 Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Chetan Asher and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Tanik Worldwide, Digital First Creative Agency. Today we are going to discuss how digital marketing evolved in the post-COVID world and hopefully we are able to put all of this behind us and we are in the post-COVID world sooner than later. So I'm looking forward to discuss what should be the excellent panel we have today and I'd like to quickly introduce all of them to you. I'll start with Swami Aryan. Swami is the founder, CEO of Radio Digital, a leading independent tech-led creative and digital marketing organization with a presence in India, Middle East, Southeast Asia and Bangladesh. She runs an incubator for Adtech and Boxing Tech startups. Swami is also a TEDx speaker, startup investor and mentor. Welcome Swami. Moving to Rishi Sharma. Swami, I think you are on mute. Yes, I said thank you. Moving to Rishi Sharma. Hi Rishi. Rishi is the head of digital for the consumer and lifestyle brand at Giva, the Aditya Pillar Group. He comes with over 20 years of marketing communication experience and integrated marketing specialist, digital evangelist and also students of life. But out on experience across advertising agencies, FMCG, fashion and lifestyle companies like Samsung, MedCan, Erikson and Pugnis is the name of you. Glad to have you here Rishi. Thank you Chetan. Hello everyone. Next to have the task is Rahul, Rahul Chopra. Rahul is the Chief Digital Officer of Clix Capital. Rahul is a technology leader with over 13 years of experience and has been listed as Adobe India's top 100 digital leaders and has led several digital transformation initiatives. Good to have you here Rahul. Lastly we have is Sandeep Chaudhary. Sandeep is the co-founder of Ad-Om and he also leads the product innovation function at Ad-Om. Ad-Om is an air-based omni-channel marketing and sales tool which helps you pay time and cost. Welcome Sandeep. Thanks Chetan. Hi everyone. I just got a way to kickstart in here all these experts we have today. For those of you watching remember we will be taking questions and answering them in the last 15 minutes. So go ahead and put your questions to us. To kickstart my first question to all of you is the pandemic and lockdown has forced the consumer to move where the supply is. So have you reached that inflection point for digital media? Is this shift here to stay or is this just going to be a temporary phase? So I'd like to hear from you. Let's start with you Sharmia. Sure. Can you guys hear me okay? So let's look at what's really happened. So what's definitely happened is acceleration in adoption of digital. So all the facilities that are available to us today were actually available even some time ago. But there was always this friction of the traditional way of doing things and so called the new way of doing things. So the adoption was always sort of slow and going at its own pace. Now with the pandemic, suddenly that friction has disappeared and the people have embraced digital and so called the new way of doing things. Now with this backdrop, let's see what it means for businesses. Now when we talk about digital transformation, digital marketing is a subset or a very small part of the digital transformation journey. What brands and businesses will start to look at or are already looking at is the plotting of the entire consumer journey. Right now in the backdrop of the adoption of digital that has happened. And right from the awareness through the enablement, through perhaps even the delivery and fulfillment. So how does that play out is the major sort of focus that these companies will have going forward. And each industry in a way will interpret this differently and to sort of suit their own context. So and by the time we probably find a vaccine, it's going to be some time. So human behavior in that sense would have changed for forever. So the way I look at it is it's here to stay and it's almost sort of the basis for us to innovate for the next orbit. If I can say that, yeah. That's an interesting point and I'm going to come back to that. Rishi, any thoughts on are you seeing an inflection point? Is it here to stay? What's your view of it? Yeah, so taking on to what Swami had just mentioned. It is in fact an exploration of a shift and of adoption for two reasons. One, one that digital did exist. It's not that it did not. We were using digital, but it was part of a lot of other things that we were doing. There were no focus and concentrated push on digital. One, acceptance because for example, if you look at your society, people have started using Google Forms, WhatsApp, different forms of WhatsApp and different tools to get information, share information, do a shopping list, etc. A lot of e-commerce, people of different age group have started adopting it. So what has happened is a lot of people have got into this using of digital platforms which have made them understand the ease of usage and how it works, which in fact at a consumption level has helped and triggered the acceleration that Swami was talking about. At a business level, we used to, at a very corporate level, I would spend enough time explaining internally on why and how it has to function, what are the benefits which a lot of people have experienced them first time. For example, there have been virtual launches, for example, there have been virtual conferences which they were not preview to, but now by force they have gone into it and they have seen the benefit. So it has got two ways. So for business, it is here to stay. A lot of people have seen the preliminary benefits of it and the advantage of having digital as a forefront in this strategy. So that's going to grow and continue to grow. At a consumption level, it takes 21 days to change an habit and it has been more than that, so I think it's going to grow further. So yeah, I completely agree with what you are saying. Right. And it reminds me of the cartoon that I saw, people sitting in a constant dream saying we don't need digital transformation and there's a big ball of COVID coming and hitting