our strong signal zones and our weak spots. Not just in your state or city, but right down to where you live. So please judge us, question us, tell us where we are going wrong and partner us in getting it right. Because the truth is, you know what you need far better than we know what you need. And if we want you to open up to us, we have to start by opening up to you. So we are starting with two simple words, questions open. That was really our manifesto, which was really about partnering with customers to really set our network right. And we actually, the Airtel app had a tab of open network where you could just tack it. And on a Google map kind of a platform, you could see everywhere where the tar is all the, sorry, the purple areas are where you have good network, the orange areas are where the network strength is weak and you will have call drops. And there were even intimations of saying, where are we planning to invest next? Where is our next tar coming in in few months? Network will become better on this. And to communicate to this, we then put out a campaign to the users to talk after having fixed all of this as a process. Because we realized that we wouldn't, a network in telecom in India is never going to be perfect. It will always be imperfect, but we are trying and we are honest. And that's where open network came in. Pratik, can we have the film, please? I don't feel there's a difference if I use this or that. They don't care. They all say the same thing. They don't catch the network everywhere. There's no network here. This is the biggest secret. You sit and talk. Suddenly, a call drop happens. Where is our network? Tell me. All the questions, all the answers. Bring them in front of you. The water of milk and water. Problem, what are we hiding from? Garza, you have to show it to me. If you show everything, what will happen? Show it to me. First show it to me. Where is your network? Where are your towers? We won't hide anything from you. That's why we have become the first open network in India. All the answers would be given to us. All the towers. Their signal strength is on your mobile. I can see their house. I can see which towers they have. I will see all of this on my phone. At least you know there is no tower here. They are going to build a tower here. This is transparency. Because it's the best network that can come in front of you. So that was our big attempt at really changing the whole orientation of the way the brand would reach out to its customers. And lo and behold, this was one of the biggest successes that we had on the brand. All brand scores went up. Trust, transparency, quality, even perception of network quality while in reality nothing changed. But just the consumer acceptance of the network went up dramatically in the same phase as we went about this. And this, then we started building and really there was a, we were all learning as we went through. It was not like one fine day we were all wise. But I think it was a three-year journey where we kept asking ourselves what next in terms of transparency? What next in terms of being an honest brand? And then we went into this whole space of talking about our network through the consumer's lens. Through campaigns where we spoke about what the consumer actually speaks about us and telling them what we are doing to solve it. So Pratik, can we please have the next ad? I am one of the first users of the app. You used to be an Airtel. I left Airtel after a year. Hey, don't look at me like that. Come on. What are you saying? Everyone was saying that this is a good 4G, that is a good 4G. So I said let's leave you alone. Let's check the best of India. Which is the fastest network? So Okhla, the global leaders of speed test they said it for the third time, India's fastest network. The first one, Airtel. So back to Airtel. I was speaking with experience. You know what? You did the right thing. You should try everything. That's why you come face to face. Why? Yes, I am the one speaking. Try everything. Then choose the right one. So we went about it and there were series of campaigns that kept coming. This is how we kept talking about our... And there were lots of themes that we picked up from the users having left us, have come back and so on and so forth. There was actually also a time when a very large set of users actually went out to try other networks for value, for price, for free data. As we went through this journey, we also started picking up all the consumer digital interactions. And that's something I think a lot of companies do. And started building all our marketing plans around what we were hearing from the consumers on social media. Our network planning moved to a transparent space. All our innovations started coming in from all the things we were hearing back from the consumers. And I think this was really transformative for the brand. Everybody in the organization because the history of telecom was you put a tower, you had business. And therefore the consumer was always left behind. And I think this was a big, big shift in the telecom world, which is everything was coming, what we were hearing back from consumers were going back to consumers with solutions. And lots of campaigns were also initiated by what consumers were telling us. And I'm just going to... And the brand in this phase really evoked a lot of interactions. We get 9 to 10,000 daily mentions on social media. And the biggest question we asked ourselves is we tried to do FGDs. We worked so hard with agencies for people to tell us genuinely what they feel about us. There are 10,000 of them telling us every day what they feel about us, what they want from us. And this became the crux of all the marketing that Airtel started doing. And I'm going to talk a little bit about... I think the biggest thing we did on the network was we really created this mega-center where we started tracking every piece of mapping social media, actual network feedback, actual network performance into looking at the entire country from where is our network performing, where it's not performing. There are many practical reasons why. And by the way, we get trolled on social media like nobody's business. That must be one of the most trolled categories on social media. But we mapped the social media feedback right back to our networks to do diagnostic on a real-time basis. That became one of the biggest actions we took internally, saying, we cannot ignore what's happening here. The second thing we did was we started innovating as I spoke about, totally hearing what consumers had to tell us. And I'm just going to pick up one idea which came out of what consumers were telling us. That innovation we put in market which had among the success for us on post-paid. Internet Diwan. Hi. You didn't do anything for your network? You used to take data packs on a data pack every month? I did. I wonder how many GPUs you used. I did that too. And the data you didn't use? I also increased the amount of it and didn't use it. And what did your network do? What? The data you saved every month wasn't given, boss. From today, this won't happen. A new Airtel post-paid promise. The data you don't use every month will be added next month. This is Airtel's promise. As we went about this, we even went to the extent of using social media chatter to talk about our campaigns. And I'm just trying to wrap this up, but I really want to play this copy which was one of the boldest copies we put out in the space of transparency. Dear Airtel, stop adding this and fix your network. Otherwise, take your network and you won't be able to read it further. You've written this on the internet. I don't believe it. What do I do? I mean, I was so angry that I honestly gave you a few words. So, I'm sorry, but... Come on, I'm sitting in front of you. I'll give you as many words as you want. This was before, but now the network has become very good. And you know, some people say that its speed is the best. Not just some people, but the global leaders of speed test have said the same thing again. So, choose the network that becomes better. Switch to Airtel. And I think, therefore, that was the whole pivot that we made on the business which was really to move towards a bit of honesty, transparency and service. We would never be perfect, but we are trying to get better. Really, the big question for marketing is what do consumers want? And I think the crux of what we started doing is saying what they really want is all out there. Is somebody willing to listen? And I think if you just start from there, I think everything else becomes clear in this world of transparency and relevance. Thank you so much. Could I please have you once again back on stage? We would like to present to you a token of gratitude for sharing the various marketing strategies, campaigns, innovations and its success stories. And I would like to invite Neeru Salat, the Zonal business head from the Hindu to please join us and present him a token of gratitude.