 Moving forward, we're talking about the role of innovation in COVID-19 when it comes to product, price, place, promotion, or people. While it's usually the role of agencies to curate content for brands, and they continue to do so, this discussion will be focused on how our brands themselves transforming in these challenging times. How are they innovating and inventing through new products, packaging, or simply collaborations? What difference are brands doing and what are their learnings? All of this will be spoken in this very panel discussion. We have some of the stalwarts of the industry coming together on this very panel, so I hope all of you are ready. I would like to see some excitement going on in the chats, how all of you are doing. Give us some thumbs up, how excited you are, because this is one of the big one here. Let me now introduce to you all our panelists. Irwin R.P., Director of Marketing and Communications, McDonald's, very warm welcome to you, sir. Thanks a lot. Happy to be here. I think Mehta, Marketing Head, think and learn, private limited. So you have been proud of us. Welcome to you too. Afeera. Welcoming Avi Kumar, Head Marketing Z5, very warm welcome Mr. Kumar. Hi, thank you for inviting me here. Gauravjit Singh, General Manager, Media, South Asia, HUL, very warm welcome, sir. Welcoming Nipun Maria, Director Brand Strategy, Vivo India, very warm welcome to you too, sir. Hi, how are you? Very well. Jayam Vora, Co-Founder and COO fraternity, very warm welcome sir. Hi, thanks for having me, it's a pleasure. Sandeep Junaidja, Vice President, Sales and Marketing DHL Express, very warm welcome sir. Happy to be here, thank you. And to chair this session, I would like to introduce to all our viewers and our panelists, of course, you know him, the Co-Founder and Director of Exchange for Media, Mr. Naval Ahuja, warm welcome to you too, sir. Thank you Gauravjit, thank you so much. Thank you for doing this, you know, lockdown. Thank you all the panelists, I'm glad to see you all, hi. And as I was going through the list of the panelists we have, I realized that we have people from across all the categories that we need during lockdown, we have HUL, which we need for our daily requirements, we have Z5, we can't do without entertainment at home, we have a fitness brand here. Obviously during lockdown, most important, Vivo communication, of course, we can't live without and Baiju's and McDonald's food and online learning. So it kind of completes the entire, I don't know whether Michelle intended it for it to be like this, but it has turned out, I'm glad. So before we start, you know, as you know, that this entire series of sessions have been about what are the new things happening in content marketing. And one of the things that COVID has done is it has kind of accelerated the pace of content curation, content marketing in the last two months because, you know, adversity as this is, the mother of new ideas, invention, new thoughts. And a lot of us have been pushed and challenged into thinking and coming up with new stuff. So let me start with my co-panelists and ask you one very simple question. Tell us one very interesting thing each one of you has done in the last, these two months in terms of engaging with your customers, which is, you know, obviously related to content. Can we start with you, Gaurav? Sorry, I was a mute. I was hoping to come in last on this one after having heard everybody else, but let me give it a shot. I think the biggest, you know, the very interesting piece that came through and on content piece, the most surprising thing that I found at least in the last two months has been what's happened to what belief in God, right? I mean, it's just gone through the roof. If you see any genre, any PG that you might cut at somehow Ramayana Mahabharat and the entire pantheon of the Indian gods has been on air at the same time and kicking the TRPs out of the park. So nothing... Somebody was joking that day when life is in danger, we all remember God, we have a population. Very interestingly, I think the interesting bit is that that takes care of a large part of India, but if you really, I also manage Pakistan, Bangladesh and very interestingly the series that is doing very well or TVC that episodes are doing very well and also available in India is something called Riftakul, which is a Turkish series. I don't know if you have caught it. It's got 99 episodes, five seasons or 500 series. So anybody who wants to sit through the current COVID crisis can sit through that. So hence, I think the one big metric about our belief in as Eastern cultures and is around belief in God and independence on that is really strong and there used to be consumers. There's almost a certain fatalism in that in terms of saying that, yes, I don't know how it'll get right, but it will get right. So there's a certain optimism and belief that they will be taken care of. I think that is one piece on content that how this particular vector overrode, it might be how it's dated and has come in and just taken completely by storm. I think the second big learning in this period as we, your point now, that in times like this, you see a lot of innovation. And I think the second piece is that the way a lot of work that we did around Life Boy Corona and use of TikTok for that matter, the kind of scale that he managed was tremendous. That was a big learning again for us in terms of limitations that we thought we need these big studio houses to create the kind of content that can go out and the scale of brands that we have and the rapidity with which that could be created and amount of uniformity and regimentation that could be followed on that was really powerful learning. And finally, I think there is, it is amazing how similar our love for content is. It's the same things trend in India at the same time, whether it was money heist or any other piece that really became big on a certain PG. It just shows that there's something about content that has nothing to do with language or any of the barrier that can cut through populations and be relevant in spite of it not being in the language that you can speak. So just a universality of great content is what was a big learning in a time like this. And of course, you can have to do all this over a cup of nice, blue-made telkona coffee. So for thanks for giving me an opportunity to plug in to three brands as we spoke, but that's what I get. In fact, I'm told Life Boy also created a partnership with Swiggy and your TikTok campaign has been, that's the first instance of Life Boy using TikTok as a platform globally, what you've done in India. That's right. Now, well, it's the first instance of a universe brand globally using TikTok at the kind of scale. And I think the other pieces Swiggy and other pieces under Roots to Market are really powerful way of managing the kind of disruption that we've seen in physical distribution, the kind of disruption we've seen in the regular ways of reaching consumers for even our advertising. So that disruption and how can we really manage it and manage creatively to each consumers both physically and mentally in a time like this has been a big learning and very humbling experience. Very fine. Let me hop on to Avi Kumar. We've all been at homes watching more TV, consuming more OTT. So obviously, I'm sure Z5's daily consumption has gone through the roof as well. So what are the other things you're doing, Avi, as Z5, to engage more deeply with consumer because