them. So what Bodhavi said brings you to the next point is that while we are talking about digital marketing and as Sogna said, it looks like one part, one element of the whole journey, but are you seeing that digital transformation is happening at the same pace for digital marketing to perform? You could have the best digital marketing playbook in place, but if your product or if your organization is not keeping pace with digital transformation and is not adopting it quickly, then it's not going to help you, right? So is it keeping pace? We've seen some examples, very good examples, just from FNCG companies who have overnight established direct to consumer channel and have started ensuring the supply of the product is enabled digitally. We've seen those instances, but overall what do you guys feel? Do you feel its transformation keeping pace? Raul, do you want to go ahead? So very interesting question and see it is very important that you should be absolutely clear with your digital transformation agenda before you start picking pace or spending dollars around the digital marketing because if you start spending on digital marketing without having a clear cut understanding and canvas around your digital transformation, you will not get a better return on your effort, right? Having said that, the first place where the digital transformation influenced the marketing is the funnel. So whatever business you are in, so map the funnel in a typical orthodox way of saying the awareness, interest, consideration, intent and decision, but do that way, right? And then start tracking and have the digital transformation in place that you get to know everything around what you are doing, right? And we all know that now data is the king in the digitization, right? So around digitization, when you do the single biggest blind spot in marketing that used to be was how to read the data or probably lack of having equality data available on a click of a button. So when you do your digital transformation agenda, definitely find out a way to know the quality data on a click of a button so that your marketing effort appear that way. So hence, I believe, yes, the digital transformation is happening at least in our case and if it is not happening in some of the companies, so the audience have to definitely be clear that the digital transformation is your first and foremost thing and then you land up to your digital marketing. Otherwise, I'm sure if not now, two months, three months down the line, whatever you spend now, you will be asked 100 million questions that what is where is ROI of the spend. So be very clear and hence the pace has to be there and I believe the pace is there in the digital transformation and with this pandemic that we have experienced, you must have seen the kind of transformation that we have done across, right? So it's happening. The pace is there, I would say. Sandeep, your thoughts, are you seeing brands queuing up to implement digital automation tools? Yes, definitely. So I used to meet a lot of company heads or the decision makers before pre-COVID times and it was difficult to make them understand why you need to move or why you need to transform towards the technological aspect, right? But after this lockdown, right, all these people who were hesitant towards moving towards the technological driven marketing, right? The decision process has improved and the demand for technology has increased many fold. Now they want to try out a lot of things, you know, but like Rahul rightly said, you know, see digital or non-digital, any marketing spend that needs to happen, right? An objective needs to be very clear what you are going to get out of it. And the very misconception in digital is that I will put $1 today and I will start getting the return the very same day or the next day. So that is a misconception a lot of companies have. So it is a job of marketers or the agencies to educate customers first in a very rightly manner how and when they are going to get the results out of it. And it needs to be, you know, like previously also discussed, digital, the very advantage is data driven approach. So data can tell you and educate and help you in making the right decisions for you. But you need to be patient, right? Like an offline marketing, they used to spend like anything, correct? But digital, their digital comes in place and helps you with the data, how your spends are being driven, how your audience is reacting, whether you are reaching to the right audience or not. So yes, COVID has actually taught people how to drive marketing in a much more efficient way and, you know, necessity is the mother of all inventions. So because necessity has came, that is why, you know, willingly or not willingly, companies have been forced to move to digital because audience has moved there. And we have to see after this pre, you know, post COVID, whether the same audience with that percentage remains on digital or not or OTT platforms, let's say. So that's an interesting point that you made, Sandeep. And as I'm sure Somya will agree, as digital agencies, we always, you know, are balancing this whole pressure between driving ROI and building the brand, right? So digital marketing has always been under pressure to drive measurable ROI, you know, because you can measure, you know, digital, you know, there is tendency to measure to every last mile. So do you think that, you know, because of the scenario that we are in and like you mentioned, will ROI driven campaigns dominate and brand building agenda will go on a back burner? You say right now is not the time to build a brand, let's just focus on ROI. Are you going to see that? I think it's a very wrong approach and all the companies taking only ROI based campaigns, they will not have a successful run in the digital space in the long term. They might taste some success on a very short term basis, but that's never a long term strategy. You need to understand towards today, people are more brand conscious, right? And if you need to have a better ROI, people searching about your particular brand is what they are going to deliver you