 This is the next panel discussion, which will talk about building a strong, desirable brand through content marketing. And we have with us stellar panel that we have here. I would like to introduce to all of you. And please go ahead and drop in your questions or just tweet to us your questions. And we would definitely ask our panel to discuss it further during that conversation or after. So let me first invite ladies and gentlemen, Prachi Patra, CMO, FBB Future Group, a very warm welcome to you. Also inviting Bhagya Sri Nawali, Associate Director and Category Head, Kulkure and Cheetos at PepsiCo India. Nishant Kashikar, Country Manager, India and Gulf, Tourism Australia. Amarpreet Singh, EVP and Portfolio Head, DIGO India and Board of Director, Royal Challenges, Bangalore. On our panel, we also have Krishna Rao, with her senior category head, partly products. And to chair this session, I have with us from Exchange for Media, Nazia Alvi Rahman, she's the editor at Exchange for Media. So I'd welcome all of you here. I hope all of you had a good day today before we begin. Some smiles would be great. And Nazia, if you'd like to unmute yourself and take over the conversation. Thank you, Nishant. Very warm welcome to all of you. Thank you, everyone. Good to see you all. Hi, everyone. You can hear me? Yes, Nazia. Loud and clear. Loud and clear. Thanks. So if Bhagesh Sri and Amar or Nishant also can do their mic test. Prachi is on mute. Can you hear me, Nazia? And everyone, Prachi, Bhagesh Sri Amarpreet. Hi. Yes. Hi, Nishant. Hi. Am I audible? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Audible, we all are. Are we waiting for Krishna? Are we waiting for Krishna to join us? Yeah. Hi, Nazia. Yeah, yeah. I can hear you, Prachi. Yes, Prachi, and here you are. Hi, Bhagesh Sri. I think you're frozen. So while Krishna joins us, I hope there is no technical glitch at his end. Okay. Krishna is joining. We've lost someone. You lost Bhagesh Sri. Okay. So we'll wait for Krishna and Bhagesh Sri. You know, despite all these glitches, virtual conferences are pretty much on time. I mean, if we would have done it the way we have been doing in past many years, it would have been impossible to start by 4.15. That's the advantage of going virtual, right? I mean, all meetings start on time. Not sure whether they end on time, though. So that is one big disadvantage. But we'll try to close it on time. We'll try to keep our debate to the point and as pointed and as insightful as we can. Again, you've lost someone. Yeah. Yeah, I think Prachi. Prachi. We'll wait for a minute, I think, or two. Otherwise, I'll start with you all and then they can join in later. Sounds like a plan. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Kaiti has already introduced all of you, so I don't have to do that. And even she has mentioned the topic, which is how content marketing can help build brand identity. So maybe we can just... Hi. Hi, Krishna. So now we have everyone, right? Yes. Yeah. So let's start the debate. I mean, I'll try and speak as less as possible and ensure that you all speak more than me because you're experts on the topic and the value that you guys can add to the debate has to be far more than, you know, that is how I believe. I mean, I don't know if it is true for most journalists these days, but I think panellists should talk more than the journalists. So let's start. And the first question that, you know, we want to speak about and we want the debate to, you know, focus on is that this has been a very, very unique year. It's kind of year which the entire globe has suffered a pandemic and, you know, everyone has lost a lot of... I mean, if not close ones, you know, people that we know via somebody. This is a very... It's a year that has gotten brought in a lot of stress and for marketers, it's been a very challenging year because, you know, in these times, you just don't know how to sell, you know, when people are going through personal tragedy, people are worried about their lives, people are... I mean, your focus is entirely different. People are worried about their job. So this has to make the role of content marketing even more important and, you know, more pivotal for all of you. That is the question I want to start with and maybe Krishna can start first and then we can move on. Nazia, I'm very sorry. Would you please repeat quickly? So Krishna, I was talking about 2020 that this is a year of, you know, a lot of losses, you know, in terms of revenue, in terms of business, in terms of lives. It's not a very easy year for marketers, you know, to sell their products because people are experiencing all kind of losses. So do you think this kind of pandemic has made content marketing even more important? Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you look at the way things sort of panned out right from the end of third week of March, so absolutely marketers were sort of stuck with the challenges of first and foremost catering to their business demands. So communication would come a little later, but primarily with lots of confusion, a lot of ambiguity in the system, what is essential and what is not with the lockdown. The primary, the most important aspect to look upon was how do I get my business mobilized. And it took us about a week, 10 days for us to sort of mobilize and by the second week of April, we were sort of on a roll, okay. And till such time, we had plenty of inventory which sort of managed and helped us cater to the business requirements. Yet there was crazy public coding and there was huge demand in the market and the shelves were all getting empty real fast, despite the fact that the retail shops, the mom and pop shops or the modern retail shops were open only for select hours, as short as maybe couple of hours or so, a lot of modern retail was also shut during that time. So once we sort of took control of those things is when we sort of thought of what do we do in terms of maintaining a good connect with our consumer. And that's when we started seeing because shooting was not allowed. So creating a new content was on that, the traditional way was absolutely a non-option. And that's when we realized that there was a lot more opportunity to create content just by shooting right from the confines of your respective homes and coming up with interesting ideas. And that's how sort of brands mobilized. We did a lot of it actually, but every small event possibly in a regular scenario, we would not have really bothered to do as much, but during the lockdown, so it actually triggered us to sort of think and create a lot more content. So I agree with you, it definitely mobilized a lot many marketers to create new content pieces to have a better connect with their respective audiences. So if you can give us an example of what did you, what was one of that important pieces that you created during this lockdown? All right, so first and foremost, let us actually when we spoke to our creative partners, we asked them, can we look at actually creating a new content? And they said out of question, so when we sort of brainstormed, we said, okay, can we look at our own footage from various creatives, commercials that we had done all this while? So actually the agency put in together all this previous ads that we had shot in, largely shots which were indoors. So they actually happened to stitch all this content together to come up with a thought of stay home, stay safe. And this is the time, this is actually people