as we all know, demand for your product is going up. You don't have any distribution issues except the fact that some internet providers have reduced bandwidth but that does not materially impact you. So what are the ways for an OTT platform to kind of sell more of it? We also know that increased consumption is not yet completely translating into increased revenues because advertisers have lesser money to spend but are there some interesting things you've done that you want to tell our panel and the audience? Sure. So Z5 has undergone a remarkable evolution if you see in the last two years where we've pursued a vision to become one of the nation's destination as a super app for entertainment. And one of the most profound changes over this time has been that we've got a very rich understanding and deeper commitment towards delighting the customer. So that's become a norm for the company and there's only one focus at the moment, which is consumer. So what are we doing right now? We are focusing on hyper personalization to mix content along with technology and focusing on everything that is essential and that is the consumer. We've put up tools and we've put up technology to understand the consumer at an equal to one level so that we can connect better with the consumer. And in this unprecedented time, it becomes even more important for us to understand what the consumer needs and delight him with that content. So when I say Z5 is a super app, we have a lot of use cases. We have introduced kids in the last one month. We have introduced hyper shots. We've come up with gaming, hyper casual gaming on the app. News as a cluster has been improved and a 3.0 version has been released. We've come up with a lot of content innovation, whether it is from a perspective of live or it is shows which are shot in-house, et cetera, et cetera. But the key is the consumer and hyper personalization for the consumers. So while there is 125,000 hours of content, but for us it is important to provide the consumer what he's looking for without him looking for it. So that's the key. You know, I think that's a very good point. Yeah, especially a media tech company, hyper personalization, and then providing advertisers the ability to ride on that because I think as we go along, as this crisis speeders out and as economic activity starts, at least for the next few quarters, hyper personalization and geo targeting will become a very important aspect. And you know, for brand like, let me go across to Nipun now and talk about Vivo. Your category has obviously been impacted Nipun and primarily for the fact that, you know, because of significant logistical disturbances, you shops are not open, retailers are shut, you're not able to get your phones across. So I have, my question has two parts to you. One is during times like these, when naturally you are not really investing significant money in brand building, presumably content plays a, content marketing plays an important part of the piece in terms of reaching out to customers. So what have you done to kind of keep that engagement going? And the second part to my question is, which obviously I will then post your answer come across to everybody else, is that how do you, how soon do you see a category like yours, restarting the brand building activities that you were doing pre COVID? Hi, Navad and hello to everybody else also. See, the first part of your question on what we've seen really, you know, different is that in the last one, one and a half months, we clearly saw that the trend of people, you know, really looking forward to, you know, a product or a feature or product advertising in general, in our category especially, there was much less interest in product advertising. The interest completely shifted because nobody was really looking to buy a phone. There weren't any options available to buy it, shops were closed, e-commerce companies also, there was no delivery for a large part of the lockdown. So people were genuinely not interested in going out there and checking out product features. And therefore from the brand side, also they weren't really interested in us communicating too much about product features. However, what the consumers were really interested was what are we doing with respect to coronavirus? What message do we have at a larger level for the society? That's what people were genuinely interested in. Are there any CSR efforts which the company is undertaking? So when we put out such communication, which was on CSR, which was about, you know, a video which we made on heroes who care, saluting all our policemen, factory policemen and healthcare workers, those kinds of videos and content really got a lot of engagement. So very less interest on product, a lot of interest on CSR and other social issues. So that's the first part on what we've really seen. That was the lockdown 1.0, 2.0 and partly 3.0 also. Now when we entered the 4.0, what we've seen is a real shift because as market has started opening up, people have again gone back to buying phones and therefore we have seen a sort of restart in smartphone sales. And we can talk about it more in the coming few questions. But we have started seeing sales reviving and because the sales have started to revive, what we've also seen is people are now more interested to know about features which they weren't interested in a couple of weeks back. So tell me, since a lot of people listening to this conversation are primarily from the content curation, content marketing domain, do you foresee a scenario where say the next two, three quarters since financials of majority of the Indian corporates are adversely impacted? Do you see parts of marketing money going from mainline media, at least in the interim term, more towards good content ideas because television by nature of it is obviously more expensive to do. And you might not have that kind of money available. Sure. So see, you're right. When it comes to content, and this was always on the horizon, just that I think this lockdown has precipitated the realization of the importance of good content. I certainly believe that now and going forward, the whole age of push marketing will have to change towards pull marketing where consumer is interested. He will seek you out. He will find out information about you. You don't have to necessarily be in the face of the consumer most of the times. And I think that is the shift we will see from industrial age marketing to digital age marketing. Right. So Ateeth, you have a brand. You are in an envious position of being, I remember 20 years back, there used to be a case study about 911 where they tried to kind of demarket the service. Too many people were calling. I'm sure Baiju is also kind of right now overloaded with demand and you are kind of ramping up your back end. What does a brand like you, which is inundated with the demand do in times like these, why do you need to engage with customers when they are coming to your shop front in Groves anyway? So two things happened in the last 65, 70 days. So pre-lockdown levels, if you look at it, there was a lot of excitement happening on the prerecorded content. And over here, content I'm talking about, the very serious hardcore academic content. And as the lockdown started, the first thing to shut was schools. And the last thing to open up as the economy and the markets open up is going to be schools. So school is at the two ends of the spectrum. Now, and this is also the start of the academic