the most efficient ROI, right? So take an example if I'm searching for a generic product, correct? Because a lot of advertisers have come on digital, my CPC cost have increased, right? So those CPC cost will definitely drive a more, a higher cost to acquire a customer, right? So if your product is 100 rupee and if you are spending 50 rupees just to sell that product is not, you know, is not a business sense, right? So if someone is coming for a specific brand name, right? That is where the lower cost per acquisition says, and I have seen across multiple brands, you know, you name any top brand of any country, the majority of their lower cost per acquisitions comes on their brand name, not on their generic one. So ROI, I personally think ROI should never be the very first objective. It has to be, you know, mix and match. Your brand building should be the very first objective. That is what is going, you know, to sell your product to a customer. And equally, then you should focus on the ROI aspect of it. But if ROI is the only aspect, I have seen a lot of companies fail, their return on ad spends are not increasing. They are decreasing day by day and their cost to acquire a customer is also increasing drastically. Great. Swami, I could take on this. Yeah. So whether brands and businesses will start to look at digital as a branding channel, if that's the question, I think it's a big yes. Why? Because one, of course, they won't have another option. Reason is that the what has not changed, right? So the brand narrative, the brand positioning, you know, what differentiates you in the market, I think the tenets of brand remain irrespective, you know, that doesn't change. But the where has changed, right? So digital is the where. And because the where has changed, the dynamics of the platform are different from your traditional channels. So and therefore, what I see, how I see brand building unfolding in the coming days is at the intersection, it's at the intersection of creative and content technology and data, right? So that's how brand building is going to unfold on digital channels. Now, if you just look at, you know, I mean, I get asked and because I evangelize brand building on digital so much, I get asked, digital is a very complex ecosystem, right? So, you know, you have so many channels, so many different formats, you know, this communication going out from the brand across social media channels every day. So it's a it's a very complex ecosystem that one is playing in and how do you really hold a single brand narrative together on digital is the biggest challenge that brands and businesses have today, right? So what, you know, and I'm just gonna throw light on how we've been able to solve this to some extent is we said, let's create a usable structure for brand building on digital. So we created something called as DFA, this is a model that's pending copyright right now it's called design for action and it rests on seven pillars. Okay, so just for the sake of this conversation, a couple of pillars I'll share with you. One is personalization as one of the biggest enablers ought to dial up brand personalization as a pillar to dial up brand conversations as a pillar to dial up brand gamification as a pillar. Right, so when I say this again, I'll give some examples here. So when Game of Thrones season seven was launched in India by Starworld. What we did was we use technology. We in fact asked people to send us their selfies and if you remember the, you know, the sort of key, key visual of Game of Thrones season seven was like avatar like, you know, there was a blueish tinge to it and there was a face of the protagonist. There was a face of the protagonist on on the poster. So we actually built a code on top of Photoshop to be able to personalize posters for every selfie that we got and made that into a Game of Thrones poster so every person had this personalized Game of Thrones poster which he was sharing across social media channels. Right now, in another case, when Reliance Mutual Fund became Nippon Indian Mutual Fund, one of the challenges that we were really solving is how do you sort of build confidence in the entire distributor community. So we use one of our partner technology platforms to personalize videos for every distributor. Now that happened at scale. Now these are ways in which, you know, when you dial up your brand that you definitely stand to have a differentiator when you use digital channels. Now, if you look at conversations, right, you can interpret conversations in many ways. One could be simply building, you know, a chatbot enabled by AI and ML as a retailer helping your consumer find the right product through intelligence. That could be one way of doing a conversation because gone are the days of a top-down approach, you know, a brand in traditional channels used to speak to a consumer in a top-down approach. Now that doesn't work anymore, you know, it's a one-on-one approach with the brand or you interpret this as sort of enabling your brand or product for voice. You know, you're optimizing your brand and your category for voice given that voice searches will become a very significant part of, you know, searches in the coming days. Or, you know, you speak to your consumer in their native languages. You look at that as conversation. Or when you say gamification using Spark AR, you know, for Spark AR for gamifying, you know, your social media channels for your brand. So essentially, you know, just sort of these are some of the pillars through which you can build your brand. The content, of course, entirely rests on, you know, what is the brand story that you want to tell, how you want to engage your consumer. And interestingly, if you see what's happening when I say intersection of creativity, technology and data is because you're enabling all of these things using digital channels. Your ability to look at data and see data becomes much easier, you know, so almost, you know, the insights that you're otherwise looking for from a research perspective or a consumer research perspective, that becomes so much more easily available because you're