were starved and people were sort of deprived of spending time with the near and dear ones. So now when we think back about the past eight, nine months, we feel this is normal, but earlier all of us hardly found time to spend with our near and dear ones, with our family members. So this was a wonderful time. So people and this was also a vacation time. Almost the exams had gotten over. So this was a wonderful time for all of us to spend time to bond together. And I think so we came up with that communication. That was fun. Thereafter, we came up with a new piece of content, exclusively shot, of course, this was on proper cameras, et cetera. But with very, very limited resources. So this we did during Eid. So usually we would not have done much, but then here we felt, okay, can we look at doing something for Eid as well? And we came up with yet another piece of communication, which was, of course, promoted across social media and various digital platforms. So those were a couple of examples. Praki, if I can have you in the debate now. Krishna is an industry where, you know, even if he wouldn't have created all those campaigns, people would have still gone out and bought his products because of the nature of the industry. But SBB, I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure how many people during the peak of the lockdown were interested in, you know, spending on clothing. And how did you reach out to your consumers and what kind of content marketing tools did you use before festive season? I mean, once festive season started, then we can understand. And even festive season this time, the kind of content we saw on television was far more different from what you've been seeing every year. Praki, you're on mute. Can you hear me? Am I audible? I can hear you loud and clear. Can you hear me now? Yeah, yeah. Krishna and I had been in such a panel earlier also, wherein we had shared our emotions already, very early part of the lockdown, wherein we had shared the emotions that how it was so difficult for consumers to even get anything as basic as food. I mean, it's not essential. The caption was very way down in the list at that point of time. Something as basic as food was so difficult to get to. So for us, from that perspective, we had been very clear. From a content perspective, we were saying that A, we are open. B, we are stopped. And C, you can reach us via anything, any medium that you want to. You want to WhatsApp us, call us, shop online, during the year. So whatever may be just there for you. Very, very, very basic thing. I think all of us should relate to before marketers. All of us are consumers. So we definitely would like to be treated by brand. The way we would like to be treated by a brand, the brand would like should be treating any other consumer that is reaching out to. So we were very clear in our head, what is that? Over time, as and when non-essentials opened up, as and when fashion started opening up, and there were practical problems, like kids have grown up. You know, clothes are not fitting. Three months ago, when we entered into lockdown, the size of the kid is not fitting anymore. We are all in zoom. We are always inside the homes. The products have completely changed. Not the kids, all of us, you know. We are not fit to use products now. Whatever respectable topwear we are wearing. Rathi, I mean, I don't know if I'm the only one who's experiencing it, but you're going to crack it a lot. Yeah, a bit of discussion. There's a lot of disturbance. If you can just check your internet connection, because you know, there's hardly any sense. So maybe I can have Bhagya Shri in, and you know, you can just check your internet. You can try things up your ass. Yeah, there's a lot of disturbance. Bhagya Shri, if you can join in and, you know, give us your perspective on how did you handle the situation and how did you use content marketing during the pandemic? Yeah, actually, you know, I completely echo with what, you know, my co-panelist said earlier, and it is very important at such a time to be relevant to consumer needs. And I think most of us, you know, who are managing brands would have noticed that the consumer expectations from brands is moved drastically. And I'm just recalling a Edelman report which, you know, told us that globally and also in India, 85% of, you know, people want brands too, as they call it, solve my problems. And 80% want people to solve society's problems. So and also, you know, trust as a feature or a driver to drive the brand is one much higher and it's second only to price. And so it tells us that, you know, what considerations consumers are having while making purchase decisions. And therefore this reflects in that building and maintaining brand trust is, you know, very essential at this point of time. And it goes from beyond the need for us to build brands for commercial purposes, to build brands that, you know, actually speak to society and their needs. So when we were doing this with our consumers, you know, we realized that it is important to speak in a way that truly establish a deeper connect with consumers and it's, you know, it's also true to our core. So for example, on our brand list, the core purpose of our brand is to bring moments of joy to people's lives, right? And so, and this time we said, you know, how can we bring joy to the unsung heroes who work hard to bring us what we love while, you know, we stay in the confines of our homes. And therefore the campaign that we launched, you know, on, on, on Lays was, you know, the hard work campaign as we call it. So, you know, when someone works hard, it's called hard work. You know, that's what we kind of put out to consumers. And that was the first step. So we said, how do we thank the farmers, the truck drivers, the retailers who get us what we need but they're never really seen, you know, you know, anywhere out. So this is the first step we did. And that, you know, that campaign, of course, we took, you know, all over. We said one step further is we joined with the smile foundation and we said, you know, can we work with the smile foundation and bring hygiene kits to these farmers, to the truckers, you know, to the people who work through our supply chain, to our plant workers, et cetera. And, and that caught the attention of people. So when we went to influencers, you know, in on social, and we said that we want to put out this content, you will be surprised, you know, people wanted to use their voice and put out this message out to say, you know, this is an ode to people who are doing this for us, you know, through their heart. And then they themselves put out a plug to say, you know, this is the smile foundation link. If you want, you know, you can come and donate here. And that really got a lot of people by themselves come out and, you know, share on the link. And thereafter we said, you know, let's go one step further and, you know, let's broad base it and it should not be, you know, just a lay story and that would be the, you know, that would be the pettiest thing to do. So we said, so we went out to about 30, 40 brands. We went out to actually 40 brands across, you know, the industry and we acknowledged them and thanked them for what they're doing for their own employees, for consumers, for supply chain, for their supply chain teams. And that was the campaign actually that did very well on Twitter too. So consumers do take note of how you are speaking beyond what your, and then of course