season. Most of the boards, whether it's a CBSE board, ICSE board, state boards, most of them, some parts of the country starts around May, June, post the April final examination. And that's the core of any start of any education season. So what actually happened is that most of the schools, and especially the A plus schools, the metro schools where we send our kids, those schools started. Doing online classes, using multiple platforms and Google Classroom became a go to market product for most of them. But that's not even 0.1% of the total population in terms of schools or school going students. So the big content initiative which the business created and that's where the numbers started stacking up is starting life classes. Because at the end of the day, everything has gone up, OTT consumption has gone up, TV viewership has gone up, gaming has gone up. And parents and students, parents and kids both being at home, 24 by seven, it was just becoming difficult for them to manage. How much are you going to watch? Now, if somebody is able to provide educational content in a live format with one of the best teachers, and that's exactly what we ended up doing. And that is the surge which we saw both in terms of engagement, both in terms of subscription, as well as more and more student at a pan India level whose schools have yet not started online classes, came on board. So new segment, which was never part of your addressable universe started coming into the play. And that's the biggest gain over the last two months. Right. So and what happens to the marketing money that I asked earlier? Where does that go? You guys are a large advertiser. You spend significant money on all media, traditional new media, digital content marketing. And how do you see it panning out next two quarters? Are you going to do lesser of television relative to what you'll do on digital and content? So digital is always dialed up and it will go forward in a much, much more bigger way. There will be a recalibration or recalibration of allocation as already happened. Digital would take the center stage because everything is digital now. Education, the mode of education has changed. The delivery of education has changed from a physical classroom to your homes. So digital will play a significant role and everything around digital, whether it is a content-led digital conversation or a performance-led digital conversation or a brand-building-led digital conversation, that would certainly get dialed up. While you will still continue looking at the other mediums, the way you have always been doing, I've been doing in the past, the air cover, which is your television, should continue and will continue. And everything else, depending upon the micro-level marketing, whether it is print or radio or anything else, could also be considered. So more or less the budget remains same some changes in the allocation. Right. So Arvind, your brand is quite interesting because it's a QSR. But because of the lockdown, obviously, because consumers have not been able to go to outlets and pick up stuff. Of course, I was reading somewhere, you've dialed up on pickup restaurants, drive-in outlets. What do you do at a time like this to keep touch points? Especially because food as a category is extremely sensitive. I'm sure in the first part of the lockdown, especially month of April, very few people really wanted to order out or food from outside. And that would have adversely, significantly impacted you guys. Now, how do you communicate, one, both your brand salience as well as the safety features? During a time like this, when you've been also not, as Ateeth said, do too much of air cover using television, you just have to go to consumers through hyper-personalization. Right. Thanks for that, Neville. Hello, everyone there. One of the things that we quickly realized very early on in this lockdown was, it's very easy for brands to become tone deaf in all of the scenario, right? When the sales are down, when you have to push and generate demand. So we quickly pivoted to a place where we kind of treat customers at people first and consumers again. What that meant was reassuring customers of our safety and hygiene. McDonald's is known for its high standards of safety and hygiene. It was time to hit the story all over again, going back to our supply chain, how the new contactless norms, social distancing norms have been implemented across supply chain in our stores. So we needed to do the storytelling all over again and prove to customers that it's safe and hygienic food. And it was also one of the first brands to launch contactless delivery. And it was very much appreciated by customers. And this is where no food touches the hand, even during preparation and even at the time of delivery and there is sufficient social distancing at the time of delivery. So this module was launched right in February when the whole lockdown was just beginning to take shape. And that gave huge positive impact for our delivery business, which picked up slowly but surely based on this whole assurance messaging that we were giving. The other thing that we picked up is consumers were asking brands, what are you doing to the society? Especially when there were a lot of, the stories about the underprivileged that was hitting the screens and hitting the newspaper pages. And we dialed up our social initiatives. We launched our wheels for good program where we tied up with NGOs across the various cities, delivered food to the underprivileged. So it's been two months now that the program is still underway. So in a very small way, we are kind of doing our bit to the society. And this has again been very appreciated by customers that this is a customer who's putting the community first and at this point in time when the community means it. So I think it's very important for brands to realize the situation we are in and dial up programs accordingly. And I think one of the earlier panelists mentioned it and we are seeing a face now where customers are craving for their favorites. They want their aloo tikki, they want their Maharaja Mac, they want their fries, and they want to know how can they pick up either take out or get it home delivered. So we have, our messaging has changed in the context, reassuring customers that our favorites are there, right to order, and our favorites are missing them too. So I think in this two, two and a half months, we have seen at least three faces, three distinct faces in terms of consumer expectations and consumer sentiment. And accordingly, we have fashioned the communication and we recognize in terms of media, digital is where most of the customers have been gravitating towards. And that's kind of found a place. Anything interesting you've done, you want to tell us? Well, so one of the important, levers, especially during this time when content is scarce in terms of producing high quality content is focusing on user generated content. And during Mother's Day, especially today in the context of people staying at home, home cooked food is what is rolling the whole roast and mothers are at the center stage, taking care of the whole household. So we kind of had celebrated Mother's Day and as a food giver, you can't really win the battle with a mother. But we imagined with customers how mothers would react when a kid or a youngster asked for a aloo tiki or a Maharaja Mac in these circumstances. And we kind of got a lot of user generated content on what would mothers say in this