enabling all of this through technology, right? So I think that's my viewpoint on how branding is going to unfold on digital channels. Right, so you mentioned about AI and ML and, you know, a lot of, and we've been hearing us so much about automation-led digital marketing, right? But the adoption of this tool, this kind of tools are still low, right? You see that changing. But are we seeing from very specific use cases, Rahul, what's your view? Have you seen, considering that you've led so many automation projects, right? Are you seeing any specific use cases that are worth talking about? Yeah, so see what has happened and you will see a lot of change happening now. We always talked about hyper-personalization, but if you notice, there are a lot many online channels where the hyper-personalization doesn't exist. It allows you to take the service, it allows you to buy some product. I'm not, I'm just not talking about the e-commerce, but you keep them aside. But if you see other aspects, you will not find, you know, those factors available. So what started happening is that somewhere I believe the hyper-personalization become by default need for any online channel. So you have to have a consideration on that factor. So you have to have, you know, solutions which are AI based solutions which optimize your same time, right? What time the same time optimization needs to work upon? You definitely have to go beyond, you know, your normal ways of doing campaign management on online channels or your existing base. And you have to land up to AI based campaign retargeting to your database, right? So those aspects, those automation in marketing and in your digital transformation agenda is now must to have. So all the leaders who are leading this agenda right now have to push the boundaries to say, I need, you know, customer engagement management too. If it means I have to spend some money, I definitely have to because you're pivoting around your digital sourcing, right? We all know that most of the organization is pivoting towards a digital channel or their direct-to-consumer channel as a bigger source of revenue generation. So brick and mortar are getting squeezed, hybrid models are now into execution, it's not being talked about. Now it's in the execution, right? So there, these are the things that we are also now implementing. So we are implementing conversational apps the way Somaya talked about. We are implementing AI based campaign retargeting using the tools. I don't want to name those tools. Yes, I'm just bringing the need that you have to push for that. You cannot just run the show by sending the SMS email. You need to know all those aspects plus create a content library of 100 to 1000 pages which enables you to do hyper personalization, right? So everything has to be driven that way. And then only I believe we able to reach out to that and to the group, to the audience. I would like to say that digital transformation word being used, I believe 22 times in last 26 minutes, right? So guys don't feel like it's too complex. Keep it very simple. So when professionals in the industry talk about digital transformation. So what they are talking about is how digital technology is understood. By understanding that particular digital technology, how we can apply them so they look for the application of it. And then how we can integrate that well into our everyday tasks which enables our employees, our customers and in a broader sense the entire business operations to deliver digital. So when you talk about digital transformation, your company keep it very simple. So you look for the digital technologies, you look for the application of those digital technologies and then you like to integrate into your existing system and then try the benefit out of it. And the beneficiary could be your employee, could be your partner, could be your customer. So keep it that way simple. It is not that complex. But yes, the complexity is reading the data. Once you start creating your channels, even using your AI ML based implementation it is. And hence those AI MLs are very important but humanly it is very impossible or very tough to read what is happening around your data. So hence a very, very good question asked by Chetan that what's the use of the AI ML and I believe that's the way because you are going to pump lot and lot of data into your digital assets and you need to enable your reading powers through AI ML solutions. You're clearly seeing there's going to be a large scale adoption of AI and ML which so far has been, there was a lot of talk but it's not been happening. But what about the other areas of marketing and I like to, you know, ask Mr. Rashi, you know, marketing is multiple things, right? So we've seen how shoots have changed, how films have changed, shifting the consumer behavior. So there's a huge need right now. There are a lot of brands who want to understand these shifts that the consumers have gone through, right? And that can only happen out of research and being on the ground, on the feet, listening to the consumer. And I heard someone say, you know, in an otherwise scenario we would just go to our stores and we would, you know, look forward, you know, what are the shifts and we'll observe the consumers. But those things are clearly not possible at the moment, right? So how is research inside my name, how are those things changing? Will there also be a large scale digital adoption of all of these other elements of marketing? Or we'll see that, you know, we will go back to our older ways once, you know, we are back to normal. Rashi? It's a good question. There was a net issue at my end. So we have seen transformation. In fact, I can say that I've seen three big transformation as far as communications concern. There was a print boom that happened in the 90s where, you know, there were magazines, newspapers, photography and the works. That was so-called traditional advertising. Then cricket happened and suddenly we saw, you know, television boom and print was left behind. And this was a second big boom that happened that killed all possible mediums and TV ruled for