we went to building another leg to it and we went to meet students and bigger artists and smaller artists and launched a campaign called Artwork for Heartwork. And I call it a campaign, but it's really, you know, part of the bigger purpose of building, bringing Heartwork and acknowledgement. So we tied up the leading artists and, you know, students who expressed their thanks through Artworks and we brought this together to a first-ever platform called artandfound.co.in. There's a platform already on this and we held the first-ever, you know, exhibition on this where Artworks for these people, whether it was big artists, you know, or leading names like a Sonu Sood or Manushi Tiller, their artworks also fetched money, but also regular people like me, you know, would buy from there and be donating. And we raised about, you know, six and a half lakhs from there and people also donated to the Smile Foundation. So what I'm just saying is it is important for the brand to be speaking to consumers in a way that is purposeful and meaningful to their lives. And that is the core of building empathy trust and a deeper bond at this point of time with consumers. And that's what we did. And that's possible. In fact, we, I have a question on that, but most of you are already answering that. So, I mean, fair enough. And you're also telling us all the good work that you have done, but I'll also want to know from you later in this debate, the good work that others have done so that it doesn't really look like a fail stitch, you know, where you only talk about your health. So now if I can have Amarpreet in the debate, you know, Amarpreet, you tell us that how have you handled your brand and how have you used content marketing in this pandemic year? Yeah, thanks, Nazia. And some really very relevant points raised by Krishna Prachi and Bhagya. I mean, yes, when the crisis started, we all know what happened to our category. I work in Alcobe. I'm sure we're all connected to the category as consumers. There was actually a month where we sold zero, zero sales the first time ever in April. Yeah, everything was closed. But yeah, and if you would ask me at that point of time, what are the most important content strategies you had in mind? It was whiskey, soda, and ice. Those were only three content I was interested in. But yeah, you know, keeping on the lighter side away from this conversation. I think, look, some of the rules of the game haven't changed. Yeah, and that's my personal reflection. As I think Prachi mentioned about, you know, treating consumers as humans, right? It is, you know, we sometimes treat our jobs as marketers a little bit too seriously than what we should, right? I mean, you know, if you just put yourself in there. Sorry, I'm interrupting. You know, I see, I understand Prachi and Krishna and Bhai Greshri's categories. They're very easy to advertise. You, I mean, yours and Nishant, I mean, also, I mean, the sectors that you're handling, they were not that easy in this. You, because you can't advertise too much and Nishant, because the sector is not, he doesn't have anything to say right now. So that is the context in which I want to understand how you have used content marketing. So I think the first big shift which was happening was for us was about access, right? Once access was sorted out in terms of retail opening and business starting, I think the big thing about content for us was really about understanding the changing consumer behaviors, right? And there were two or three powerful things which were happening. One is that consumers are becoming very value conscious. You know, I market primarily the Indian whiskey portfolio. Yeah. And therefore, you know, with the kind of mass migration which was happening, you know, not enough money in everybody's pocket. So overall value consciousness was becoming very, very important for consumers. So very sorry, I'm interrupting. The very senior CEO, he told me that, you know, it doesn't really make any difference to me. But still I've cut down on my alcohol, psychologically to save money, you know, because we're all going to pay cuts, you know. Yeah. Sometimes into the few months into the lockdown. And you're right, Nazia. And we did see that as many categories saw. We did see a tightening in terms of our growth in the category, which is quite evident in the kind of performance which has been put out in public. So we saw that tightening in terms of the consumer purse. And therefore, you know, this is not fundamentally a necessity category. You're semi essential, so to speak. And therefore, there was a tightening there. We also see a lot of shift in consumer behavior in terms of where the consumer is drinking. A lot of our category consumption happens in on-premise. And with on-premise being closed, a lot of the consumption was moving into home. But as we know in a country like India, you know, not everybody stocks at home, everybody consumes at home. So that created an interesting consumer dynamic. The other big thing which was happening is in terms of the content in the way consumers were, you know, absorbing content. The amount of time people were spending on OTT and, you know, all these digital platforms just, you know, kind of catapulted during this particular frame, because people had more time. And that was another thing which we captured in. So I think all our ideas, and I'll talk about a couple of them, but really what we saw is that because there was not enough money from an advertising and promotion perspective because the priority was about access, get the business started. It led to two things in our category. One, I mean exploration of new ideas. And, you know, in our category, we really do big, large-scale campaigns. And you have seen that on our brand extensions. But we were now doing campaigns with very little money. Right? And that really pushed creativity. Very pushed creativity. And the level of collaboration which we saw amongst agency partners and internal teams was at a quite a peak per se during this time. A couple of things which we did interestingly in building on what Bhagyashree was saying. Similarly, for example, we have a brand, McDowell's number one, which is RadiGIRB and it's a big brand. And it gets consumed with friends, right? Primary consumer is the friend sitting together in a casual get-together occasion. And our brand extension is Soda and to which we basically do the advertising. And on Friendship Day, when Friendship Day was coming, I mean, typically what you do is you go out and meet friends, right? But how would you do that during the pandemic? And we had a simple insight of actually using our past assets, you know, remodeling them and actually running a program where people could send virtual hugs to their friends. Right? And that got us a lot of visibility per se. Similarly, on another brand called Royal Challenge and because I also am on the Royal Challenges, Bangalore Board, we had the flexibility to use some of the assets which we have on Royal Challenge, the RCB Pritik team. And we were able to take some of the COVID Hero stories, right, out there. And you might have seen the kind of stuff where the RCB players were wearing jerseys with COVID Heroes, per se, across the IP. It was actually the first for BCCI to give a permission like this. And, you know, it's a very attractive social media campaign where Virat and all the RCB players for a day changed the social handle names to the name of the COVID Heroes. And what