context. And that ran for a few days and was very heartening for a brand to get its feedback in terms of re-engagement with customers after a brief period of time. So I think stuff like influencer marketing and UGC are a bone in today's age and that's something that we have dialed up. Yeah, I think that's a very important point. Sandeep, let me come to you. DHL would of course have customers both sides of the spectrum. You have corporate clients as well as consumers who directly reach out. So there is a B2C piece of your business and there is a B2B piece of your business. What would you do to kind of talk to both because the communication, the engagement you have with both is two very different areas. I think, can you hear me? Yes. Good. I think so therefore as a brand when we are communicating, we are communicating externally but a lot of our internal employees are also looking at what we're communicating. So therefore that sense of responsibility is there in our communication. And at a time like this, we realize that this is a health crisis and it's not really a marketing opportunity. Therefore, at some level, whatever selling horses that we ride at times, we have sort of thinking, we've thought of getting off those selling horses, we got off them and trying to sincerely embrace empathy. So in our tonality, in our communication, we are trying to behave genuine. We know that social distancing is not equal to customer distancing. And therefore being in touch with the customers is far more important than ever. Fact of the matter is for we are in international logistics and therefore for us to function, we have to be on the ground, right? We have to be picking up delivering, running vehicles, working at the airports, unloading our aircrafts, loading our aircrafts, building containers. There's so much work to be done and it's so much uncertainty that it would come from when we went 100% lockdown and slowly, slowly opening up. The organization was fully involved in negotiating and understanding the terms and conditions and how to operate. And all this chaos to maintain a clear narrative was very, very important. I think, therefore, what we were doing and customers were opening up too and they wanted to export and they wanted to import and they wanted to know what's going on, right? So we kept our communication very, very short, very meaningful and we were helping our customers pick out relevant and most important key points. But you know what? The whole suddenly dawned to us and look, the word state is so important, right? None of the narrative we hear from the government, anybody gets completed until they say, the states will take the final call. But there's so many states and so many rules and there are companies like us who work across states, across so many countries. How do we understand first of all, what states are saying? How do we cut the clutter and communicate to people so that, you know, more than the fluff, they need meaningful information right now. So I think that's what we've been doing and the one common string which is running in our communication is that we realize that positivity is far more important in these times. But therefore, we are trying to be very, very sensitive, staying positive, trying to communicate happy and cheerful stimuli in order to drive away the attention from the negativity of the situation. So I think these are three or four tenants that are built in our tonality of our communication to our customers and they cut cross to B2B, they cut across to B2C. Many of our customers walk into our retail stores knowing extremely well that when they walk into a retail store, the safety protocols are absolutely top class, you know, and we get live feedback from our customers on how they felt when they walked into our store. So I think our communication is based on these facets when we look at our customers. Fantastic. Jayam, let me come to you. You run a brand which is, again, very relevant during lockdown times. A lot of people, especially, you know, I've experienced this personally. A lot of people have time to focus on their personal wellness now and you guys are very well placed in that category. You want to tell us what you've done last two months, how have you kept the brand alive and buzzing? So I think, you know, the last two months have been quite eventful. If I was to just take a step back, FITERNTE is an offline retail subscription product to access gyms and studios. So by nature, I think the lockdown kind of shut all avenues of business for us. But I think what was the renewed focus that we saw is that more and more people, as you mentioned, want to get into fitness, right? Immunities become, I think, our strongest line of defense. So the whole idea was, you know, for us as a team to identify what formats of fitness will be able to cater to this growing demand. And there were multiple formats. And I think what we realized is that rather than pinpointing on one format, we would kind of create a skew of offerings which would cater to different segments of consumers. So as to give an example, if you are a consumer who's just entering fitness, if we provide you prerecorded videos for you to kind of watch and work out, there is a high possibility that you may end up getting injured. So that's when we said that, okay, let's create a high-touch model, let's empanel a few hundred thousand trainers across the country to say that if Jayam as a new person wants to get into fitness, how can you kind of take them through the basics of fitness at a one-on-one video call and then give them the option to kind of look at a prerecorded video to scale up the process, right? The other thing that we did was to kind of create a, I would say, sustainable equation between supply and demand. So we worked with over 2,000 studios, so fitness studios in India to kind of, you know, train them towards technology adaptation to actually take a fitness class virtually. So while fraternity earlier used to help you find a class and go to it, now the idea was how do we get the class to you, do it in a group format base so that as a user I get a sense of normalcy where I, you know, have people working around me, there's a trainer, you know, kind of looking at everything that I'm doing and hence it's quite sustainable and effective for me as a user. The third thing that we did, we also created a library of prerecorded content with the aim to create scale and cater to a user base, you know, which was already into fitness, wanted to kind of level up. So these are the kind of things that we've done and I think the way we've looked at it is that, you know, while these cater to COVID challenges as of now, it's going to be a very interesting model in the future. So I may, I mean, I personally predict that six months down the line we'll actually have a yoga class happening in Mandra where eight people will be attending physically and six people will be attending from different parts of India virtually onto that class, right? I think it's very interesting. In our opinion, given the offerings, it's very important to communicate them in the right way with the user. Us being a startup, you know, is not that well flushed with funds in our ability to kind of use multiple channels to our advantage. So I think what we've done in that aspect is that we've kind of tried to create a lot of interesting user generated content which, you know, may catch the consumer's attention. One example was, you know, there was a workout series where