a longest era, I could say. It's now it's the digital boom. Now is the time when TV has and everyone is like kind of looking at TV as a mobile or rather digital as a first medium. And when we say digital, mobile becomes the first. And with mobile, what has happened is that the photography and even the videography has become democratic. So it's kind of become everyone's tool. It's become so easy to use and so easy to operate that you can see that bloggers influence using it efficiently and creating content. Creating content by dozens in that home. There was a beautiful ad about Chumpy recently, which was all made at home and it was quite a trending content without even getting into a professional shoot. PNG got into, I mean, I should not have been taking names, but yeah, recently they won ad at home. So I'm saying this is a GoPro days. We are going to see that shift and we are going to see more of handheld at home self created videos. There are two advantages, one they are quicker. In digital it works because it's about someone sharing a story created by themselves. It doesn't look unnatural by any form. And three is it's very well communicated because it's done in a setting which a consumer would want to see himself in. So it makes it a little more rather easy for a consumer to accept what I'm trying to explain. So I think that's going to shift and that's going to be the way our films are going to be made in future. Coming to the question of how a shift in marketing and brand in fact, Swami touched upon that point and I quite like that. The point about conversation, I made a note in fact, there was this whole about conversation to conversation to conversion. There is a bit before that which is called curiosity. So earlier we used to create that curiosity pull through various mediums. We would do TV, we would do print and 360 degree and try to pull people into then searching for what is this all about. And then getting into second level. However, the journey has become shorter. Thanks to digital and mobile and social media, you are constantly conversing and having to talk about it, share about it. And you are becoming more engaged at the same time and leading into the cycle has become shorter. Which will also impact content because you don't need to now get into doing a 30 second plan of media, go for this huge big back campaigns while that would be required. I'm not saying it won't be required, it would be required for certain brands to command that aspiration. But yeah, it will help. Thirdly about, so there are a lot of partners who we are working exploring about how we can use this snacky content that I say which is at home and made to handle. The third is about consumer insights. Well, I in fact personally moved away from taking off ground and on from the traditional insights. We in fact use your gypsy and you can talk about it because gypsy is a tool help us collect insights through social media, through ORM, a combination of this. Because what I see, people share more on social media than rather talking to among friends. So the sharing of information, sharing of topic, sharing of like, dislike is more on social media than we doing it in general among people. Also a lot of time we saw is that Indians don't like to say no to everything. You know, they would not say no to anything that they don't like. So you will have to take the insights there from the ground with pinch of salt and some bit of your experience. But at digital it comes up like very clear. You have sentiments, you have, and in fact Chetan if you can talk about more about gypsy, I think that's the way. So digital is going to not only help you converse and engage with youngsters but be able to help us cut through the entire journey from curiosity to conversion. Understanding the data and then which in fact is complex and I agree with Raul that that's because challenge is getting the right data and understanding and converting that data into usable data. That's the biggest challenge and that cycle once has got that loop right, we would be able to get to see better results on digital. Absolutely. Absolutely and I think we kind of saw that earlier and we said we don't always have to be on ground to get data and insights. And in fact, like I said, consumers don't like to sometimes say no in a group discussion. But they're really truthful when they talk, when they're doing one-on-one with their mobile phone. So yeah, we've seen that, we've done that journey together. But you spoke about talent creating a lot of content on their own and using the equipment that is at home. And we've seen like a shift from large scale films to digital films being made, right? And we've also seen that and we're amazed by some of the results that helped us create. But do you think that is this going to impact the overall quality of our phones? Are we saying that the days of large scale, mid-bang, TVC kind of films are over? Because it is shown everybody that there are smarter ways of creating content. There are cheaper ways of creating content. And will this become the new norm? And I'd like all of you guys to chip in with your POV. It will be interesting to hear all of you guys on this. Yeah, so I could take that. So I think smarter and cheaper ways of content now that we've discovered it is here to stay. But when you speak about the high quality, larger than life for content creation or filmmaking, what is it about? It's about experience. So it's about creating that aspiration. And that definitely contributes to the brand, right? For example, since we work with a bunch of OTT platforms and we're bringing a whole lot of originals and blockbusters onto these OTT platforms. But we're not dissing theater. We're not saying now you don't need theater, if you know what I mean. It's theater and going, watching it in the theater is a different experience altogether. For lack of it, here is your next best option, right? So my take on that is that while faster cheaper content is here to stay, democratization of content is good for everybody, for brands, for users, for everybody. Technology needs to intervene to improve the