we're going to do is that those jerseys from the first match are going to be auctioned and the money which is going to be raised will be given to an NGO. And we put the good amount of media money celebrating those 18 COVID Hero stories. So I think what really the sense is that during this period, marketing had to evolve, right? Because the context was different, the consumer movement was different, and we could have kept the airport then on and continue to work as you were working earlier. So we had to take them off and then listen to them. So I think we're still on first question and we have exhausted half of our time. So next time if you can also answer this briefly, I also have to go back to Prachi. Sure. I'm not sure whether you intentionally kept me at the end because the international border will not be open and therefore it's going to take some time for, for example, to come in. Because I knew your answer will be different from others. Yeah. So I guess when we started 2020, you know, we were all going to go about this year to, you know, which we felt would belong to Australia, you know, because we had six years of consecutive double-digit growth and arrivals in spend we have. We were growing at a rate which is the, you know, outbound travel market. We had earned the distinction of being the fastest growing in one market for tourism Australia for three consecutive years. And then we had two world cups taking place. They're the women's world cup that took place in February and March and then the men's world cup, the T20 world cup was later in October and November. So we were quite excited with the, the whole opportunity that was, you know, in front of us. But having said that, you know, all everything that has happened and what we've been trying to do over the past eight months and we'll be having eight months of literally no sales. You know, you guys have been lucky to get back to business in eight days or eight weeks, but it's been eight months for us where people have traveled only on compassionate and compelling reasons. So all we've done during this particular phase is stay in touch with our high value travelers, people who believe, who we believe have the propensity to travel despite what every month's going through and keeping the lights on, keeping the content slightly more fun and entertaining and inspiring people with, by giving them reasons to travel to Australia as soon as the borders open. So everything that we're doing in this, in this period is creating that aspiration to travel to Australia as soon as the borders open. So we've been feeding them with content like 360 degree videos where sitting on the couch, sitting at home, you can actually transport yourself to Australia and visit some fabulous locations. We've been having this life from Australia sessions where, you know, experts from the Great Barrier Reef, from, you know, some of the nature and wildlife parks, from the MCG, from the Opera House and various multiple attractions that Australia has to offer came live and interacted with our, with our, with our travelers and customers. We recently launched a series of AD, you know, audio videos. This is kind of a sound engineering technology which takes you to Australia. You hear the sounds and sights of Australia and across different wonderful places that, that the destination has to offer. So we're actually making the content slightly more entertaining. We're giving people reasons to travel as soon as the borders open. And now, I know we have the Indian cricket team in Australia. So we've got a fantastic contextual media and PR opportunities. So we're going to leverage this across multiple platforms. We're working with all the OTT platforms like the ESPN Cricket and 4. We're working with Sony Live to create some content behind the scenes. Luckily, the stadiums will be full with, not full with sectators, but Australia will be allowing between 25 to 75% of the spectators of the, of the total capacity that the stadiums have to offer. And that's going to give some positive message to Indians that Australia is relatively safer and has been able to manage the pandemic really well. So we're going to work with the OTT platform. We're working with a lot of content platforms as well to create some nice fun, you know, interesting content. We're working with a lot of Instagrammers. We're collaborating with both Australian and Indian cricketers to showcase Australian way of life, taking them to various locations, provided they're allowed to travel outside the bio bubble. So a lot of content been created in that inspirational and aspirational phase so that as soon as the borders open, people can think about Australia. And as a result of the numerous activities that we've done, we've still seen that the intention to visit Australia, the consideration, the desirability to visit Australia is still quite high as compared to some of our key competitors. What we've also done during this phase is held hands of our key partners really closely. We have a program called the Aussie Specialist Agents. So we have trained almost over 15,000 agents giving them knowledge, giving them imparting, you know, more destination information so that they can launch new products, experiences as soon as the borders open. So we have working, we are working closely with some of our key partners as well, working, trying to work out new partnerships with the likes of, you know, some of the banking partners, products like Airbnb, Visa, MasterCard, something that we've never worked in the past and also engaging with the Australian industry, you know, because the entire industry is going to a tough phase. It's all about keeping that dream and that hope alive because we believe that India as a market has got tremendous potential and as soon as the borders open, we'll soon see this phenomena called revenge travel and people will travel like never before. That is true. I mean, we all are waiting to get back to travel. Prachi, you want to complete your point before we move on to the next question? Yeah, I don't know how much, how much was I audible and how much could I, could I, I'm just gathering from what I, yeah. Yeah, so as to the point that I was trying to make here, you see, when there has been no playbook which could have prepared us for this situation and all of us are actually putting that emotions out. I think with the beginning of, in the beginning of 2020, we had our targets fixed, we had our plans fixed, we had our budget fixed and what the situation has done is, as Amitpreet also mentioned very correctly, whatever digital maturity any organization had been, it has just pushed the organization to go to the next five steps out. There is no option. It's just you're pushed back against a wall and you really need to make your way out on it. So when we went into lockdown, I think a business our size really takes a lot of time to make a change and any change has actually takes time to calculate. For us to be able to get our online site in 14 days was a major achievement by itself. The only two things that we were trying to achieve by doing this is just to the content or the voice that we had on the market was, we are open, we are stopped and reach out to us any which ways you can. I think that's the only voice that we had and this is exactly what I was telling that before market is all of us are consumers, we were also struggling to get our food rations out at that point of time. So all we cared at that point of time was to