you're not using equipment but you're actually paralleling it to, you know, house course. So I think one other displacement for most urban Indians is that they're all working at home, right? They're actually doing household work. So the idea was to create a series that when you're doing your dishes, how do you maintain fitness? When you are sweeping the house, what can you do better to also make it a fitness routine? So I think those kind of things have worked well for us. It's my point of view. Fantastic. So let me just, you know, expand the umbrella a little bit here. Content marketing obviously is a piece that resides in the larger marketing, you know, ecosystem. I was reading the walk report that day and, you know, some of the points that stood out for me was one of the things that Martin Suril said that in his assessment, the economic recovery from COVID will be an inverse square root, right? Which is, you know, going down initially, then coming up a little bit and then completely plateauing off. We don't know what shape it will take in India and we hope that, you know, the shape that it takes in India is more, you know, we, the inverse square root. But what I want to know from all of you is that if you were to, like a lot of people are jokingly now, saying, you know, BCN, AC is before corona and after corona, right? The definition of change. So if you were to look at the role of content marketing and influencer that will fit into a brand's, you know, agenda going forward, how do you think it'll change from a pre-corona to a post-corona world? Yeah, you want to start and tell us? Yeah, so I want to see at the end of the day, what are we, what are we here for? We are here for to try to win the trust of the consumers by providing services. Yeah, so as long as the consumers are moving in that space, which they have actually over the last two and a half months and more and more views and more and more content both in the English, India, and especially in the regional languages, which was not that very big, has taken shape. There's enough and more excitement and content happening in that space, which is regional languages, the six-stop languages. So it's the whole ship, the metamorphical ship is happening from sitting at home and trying to search for content or content coming to you, is always going and finding out content which is relevant for you. And if that ship is continuous, then there would be a significant ship in the way you look at marketing, you look at content marketing and the way you look at influencer marketing. So it's all about the consumer journey. If the audience is there, this will move. But if the audience is after the V-shape recovery comes back and we see the traditional output what we have been seeing for decades, then I don't see this as moving. But it's all about where the consumer is, where the audience is. Brands as well as brand monies will move that side. How will it move? So let's assume a scenario that the recovery is not V-shape and there is significant impact of corona. How, tell us granular points. One, two points, as I said, pre-COVID, post-COVID, content marketing, how will it change? What are the things that you would do differently that you were doing earlier? So the things which one would end up doing differently is looking at opportunities. Because today, if you look at the last two and a half months and all the reports with Bach and all of you guys have been submitting and publishing, we have seen a significant change in the way we are spending time on entertainment. We have seen the significant amount of time we are spending on gaming. So that is a clear cut indication that numbers are moving. So as a brand, you need to move to that space. Today, gaming will become a huge play as we go forward and there is enough and more content available in the gaming space. So one needs to move to that level. Same is the case in entertainment. Entertainment has moved across TV but the growth has been faster on OTT platforms. And a lot of opportunities are available over there. The entire Durdarshan piece which happened, nobody expected that content to do so very well but it was a real eye-opener. And getting advertising over there was becoming difficult in terms of cost. So what has happened over here is two or three small initiatives of school. Things in the marketplace have shifted the entire paradigm. So that is the way one needs to move step by step. There are no right or wrong rules though. There's nothing right or wrong over here. You'll have to evolve and you have to be nimble-footed and agile and keep on looking at opportunities which are coming forward. What of you, your company manages brands across sector and you've been for a few years now, you've been significantly investing in the space. So what's your learning, as I said, from a pre-COVID to a post-COVID world in terms of usage of content marketing, influence on marketing, what are the things that will change? You're a mute. I think you need to unmute Gaurav. Sorry. I think now it's a very pertinent question that I struggle with every single day because every opportunity, like this one, Churchill said something very interesting that never wasted a good crisis. Now, in a crisis like this, there is also time to really put your thinking hat on and imagine what scenarios could be. I think the biggest learning is that in a scenario, when something like this happens, you should never be fixated to any scenario. That's the first thing. But I'll tell you two, three trends that for me were very striking. Now, if you look at China, for example, which all markets started opening up, you saw people revert to same behavior almost immediately. Some things come back so rapidly that it shocks you that was this the same place just a week back, which was actually empty, is now crowded with people. Restaurants were chocolate-blocked full and were going at a green level. Now, if you look at India, and if you start looking at green zones, red zones and the containment zones, the first lead indicator that actually people are getting out of homes in a massive way is the amount of time drop that you see in green zones. So what we, you know, it is amazing that things that we imagine, and I'm interested in you mentioned the inverse square root curve, as you start getting distant from an event like this, the memory also starts fading and you start going back to common behaviors. But I want to take two, three points here. I think certain things will have changed forever and will be so. Next time that you're in a bank queue, you won't have the person standing behind you in India really pushing you right into the counter. That is something that we took for granted all this while. So you'll suddenly see that there's a certain respect for distance and personal distance that'll come in, which again opens up massive opportunities in terms of marketing, in terms of messaging, in terms of keeping the sensitivity going. I think certain hygiene categories have come to stay. I mean, what, you know, as they say very interestingly that, you know, it takes a crisis to like this one to really skyrocket some of the categories that we, that would have taken years to develop. Some of them are on this here. I mean, for example, you know, sanitizers, you know, you never imagined that the first few days, people who were given sanitizers, some of people were drinking that sanitizer. So you have to stop people from drinking a sanitizer. So now everybody knows, even in