experience. So the closer we come to creating experiences that create aspiration, that come close to that larger than life feeling that you get when you watch a movie or a full blown television commercial, the better it will be for the brands. So Chetan, I would like to say that we are working on a concept called deep fake videos, which are already in talks these days. But I personally, I will still miss the emotional connect that ads had with the Indian audience, take any of the brand which have created ads that drove on emotions, personal connections. I think that will still be missed just for the sake of creating videos, publishing content that is already happening right now and they will just come and fade away. People will not be able to connect those ads to a brand enough, you know, the way we used to connect the earlier brands. So Dairy Milk for an example, you know, had created a very good personal ad. So those kind of a content would still be missed. And those kind of a content is what directly correlates and make a long lasting impact in the mind of the user. To the marketers of this panel, Rahul and Rishi, will you guys still make a large scale, you know, PVC like film or you will stick to creating digital content by creators? So I'll take on that. So I'll take an example of what happened during the autumn winter campaign that we did in October. It's never going to be as Swami has said it's not going to be either or. We will have to have a combination of two or three, two mediums at the best. And that's how I see it. We had to launch a new concept for the brand, which is Live Your Flow. We have Kangana as a brand ambassador and we did a full-fledged Big Bang ad with Kangana and we rolled it out with TV. But what did the medium do? It helped us get the reach. It helped us reach the corner of this market where we wanted to reach. But what next? We wanted people to see it and then come to the channel to understand what the brand is trying to say. What is the philosophy? So I say the second level of engagement from after seeing a TV or an ad would come to digital. And that's where we use influencers. That's where we use bloggers to communicate the purpose, the meaning of Live Your Flow. What it stands for, how it really is important in life and works around that. So it's always going to be the combination. It's not going to take away from the Big Bang firms that is required for us to shed the emotion, shed the aspiration and the imagery that we want to deliver and create around the brand for the period of that season. And then move it to the next level. And that's how I see it. So it's for longer conversations, digital medium and digital videos and these low cost videos so called will continue. Will help us tell story better. But yeah, it will be a combination of the main line plus DigiG. Yeah, so we also by the way picked this video thing. I mean we all know. But Chetan, we try to contain ourselves to get overwhelmed with this stuff. And we took that call that wherever video enable my customer getting more knowledge about the process to buy, about a self service or about a product or a service that I'm giving. I will only play those videos and I will invest there only. So let me take a very small example. So for example, CKYC. Probably you and I understand CKYC, but my customer doesn't know what is CKYC. So when they come onto the digital platform and they are going through a journey and if we about to step out from that particular window, I will throw a video that this is what the CKYC all about. Take example of video KYC. People don't know. I will probably throw a video to say the video KYC is for you only a book a slot come in front of a underwriter and get it done. Right. It's a very easy thing on the go you can do. Right. And it will hardly take two minutes for you to get it done. No need to book appointment and call anybody at your home. So people don't know this. So wherever we can educate people in that transactional flow, there we are picking videos and around other corners. We are right now holding on to it. Okay. All right. So while we spoke about the digital transformation and digitization. The digital has always been like a step kid who gets the last piece of the marketing mix by right. So are we going to see a significant allocation of marketing budget moving towards digital when it gets the budget it deserves. The first thing we should answer is we should get marketing budgets this year. And then comes the question of allocation. But within that I would definitely say digital would take the lead. It's definitely going to be the lead medium. But yeah, compared to what we were doing last year and last season, this is going to be tough on. So you have asked question just to increase our pain. So we are day in, day out, debating, struggling, fighting. But yes, I believe audience would be also in the same, all the attendees in the same shoes. So hang on, be a good storyteller, try to convince your staff and try to get, let go of your staff. As Chetan said and as Rishi said, focus on digital aspects. So that budget I believe you can very well get quickly. And after four, five months, you will again, we'll be back and your agendas will be there because that prevails. I mean, Rishi knows, people know that this works. But right now it's time to get focused to digital and get your budgets done there and run with your show. So I think right now is the time to show that digital performs, show them the proof of pudding and say it works and we should continue investing in digital. Yeah, so I also think that this way of looking at media planning will probably be obsolete. So traditional versus digital will be obsolete. The way to look at media planning on investments would be to sort of invest in every touch point of the consumer journey. So I think this template around media planning will completely undergo a change and if the wear of your consumer is a digital touch point, so be it. So it's not going to be traditional versus digital. It's quite bang on. It's quite bang on because at our group in every marketer has to go through a workshop on customer