make this voice audible. While we're doing this as you mentioned, yes, fashion as definitely was non-essential, it was closed. By the time we opened in the next two, three months, I think a lot had changed. Our product mix went into a complete different kind of avatar. In fact, when we opened up, we were actually having a campaign called New Fashion Essentials. You're not worried about what you're wearing as a bottom, you're just worried about whatever you're wearing as a topwear. So there were products like these, good t-shirts and sleepwear definitely has taken another level of product mix. In fact, just to give you an example, it went by 5x in our product mix. So this is something that had happened. This is something that we were prepared for. From an electronics perspective, we were very clear that as soon as it would open up, there will be a requirement for laptops, extra laptops, but you won't be online for a long time. So definitely there was a requirement of another laptop. Parents can just loan the kid a laptop for as many hours. You have work to do. So there will be a requirement of laptops, there will be a requirement of defilators. These were hour forecasting changes that we had to just pick up and make a change to it. And as Nishanta is still going through the pain pangs of prepping the customers to come back and be prepared, this is what we had prepped up just before opening up from various category point of views. And that's how we managed our content. So quickly I'll move on to the next question. I think I will only be able to, if our questions, if our answers continue to be of this length, we'll only be able to accommodate one more question, which is that all of us, all of you told me how you tried to give, all the content was, had that human touch and trying to talk about the, connect with the people who were the real heroes and all. But that all sounds so similar. Still you have to stand out because you have to be different. So in this content thing, trying to be human, are you not all being same? How do you be different also is what I want to understand from you. Again, if you can start with Krishna. Yeah, that's a tough one because yeah, the thinking process largely would remain the same. And this would be category dependent. So every category, how you are going to adapt, the emotions are going to remain the same beat India as a country. There was a COVID fatigue at one point of time, that every brand is only talking this. Any which was every second person I am meeting is talking this. I don't want to talk COVID now. Maybe you can reach out to me in a different way. I also need a break from COVID. So did you guys, by I mean consumers, so did you guys also think on those lines when you were planning your content? In the late, I mean after few months of the pandemic. So specifically, so that was not really so, like I am going back to the same point, wherein it's still category dependent, though the underlining thought would remain the same, it's all about the human emotions. But how are you going to connect it with your brand? I think that is what makes your brand stand out. Though while you were talking or you're mentioning about, talk about some other brands. Frankly speaking, Nazi actually I am at a loss to sort of recall brands, which have done extraordinary content. And with a lot of thinking, I could actually gather one brand, which was one of the core, one of the beginner I would say, that was Reket Dettol. So they were the ones who made use of medium before TikTok got banned. So they made fantastic use of it. They sort of taught the entire, not just India, the entire world, as to how to wash one's hands safely for a full, complete 15 seconds. And that had terrific following actually. And everyone was like taken aback. So I think that is one content, which really was extraordinary and remains sticky. Other than that, absolutely bang on time, it was quite relevant as such. So I think that is one brand. And that, yes, there is definitely a possibility that one may get actually lost in the jungle of thoughts, where every brand is... You could also not think of too many examples, because every brand is doing exactly the same talk. Each one of us would have seen several such content pieces, but then when you ask someone to recall, it becomes extremely challenging. So during COVID times, I'm not really able to recall any other sort of piece of content, other than maybe a Colgate, Sindhuta and Sapka, I think they had done a very good integration during the Mother's Day. I think that was quite impressive as such. So that's my idea. Do you agree that we all are doing, all of you are doing exactly the same thing? How do you now make your brand stand out? You know, Nathya, what I feel strongly about is, it's one thing to want to stand out, but what the brand wants to do is to connect with consumers in a way that's relevant to them, and it is true to its own purpose also. And in doing that, every brand would put out something that is true to its purpose and speaks in a way to the consumer that truly matters. And I think there are stages in that. Of course, there's a stage one before COVID, where mostly we would put out content and the consumer would like, engage, share, or may not. And then we come to a stage two where consumers connect with each other through the brand in a way that the brand helps them be a tool to express themselves. Now, I'm going to give you one example from our portfolio and then I'm going to give you one example of another stage that goes beyond. For example, for Kurkure, it was important that we speak about how while we are thanking everybody who works for us to make our lives comfortable, but are we thanking the people who make it easier for us to bear this difficult time on an everyday, every moment basis, and which is our families. And they're often actually unacknowledged. We take them for granted and we sort of actually treat them like we would be. But for us, it was important that we in our own, you know, Kurkure has a very quirky personality. It's always Tangin Chi. So how can we put out something that helps consumers hang their families in their own way? So we put out a campaign that was, you know, like an ode to family, where consumers came, you know, we created a cute jingle where we said that you know, like, I can't live with you, but I can't live without you. And, you know, when we put that out, we put it out in a jingle and we saw consumers come out and do their own renditions of that jingle in their own way, whether some did it through a dance, some did it through pictures, some did it through an act. But, you know, that was one way that the brand, you know, gave a tool for people to express themselves, which was not, you know, in a way that we are just thanking society around. And then there is another level, you know, and I call it the stage, the third stage or the higher stage, where you create a medium for consumers to connect in a way that the community thrives. For example, you know, you can associate with the platform that helps you connect with it and give back to society also. And I think Cadbury's created and we saw it just before Diwali they launched a campaign, right? And they said this is not a Cadbury. That was a very beautiful campaign. It must have been taken a lot, let me tell you, from a manufacturer's perspective, you know, in an FMCG company to build a system wherein you can, through a geo-targeted way, be able to get the consumer to