rural villages, you hear people understand what sanitizer is. I used to be a marketing manager on Purit and it took me a lifetime to explain what a virus is. Now nobody needs explanation on what a virus is. You know, you have deep India and you listen to consumers and you realize that virus, people understand it. So certain things have changed forever post COVID. So including things like sensitivity to hygiene, distance learning, whether it's physical education, whether it is, you know, fitness, like fraternity is talking about, whether it is, you know, what Baiju is doing. I think this whole piece of distance and I learned a very interesting word from my teammate, you know, today when we were talking, which was to say that you become almost distance agnostic to a certain kind of work category. For example, what will change forever is possibly just thinking that you need to physically be in a room to have a conference like this. Imagine what it does to cut down costs. I think the other pieces which will not change so easily and take a lot of effort for us to change is are people ready to give value for this to the extent they were ready to give for physical intervention? So let's say if a similar session were to be done with the aura or a learning session or a fitness session with the same amount of fee that you had for a physical intervention, let's say what a cure for it like scenario did, will that continue? Or will people still want physical evidence of that service? I think that I'm not so sure that will change so much. But for me, what will, my hypothesis in the scenario is that a lot of things that are, that today are pretty locked down, we come back rapidly, but certain behaviors will stay as remnants for us for a long time to come. And that is including things like sensitivity to the physical space, hygiene sensitivity, to things like need for financial wellbeing, for example. A lot of people are suddenly finding that you are not possibly that well geared for a crisis like this one. So suddenly- But does that end up being the influence of marketing doing more online content? In a way, yes. I think again, what's happening is that we again say, which consumer what content, right? If you look at India, we go and start tearing up India and various segments and what you realize is the top 10% segment is almost 38, 39% wall consumption in the country. And that 10% segment in the country is essentially not on a traditional medium. So of course, they are doubling down of content is massive, massively critical. Because in a time like this, they found that they have entertainment and choices on a fingertip. But what we change is the influence of marketing with where the one vector that'll come in very powerfully is in this, you know, the paradox in the situation, like this is there's so much of content. And yet when you sit down with a remote control of a TV, you don't, you find very difficult to decide what to watch. That's when you turn to your traditional usual thing at world of mouth, turning to a friend, what should I watch on that WhatsApp group? Can you tell me top 10 series? How often have you seen that? I think that's the void that influencers will feel in a very, very big way. From taking that choice overload and cutting through that clutter to give you those two or three or five things that are interesting and positive. I think that's the space that influencers could have. How does a media tech company like yours latch on to that opportunity? Gaurav is very right. And so all of us have experienced it. I have spent like hours arguing with my wife in front of a TV and then we've just walked off because we haven't managed to agree on what to watch. That nobody can help you with. Wife is a tough one here. It's a tough text. And that's a big opportunity for ODD platforms. If you can hook the customer immediately, then obviously time spent goes up. Absolutely, absolutely. I think Navan, I would go back to the point of hyper personalization where the more you understand the consumer and his behavior and this is behavior which is there both on the platform and off the platform. It helps in giving him with the content choices that he would ideally want to consume. And this is, so we are, as a brand, our motive is to be tuned to you which is almost like being a reflection of who you are and who you aspire to be. So as an app, we want to understand you. And that is when consumer profiling helps, that is when personalization helps. And like you were saying, see, this is the new norm and it is the age of being agile as content marketing has been very natural to our organization. We work with influencers day in, day out both for our shows and their marketing as well as with a lot of partners to promote their products and brands. And what we've seen is that content marketing is on a high. The consumption on OTT is ever increasing. People are coming to the OTT platform and accessing the content through the different devices. So the consumer behavior has shifted. What has happened is that it's not just a person who was watching it on mobile is also now watching it on the big TV. He has shifted from maybe a cable television onto OTT platform. The same ID and password is being utilized on five devices by five family members on to a mobile iPad or onto a big screen. So, and that is where I think hyper personalization helps. That is why we're profiling helps in terms of recommendation engines that can help you in providing you the right content for you out of the plethora of content that is. Nipun, let me come to you now. What about you? I mean, you guys have been investing significantly across media again and it's a very interesting category. It's been a high growth category last two years. You use television in a big way, brand ambassadors. You've done the big ticket sporting properties. You've done influencer marketing, content marketing. What changes for you? I mean, when you go back, say, into your office a month, hopefully from now, what would have changed in your marketing mix, especially when it came to using influencers, using digital online content? Okay. So, Naval, I will look at it from two ways. First, the first way is all of us, you know, this lockdown, this was more out of compulsion than choice for anybody. So it's like an elastic which is stretched. Now, the question is when this force is removed, will the elastic go back to its original position or not? And somewhere, I concur with a part of what Gaurabjit said, which is that how much will actually change in consumers' behaviors is, I think it's for us to wait and watch. Because it is natural for us to say, yeah, a lot of things will change. There will be a new normal. Yeah, these are the buzzwords these days. But whenever in the last 10 days, when we've seen the markets open up and again people flocking to stores, buying smartphones or starting to buy smartphones, what we have realized is that as soon as the force which was pulling people away, the force is removed, it is not that suddenly there is an absolutely new normal. So I would rather refrain from saying that, yeah, there is 100% there is going to be a new normal. While of course, some behavior, there is going to be change in terms of our hygiene habits, our social distancing habits, being more aware of crowded places. So those things will change. But in terms of buying habits, I think we still need to be sure as soon as the lockdown lifts. Second in terms of marketing, there are two aspects, Ravana