journey mapping. And I think that's the future because unless you know your customer's journey well, you know, planning media is the old traditional ways don't work. Exactly. Completely change. As I said, in fact, in the earlier conversation we were talking about it starts at social media and it ends at social media now. I mean, people like a skirt at social media and they can shop at social media and go off. You don't need to go anywhere else. So you need to know the mindset and that all comes through understanding of the CGMs. Yeah, I completely agree with you on that. And like you said, see, times are tough for companies. So someone asked also so that digital budgets are not increasing. The shift has happened to digital, but the way the budgets should have been increased. It is still not happened because we all know what is what is happening right now. So if even if you get marketing budgets today, I think you should feel lucky in today's market that you have some budgets to spend. All right. So I think we are in the last 15 minutes and there are a lot of interesting questions coming in. So I would like to pick up some of these questions and, you know, direct them at all of you. And I'll start with, we have a question from follow me, Sanyal. Her question is that the digital marketing is shifting largely towards younger generation. And is it going a bit from the other CG? And secondly, how are we, how is the rest of the country, rest of India ready with the technology and infrastructure for digital marketing to reach and, you know, create that awareness and have some impact on that consumer. So who'd like to go first? So I think the infrastructure is going to take is being taken care of by Mukesh Ambani. So he's doing the job of taking ably backed by our Prime Minister. I think he's doing the job of taking infrastructure to the remote villages. And I think the fact of the matter today, more than ever before is the adoption is happening across age groups. So we are not alienating the older age groups at all. In fact, the growth you see of digital adoption is happening in the older age groups. So I don't think that should be a concern anymore. Okay. The other question that we have is from Pallavi Chakraborty. And maybe Rishi can help us answer this question. There are so many hundreds of influencers in place, right? And on various platforms, really fragmented space, right? And now, for example, with TikTok, getting banned, you know, suddenly you have some four or five platforms and then you'll have different influencers on all of these platforms, right? So do you think that it's somewhere losing its relevance and, you know, the whole idea of, you know, also influencer and, you know, leading commerce, is the consumer getting confused? You know, whom to follow, where to follow? Yeah, it's a good question. But at the same time, consumer has a spot with choices, but it's very smart. So they don't follow everyone. So they have identified influencers by choice, by the segment or by the business that they are focusing on. I would not say business, but the category they're focusing on. So, and also as a marketer, how, for us, it is, for us to choose certain influencers before we do a campaign is based on what have been their history all about. So what kind of brands they've been working on, what is the kind of traction that they get when they post or they create a content and stuff like that. Quality is going to be the first criteria. Quality of content is the most important thing that you just cannot be doing everything. It's not miscellaneous. You have to be very specific and thorough about the subject matter and then only you become a successful influencer. And that's how it's going to evolve. So influencer marketing, while it's been in India for a while, it has just got matured in some time. And now because of consumption on digital going more, you will see further more maturity happening in this segment. So a lot of players do offer platforms where we can look at the data that helps us decide which are the influencers to go for. So yeah, I mean, I don't think consumer is ever going to get confused. They're smart enough to find where and go to follow and take inputs from. Which has been just your next question. We discussed saying how ROI and performance is going to play an important role and there's going to be a tightrope walk between brand building and ROI. So will we see social media platforms which are largely seen as brand builders and not pure play performance. So are you going to see those things, you know, taking a backseat and are we going to see re-immersions of, you know, corporate websites and brand websites which are driven by their own e-commerce and not. So will we see a lot of brands opening their own e-commerce channels, apart from being available on aggregators like Amazon, Subcard, etc. But also, you know, having their own e-commerce channels and then we see a lot of digital marketing being directed towards driving the e-commerce agenda. Okay, so brands will definitely have their own e-commerce. I mean, that's a trend which started picking up sometime back largely because one wants to see through the entire journey and data. And journey, as Swami Anu mentioned, is the most important. From where he came and what he shopped is what we all want to know, which is a difficult thing on an aggregator platform. Two is that, what was the other question if linked to this, you said? So are we going to see, you know, social, taking a backseat and, you know, pure play, you know, performance advertising. No, so in fact, I got your question. No, not really because the performance and ROIs are, you know, hygiene. I mean, that is something we as marketers have to see in every activity and initiative we do because we have to deliver results. The measurement matrix of ROI may differ from, it's not always linked to a business but, you know, it will differ but it is always there. Secondly, social media would not be taking backseat for a simple reason. One, it's backed by a small data research that we did on data from there which says that still people spend more