be connected to a local store that helps your need for that moment and also helps, you know, the society to thrive in a way. And I think that, I would say, is a very standout idea. Can you imagine that if it goes beyond urban and percolates to rural, then, you know, it really gives a leg up for me as a, you know, local store around who's possibly not getting anybody come to me, is able to get people to be connected. And I think through technology and the brand's purpose of, you know, Cadbury's purpose, they've done that beautifully well. Absolutely. I also, you know, recently, even Pepsi, our brand, the beverage brand on our portfolio, Pepsi did a campaign called Pepsi Saved the Restaurant Campaign and it wasn't about Pepsi there. They said that, you know, we tied up with the National Restaurant Association of India and Swiggy, and they said that this initiative provide, you know, support to the marginalized workers of the restaurant community where you're not getting... It was done by McDonald's, KFC, all of them together also. This is also a way to say that brands are not looking to like the same thing so much is to come together and be speaking to consumers in a way that the community thrives. So, and so what if they're doing the same thing? So long as we as a society are, you know, becoming you know, more together, more humane, I think it's a good thing. So this time I'll take Nishan before I take Amar please and Prachi so that he doesn't complain. Nishan, tell me what is your view about it? I guess... As far as the tourism category is concerned, we are all operating in the sea of sameness. You know, everyone's got beaches, everybody's got mountains, everybody's got wildlife and you know, everything that you need on a holiday. So how do you differentiate yourself? And I'm not going to talk about work that we've done during the pandemic but something that we've done a few years ago. Like actually we did, I mean that is where, you know, you have to create that thing for yourself. So that is, these are the kind of things that I'm talking about, like the things that Bhagya Sri did. Yeah, so we launched a campaign called Restaurant Australia and that was to invite the world to experience the Australian culinary culture. And it was inviting people actually to travel on the belly. So this is a campaign which is close to our tummy actually. You know, something that we've launched and everybody's heard about Mastership Australia. Our association with that particular show really helped us to raise Australia's profile as a great culinary destination and the food and wine capital of the world. What the chefs allowed us to do there was to showcase how warm, welcoming and inviting Australians were. The contestants on the show came from different nationalities, races and religion. They helped us to showcase how multi-cultural Australia was. And whenever the show went outside the Mastership kitchen, outside the studio, you know, you could see the spectacular natural beauty that Australia had to offer. So Mastership Australia as a show and our association with that particular show really helped us to raise the profile of our destination. We later worked with almost close to 20 food and wine influencers in India including the likes of Sanjeev Kapoor to Rashmi Uday saying Veer Sanghvi, Kauraki and Mayur, Vicky Ratnani, Kunal Kapoor, you name it. And every food and wine influencer in India had an opportunity to travel to Australia and experience the culinary lifestyle. And they all created content on their respective social media platforms, various other digital platforms. We also created content. This was amplified on, you know, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram as well. And thereby raising the appeal of Australia as a great culinary destination. We organized events like inviting the world to dinner and the who's who from the world's food and wine industry to Australia. We organized the world's 50 best restaurant awards inviting all major influencers who really created good amount of content to raise Australia's attractiveness as a great culinary destination. So this is one of our... How about other brands? I mean, how about what kind of campaigns that other brands that you like them in that you would want to speak about? During this particular pandemic? Yeah. All right, so this... Where the concept of content marketing was utilized in your opinion in one of the best ways? I guess a category that has really tried during this particular pandemic is the edtech platform. You know, and you've seen suddenly brands like, you know, Baiju's and Whitehead Junior with its Upgrad, Anacademy, Topper, Really Mushrooming and all of them are flushed with huge funds because of the VC funding. So we're getting to see some great amount of work, not just on traditional platforms, but also on the content marketing platforms and something that I wish to highlight is the work done by Baiju's. You know, apart from organizing these inter-school quizzes and contests in partnership with Discovery and Disney, what they've done is they've launched a program called the Baiju's Young Genius. So trying to identify talents across the country, across different walks of life, like across different streams, be it music, be it art, be it sports, be it coding, be it math and recognizing such talent. What they're also doing is in association with the Times of India group, they've started this learning series called Keep Learning and that is to, that's an education initiative for the parents and the students to understand what are the changes happening as a result of the new education policy? What are the career options? How do you maintain that digital discipline and the time that every kid needs to spend on screen? What is the education initiative that has been undertaken by them and what you've done really well in terms of CSR activity is a program called Baiju's Give Initiative and this is all about donating your phones, your laptops and your desktops to a charity and they are taking the owners of repairing these things and giving it to the underprivileged so that they can have a better life during this particular period. So I think that is one brand that really stands out in terms of the work that they're doing. Yes, so I think, as I was saying earlier too, I think during this time we've gone back to the basics I think the three C's which we've always looked at from a content marketing is always about core idea. Knowing what your core brand idea is, what is flexible, what is fixed you need to be very, very clear about that and best content marketing comes when you're very sharp around that. The second is about the culture in consumer in which is what we're all discussing about not being tone deaf and I think the reason why you see a certain sense of sameness is that the cultural tsunami of corona has hit everybody. That's what is the life of the consumer and the culture as they're experiencing it and the third C for us has always been about commitment because we believe that content marketing is not a campaign it's a commitment. You have to do it because for a long period of time because the more you're consistent with it the greater the ROIs happen the more integrated you are the greater the ROIs happen. I'll give you two examples one from our stable and one outside the category within our stable it's really McDowell's number one and in the space of friendship and affiliation our passion space has been about music because