Thiti also touched upon, which is where is our consumer accordingly, we have to be there. So that that's a function of where our consumer is and second is what kind of monies do we have. On the second part as all businesses or most businesses have suffered depending on the range of decline, but all businesses have suffered. So keeping that in mind, marketing budgets will of course, will have to be re-looked at and re-apportioned to give the maximum rank for market. Yes, that's true. One of the other things I was reading was that post COVID, the increased power and sway of e-commerce companies and the new learning brands will, I think that is a unchallenged reality. E-commerce companies will have a stronger, you know, say in the distribution ecosystem and all of the brands who are anyway learning how to kind of deal with them. Yesterday, I was ordering a hair trimmer for myself and I spent, because it was a first time experience, I spent a good part of an hour just trying to figure out what to buy. And it had the best brands, the known brands and some of the unknown brands which are highly rated on Amazon, right? Who have four and a half, five star ratings who are, you know, good on pricing, good on value. So it's a very interesting challenge for brands. And I think that is going to also determine, you know, how the marketplace, you know, evolves in the next few years because challenger brand, new brands, if they get their e-commerce strategy right, they will be able to give the legacy and the established brand a run for their money. Yeah, see here again, Nabil, I'd say while that seems to be, you know, like again, power for course when it comes to new normal. But, and I'll give you one example. We, in terms of the smartphone industry, I can tell you, the market is split between 65% offline, 65 to 70% offline and around 30% is online. And what we did was we took this initiative of a Vivo smart retail, wherein what we are saying is you want to buy from offline store, but you don't want to go to an offline store. So we will arrange a call where the Vivo brand ambassador will explain you all the features, help you decide the phone and the retailer will deliver the phone to your home. So the comfort and especially in the smartphone category which, you know, people, the average ticket prices are 15,000 rupees and you will make this purchase once every one and a half to two years. It's not that you will every day go in, you know, buy a smartphone. So people still trust the physical presence of a store, touching and feeling the device, comparing it with three other phones, opening the camera, checking the camera, then making their decision. So again, category to category and person to person is the way it will evolve too. And even with this Vivo smart retail, in around 15 days, we've seen 30,000 plus customers reaching out to us and giving their queries. So I would again say, whatever we are saying, it depends once the lockdown lifts, this elastic, how much back it will go back to its original space. Right. So I'm told time is up, so I have one last question and I'll take that around and because, you know, you guys all run very large brands across significant key important categories, media spends has been, you know, very big, you know, part of the equation for the advertising and the media business. It is tough to say right now what happens to, you know, overall marketing budgets and the money you are spending on media, but a lot of people in the advertising and the media ecosystem are hopeful that over the next two to three months, majority of the spends are going to come back. If I were to go around and ask you, of course it's not possible, as I said to put a number, if I were to go around and ask you, what is the month that you would look at from now, when you would say your media spend will be indexed back to 100. So for example, if you were doing 100 in September last year, it would again be, you know, 100 in September this year. Obviously April may have been two kind of washout months, except for maybe HUL, I can't imagine anybody else having done more than 20% of what they're done in April, May last year. So looking from now, we are almost on 1st of June, looking on from now, what would be the month where you would say, okay, my media spend would roughly index back to 100. Arvind, you want to start this? Sure, Neville, I would say 12 to 18 months, and that's the time period we are looking at, because when you were asking the earlier question, what's going to change, right? Is demand going to come back? Yes, demand is going to come back, but the nature of the demand will increase. People are seeking more and more convenience, which means for example, our dining business will take a longer time to come back, whereas the delivery and the takeout business will be in higher demand, digitally enabled, and so on and so forth. So that's the problem now, Sasiya. Right, and that's a pretty long time frame, because you want the severity of the cut 12 to 18 months is pretty long. That's right, because the nature of dininess, you kind of meet people, you grow in groups, I think, and what we are seeing very clearly now is, convenience is a big driver of choice, as opposed to the older channels being preferred. So we see this shift, and hence the 12 to 18 months. What about you, Ateeth? No, we are already at 105 in the last two months. Fantastic, that's good news. So there has been no change, because the category is growing, and as I said in the first time when you asked me, more and more people are adopting to online learning because schools are shut, and they're the last things to open up, and this is going to be the new approach, the blended approach of learning at home and learning from school is going to continue, and it's going to stay for good, as for India is concerned, and practically everywhere in the world. So there has actually been no change for us in terms of advertising marketing spends. We are at the same levels what it was earlier drawn up before the lockdown started. Great, and Nipun, what about Vivo? Yeah, if there is no second wave, I think that's a very important point, if there is no second wave and things only look northwards from here, then I think in around six months time, in around six months time, we should be seeing a business pre-COVID, and therefore marketing budgets and marketing spends also being aligned accordingly. Also around six months from now, we will be hitting the festival season. Yes. So from that time, hopefully things are much better than they are right now. Brilliant. What about you, Nipun? You can hear me? Yes. Yeah, all right. So I think, so with the current estimates, right? So if I look at global markets and globalization demand, globalization is the real thing. That's the real demand. US is going to degrow by minus 8%, Europe is going to degrow by minus 6%. The Indian numbers, people are talking between minus 5% and minus 6%. And that is when we are in the current environment. We don't know whether we've seen the worst phase yet. And I wish and pray there's no worst phase, there's no second peak, et cetera. But the fact of the matter is that demand is really gone southwards. India exports were down by 60% in the last month. Therefore, by current estimates, anything between 12 to 18 months is optimistic to say that demand will come back to normal. I agree with the square root point, but maybe the altitudes can be a little different that this could be the square root. And