music, friends alcohol they all come together in a very beautiful way and what we realized one of the key insights we realized is that because of the social distance which is happening we know men are very forward expressing their feelings and now if you're not sitting together drinking together you're not really opening up and expressing your feelings of what you're facing how you're experiencing but actually during this time people who have really helped us communicate this tough time has been our friends because they've kept our spirits up we have a nice campaign where we're actually telling encouraging friends to call up their yars and actually say thank you here for being here around this period of time and we're making some nice how do we leverage music in terms of making this a little bit easier because right now alcohol is not between them sitting together so maybe use the power of music to be able to kind of express that's something which we're doing on existing brand if I look at also from a corporate perspective I think we didn't talk about corporate but I think a lot of corporates have come forward during this time to actually you know show their human side for example DRGO came out with the fund of 75 crores to in a program called raise the bar which is actually about supporting the on-premise you know bar setup because there's lots a lot of business and how will they really come back when the situation improves we have a fund where we go back to those stores help them put the right sanitation right kind of capabilities for them to kind of come back and be ready with and I think something about community building right so that's a community which we are basically working with outside of the category the example which I want to say was about Facebook I think they've some of the recent work which they put out very interesting again you know how leveraging the power of the platform what is the cultural mode in the nation and being able to use the platform to solve for real needs in culture I thought was a very smart piece of work Prathi so there was one piece of content which has stuck through me right from the beginning of this entire situation when we entered the lockdown there was unilever standing up with life boy and saying that you can use any soap you can use any sanitizer it was just such a category speak and sans any kind of brand push so sanitizers are vanishing soaps are vanishing from the market and it was not only about pushing your brand it was about pushing larger cause and it stood out it has stood its best of time right through the beginning of this entire lockdown situation that was a huge space and I think it has struck with me and to what Bhakeshri also said I would rather be standing in the crowd sounding humane than sound otherwise I'm okay sounding humane with everybody else so this is and with us also as I said we have we have just been looking at the consumer as we were looking at ourselves you know when we entered the situation we realized that look at the women of the house I think her work went by like 5x I know I'm sorry to the women in this entire panel but I know for sure men were pitching but they were pitching it was never their job it was always the women of the house actually getting whether she is working or whether she is a housewife didn't matter I think all of us could see it within a month or two I think our job as the householder care has actually jumped up by many eggs and I think from our point of view we realized this and since we are in the middle of the entire action with our stores with our online situation we were looking at the entire sale and we were looking at the entire tracking it by the hour, by the minute so for us we were reaching out to the women directly and as Bhagesh mentioned I completely cooperate with this that it doesn't matter whether your content is remembered or not if it works for the customers you are reaching out to Bangon it did its job and I think it did the job perfectly well for us to the consumer that we are trying to reach out to the consumer we are trying to speak this was the part wherein I think we were able to show the humane side some of the millimeter change on that we definitely keep the engagement from a beauty and personal care category so when non-essentials were not open our engagement was very dadi markinuske whatever you have at home use it make use best use of it it's a warming of conversation with your engaged customers and as soon as the entire situation eased up a little we started getting putting in branded content from that perspective I think it was just a small small changes which helped us as a brand all together and have a very warm speak throughout this entire situation so we have already extended our time but we still have another 10 minutes Michelle has been kind to us she has extended the time by 10 minutes so you know I you all have been talking about how important it is to connect with the consumers and their needs and human side but then we all have this compulsion also end of the day you all have to talk about those technical terms of ROI and brand recall and all these things that you understand are better than I do so if now we can talk in terms of in the context of content marketing so how much has that content marketing played a role in getting you the kind of ROI you were looking at again let's start with Dishan alright thanks for that Nazia not all brands have got the privilege of huge marketing bucks to travel tourism, hospitality and aviation space we see brands having budgets less than 20-30 crores annually and this is the entire marketing marketing budget that the brand has that includes your PR agency fees and agency retainer fees and all of that and therefore content marketing plays a very important role basically to increase their you know the share of voice or the awareness for that particular brand and then drive that desirability and convergence at the end of the day so just to give you another example content marketing to the fullest was during the ICCT20 women's world cup which took place in Feb March in Australia and we did that launching a campaign called experience the game and beyond it was basically inviting agents to travel to Australia and not just for the games but also travel and see the outside of Australia beyond the stadiums as a part of that initiative we launched a campaign called hashtag led by women hashtag LBW and that was primarily aimed at raising the awareness of women's sports in India and globally and in alignment with the ICCT objective to achieve a world record and we will shift for this particular sport because women's sport wasn't that big until that point of time for the first time in the history of any tourism board or any brand we had the two prime ministers Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Scott actually sharing their campaign our campaign on their social media platforms and they reached out to almost like 25 million of their fans and followers we collaborated with the likes of Mithali Raj, we got all the friends of Australia all the influencers who had travelled to Australia over the last 10 years under one roof to support this whole cause of raising awareness for women's sports and later we carried an 11 member team we invited an 11 member team of women achievers across different walks of life to travel and attend the finals on the 8th of March incidentally was the International Women's Day so all these efforts which cost us less than half a million dollars helped us to get an ROI of almost over 12 million dollars so if you have campaigns that touches your emotional chord or if you are trying to make a change in the society or cause lead marketing as we would call it there are people, there are influencers who would come and support this whole cause and will help you to deliver much higher returns and in the bargain obviously we also achieved greater visitation from India to Australia and we also achieved a new milestone of over 400,000 visitor arrivals so yes I do agree that content integration opportunities are really important towards driving that brand awareness and visibility and delivering a better ROI Krishna I don't know whether in our case I can say whatever we did has really translated into ROI say for example like I mentioned this earlier as well that every month for us beginning April has been an ever highest sales so May was higher than April and June was higher than May and so on and so forth so I don't know irrespective of whether we have done something on Mother's Day for apology or for that matter any other initiative typically the content that we created was largely a corporate so wherein we had a mix of all our brands different brands like across categories biscuits, confectionary snacks, bakery etc so it's slightly difficult to attribute whether that's really happened so it's a known fact that all the shelves were empty and absolutely high and dry and there was virtually nothing to consumers were looking for any and every packaged food that was available and we just did the job of filling up the shelves as much as possible and I think that sort of translated into numbers so it's very difficult to attribute how much of it actually came out of the content but it's like it's a continuous process of actually continuously bonding with your consumers so that's what I can say Agishree? For us we learnt early in April that the consumers need actually for there's an experiential consumer need which was really high throughout last year and then after the pandemic the consumer said that I'm more value conscious than I ever was and so it's very important that whatever I'm buying is affordable and really value for money for what I'm buying and that became a huge need and so that was one fact coming out of research and the second way we learnt about digital marketing had a lot going for itself because internet penetration went up, digital adoption went up in a big way and data consumption went up in a huge way and so we launched our campaign in which across our portfolio across the Snacks portfolio that's Leys, Doritos and we launched a campaign that gave on every pack to every consumer free data so if you bought the 10 rupee pack you get 1 GB of data free and if you buy the 20 rupee pack you get 2 GB of data free so the response is stupendous because data is such a sort after commodity right now and if you get it on a brand like Etel on a brand like Leys, Doritos or Furfure you're really going to grab it out so that's what we've launched and not surprisingly our redemption rates are really actually the promised to launch so we'll see it through the year and we extended it through the year but essentially that's the way to kind of connect with consumers for the value they want and give them something that is really very relevant to them and that's how we've done it and we'll see the results of this campaign we are too much down we'll see it through at the end of the year Ammapreet Hi Nazia I think recently there was this article by Elizabeth Net in work where he talks about you know if you want to really predict share of market actually you should track share of search and if you are winning share of search you will win share of market it's a leading insight personally and share of search you win by wearing share of heart essentially right and I think content marketing plays a beautiful job there so I have a couple of examples in that space one for a large brand to answer your ROI question and one for a small brand a large brand perspective I believe it's really about commitment as I said earlier in the three scenes it's about staying the course broadly in that space for a long period of time to be able to move any matrix and deliver any ROI if you for a large brand do a small thing which is fashionable in nature it won't move anything per se and we've all learnt that the hard way so we've seen on large brands year 2 is much better than year 3 year 3 is much better than year 2 without content it's a part of an integrated plan and not just content itself so that's one of the big learnings for us from a large brand perspective from a small brand we can really get lucky you know I have there's an interesting one I do want to kind of put it out on Captain Morgan Rum which is a really small brand for us with very minimal money we've got 100 million reach on a Jiffy channel because the captain was really dancing during the IPL during all the bomb res and the sixes of the wickets and we never expected that to happen it was just a silly thing somebody you know thought about it and did it so I think what's the ROI? ROI is almost infinite because we can spend anything on that and we've got that kind of so I think we can get lucky even sometimes you know the context and creativity can deliver that but if you want to think about a large brand I think it's really about consistency and there is a lot of data in terms of you know driving that consistency can help you win share of search and therefore impact brand relationships Prachi, Prachi you can have the final word yeah so I mean everything has been said on the ROI part of course all of us are definitely running for an ROI and you know more than ever the budgets are constrained it's a constraint at this point of time and definitely have smaller so what we have figured out and what we have seen is you know throwing content first for each and then following it up with smaller CPA campaigns or CPC campaigns have really worked beautifully for us and that's something I'm adding on to whatever my fellow panelists had to say I'm just adding on to that that this is something that has I think it works for most of us and with a fantastic call to action I think the second part of this thing really gives us fantastic ROI yes every content that is developed has an objective either it has a brand objective or a conversion objective at this point of time most of us are definitely looking at a conversion part of it and also keeping the engagement on is the second part of which is going on organically so there is definitely every every voice that you're launching out there in the space and ROI is a part of either your brand is being as Amanpeet mentioned searched more or being having a share of voice which is stronger in the market and conversion is of course right there on your face which it looks beautiful to all of us including the management so thank you all I was reading on content marketing and I came across this interesting quote on content marketing is the reason why search began so have I been put on mute no we can hear you suddenly the noise went away I thought maybe we have already exceeded the time and Michelle just gave up on us and started putting us on mute so we will quickly it was a very very interesting session and I wish all of you a much better year and far more ROI forward and thank you so much for joining us you all should keep coming back to E4M as often as you can thanks a lot