therefore, if the demand and the business is going to take time to come back to normal, the marketing spends will automatically take a different way altogether. And therefore, the way the spend is allocated really will have to evolve because the spends are going to reduce. And I think this is going to take quite some time, maybe 18, 24 months, and we'll wait and watch how it goes. Right. Fair enough, Jayan. What about you guys in sort of growth trajectory? You have a business to build. So can you assume that, I mean, of course there's no indexing reference here. Are you planning to up your presence in terms of promotions marketing? Yeah, no, I think it depends on two factors. One would be whether virtual fitness can actually move from just engaging users to our ability to monetize it. I think this is something that has been an unanswered question in the last decade. No one has really been able to monetize virtual fitness as much as other categories. So I think that would be one of the most important questions it defines our spends. If I was to just purely look at it from the retail offline space, I think that would definitely, it would take six to nine months for consumers to start feeling safer to go to a gym and kind of go to a fitness studio or follow personal trainer. I think these are the two factors which would somewhere impact how we would spend our money. Yeah. Abhi, you guys have spent over the last 18 months significant money on outdoor money, which is all kind of right now not in action. And that money also depends upon people coming back on road, traveling, going to work, going to meet others and it's still some time away. Where would you redeploy all of that money in the next two quarters? So the category that we are in, our media spends are the same as they were earlier. In fact, if I have to scale it, it would be now 105 if it was 100 earlier. So we're spending more in this time. We've reallocated the budgets. Yes, the media mix has been re-looked at much more ROI and much more measurement driven platforms are being looked at and also from a perspective of whether they are contextual at do during these times or not. So most of the monies have been deployed over digital and over television, which was allocated on to other outdoor media message at the moment. Right. So Gaurav, I'll let you have the last word. Obviously, HUL has been continuing to spend through the crisis as well. We have seen from a lot of Bach and TAM data. The question I have is like other categories, HUL has also impacted in terms of the volume value growth. I was looking at some crystal reports that day which said, you know, SMCG growth this year could end up being half of what was being projected earlier. Does that also mean that you'll go conservative with your marketing spends next week quarters or will that be business as usual? I think the way we at least we are trying to do is to match physical availability with mental reach and what's happening on all of these things is that such a dynamic piece that's very difficult to say, listen, this is what would be our media spends. The reason for that is that in our case, the categories that straddle a very wide range right down to something that's absolutely essential for IG to go down to something as normal, as it gets as, let's say, lack made colors. So it really depends on how markets open up, how consumers react and what kind of availability is possible in a time like this. So there's, and hence, it is a very dynamic piece and we'll continue to invest in line with what consumer behavior is. So if they can get access to products, then we will continue building our brands. But what is very clear, historically, is that in times like this, bigger brands come out much better, stronger and salient brands remain powerful. I think the challenge in a period like this is how do you mean salient? It's such a large fragmentation and audience typologies across and the TV itself moving the way it is. And again, going through that throw in places where you're starting to open up markets. So I think the dynamism of this industry requires us to be on the ball in terms of which consumer segment needs what medium makes to reach to them and constantly calibrate our plans in line with physical availability and as it comes back to normal and as Nipun was saying that it really depends on how this whole second wave, God forbid, plays out. So there's so many moving parts now and it's going to be a real hazard to guess anything. But I think the way we approach it is that we constantly become more centric. There's some markets where things are back to normal, where we are aggressively building our brands. So in some places, consumers desire the product and hence we are building our brands and desire the product and hence we are building the demand for it when things are normal. In some cases, we are not even to produce enough to fulfill the demand that there is so you want to possibly calibrate our advertising. So there's so many scenarios across the 50 brands that we have in marketing at any given time so it is not an easy answer to give. But suffice to say the only way to play this is to really shadow the consumer and how consumers are behaving and be salient when they are opportunity to be salient. Fantastic, thank you for the candid answer. Thank you so much. Let's hope that it turns out to be a V-shaped recovery. The so-called second wave is not as severe and I think we are looking at a future scenario which is more hopeful than the last two months. Businesses will be back on track. Some categories obviously will be challenged but the pessimistic scenario hopefully will not play out. We will be somewhere between the most optimistic and the most pessimistic scenario as happens in most crisis. Thank you for your very candid and insightful thoughts, all of you. Thank you Abhi, Gaurav, Jayam, Ateed, Sandeep and Nipun for being part of this panel on a Friday evening. We wish you all luck and hope to see you soon next time. Khyati, over to you. Thank you, Gauraval. Thank you, team. Thank you, Gauraval. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to all the panelists for spending this time with us for having this wonderful discussion. All our attendees have been messaging a lot of good stuff that it has brought in value to them. So thank you to all of you. Thank you, Khyati. Before we close the content dam, I would like to leave all of you with just one little thought. You know, there's a quote by Albert Einstein which says, in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity and all that we've heard today in the content jam conference is that, let us not be apportionistic, but let us all be more empathetic towards our viewers, towards our consumers, towards the fraternity that we work in, towards each and every lives that we touch. I think empathy is gonna take us a long way. So while you make content, don't forget this. And let us all move forward with the hope and positivity that we all strive with. So thank you so much, everybody, for joining us for E4M content jam. The content marketing gig in its third edition, it went virtual and coming to all your screens. So thank you for all of you who joined us till the end. Don't forget to tweet us, your responses, your feedback, suggestions, comments with our hashtag E4M webinar and E4M content jam. This is me, Khyati Kawa, signing off. Thank you. I was your virtual host for this content jam. See you again. Thank you. Thank you, Khyati. God bless you.