time on social media than anything else. So that continues. It doesn't go how you use it smartly is going to be the next big thing. So it's not about just putting posts there and keeping the, you know, social media numbers high and creating likes and dislike campaigns but it's about driving the purpose. We are in the business of fashion where sustainability plays a very large role. We have to drive the purpose. We have to make people, you know, kind of acknowledge the cause and also join us in the movement. In those cases, social media helps. Social media has helped us in past and in fact it has helped us create a tribe to, you know, counter a certain argument or to make a point. So I think everything will coexist but how we use it will be partnership of agency tech agencies like you and the marketers. And I just want to play simultaneous exercise as well, right? You know, while brands will focus on building their own ecosystems, their own websites, their own experiences, they will equally list on marketplaces because marketplace, for example, is where your discovery is likely to happen if you're a smaller brand, right? And then you will have to drive them. The idea would be to drive them to your, you know, own websites or assets which is where the narrative becomes apparent to them. So this is a simultaneous exercise to play out. Sandeep. Sorry, sorry. No, I was just saying, I was just adding to your point that even if you look at the trend, it's not only the brand, but individuals also small startups, right? They are coming up like every at nook and corner, okay? And they are building up their own websites. They themselves are coming onto their own channels. They are launching their own portals rather than only being present on, you know, these marketplaces because these marketplaces, they consume a lot of margins which they do not play on. So all these smaller players, including brands, they want to drive consumer from their own websites. And that actually, like Rishi said, that helps them, you know, capture the entire customer journey also. Map how the customer is actually coming on and purchasing their product everywhere, end to end mapping is happening. So there's a huge increase in number of e-commerce stores getting launched on a day-to-day basis. And in fact, Amazon and there are multiple other companies which have recently launched their own platform where you don't need to have coding skills or anything like that just to launch your own application. If you know the business idea with just a small hands-on, you can launch your own e-commerce site or app for it. So we have a next question from Preeti. You know, question is that while you're expecting that all brands adopt to digital, but what happens when all of them start adopting to digital and there's a lot of clutter? And then will they step back, you know? So right now, maybe, you know, the digital space is not as cluttered. But if you just continue, then we see, you know, multiple brands start coming on to digital. Will there be a lot of clutter? Will there be enough inventory, you know, for all of these brands? And will consumer be able to, will get lost in all the brand noise that is that will be around? It's not dead now? Is that what I heard her say? No, no. I am sure she's telling me that. But yeah, I mean, if you just expect that 100 brands are, you know, active on digital and, you know, the remaining 900 are probably around that 30, 20 percent. I mean, all of them become 100 percent. Sona, before I answer the question, I will add one point. In fact, as a marketer, I feel because everything is coming down to mobile. You see? Yeah. Mobile. And there are three mediums. Instagram, this Facebook, and there is maybe in shorts for us who are scrolling through. And then there are so many brands. So I think it's a very valid question and data tech agency and a creative digital creative agency. Please answer and automation if you can help us understand. Is this going to be really a challenge? Yeah. No, I think it is definitely going to be a challenge. So that's what I meant when I said it's, isn't it already cluttered? I think there's already a lot of clutter, right? And here is where technology will play a role. Being able to look at data will play a role cohorting consumers and making communication relevant to them. Instead of bombarding everybody with all kinds of communication will play a role. So I think we need to get more nuanced and more sophisticated in the way we target our audiences, understand our audiences, the cohort we are talking to, so that there is relevance in advertising communication that goes out. I think that's really the ultimate solution to this problem. And Rishi, the game would be more upon, I would say, how you utilize technology like marketing automation to drive repeat purchases, right? Swami has rightly said the space was cluttered already pre-COVID times. The CPC had increased, right? But in the COVID times, actually the CPC decreased for a lot of markets, right? So the game is not about going after new and new customer because the inventories are smaller, the marketers are huge. It's all about how you drive repeat customers, which are again going to lower your customer cost. Right. So we have just a few minutes left and I would like to wrap this up with one last question, which is very important, which is any of the parting shots that you would have. Is that the smaller brands, the smaller retail brands, should they start using different marketing now? Should they wait or should they only stick to traditional media? So I think it's a no brainer. Smaller brands totally need to jump onto the bandwagon right now. So I've maintained, when I was sort of doing my analysis and assessment of what is it really going to mean for brands at large, pre and even during COVID times, is that most small brands have now discovered go-to-market strategy is not so expensive anymore. Right. So you're not approaching through, let us say if you're talking about a retail brand, you're not approaching through the regular channels of listing fee, finding a distributor and the go-to-market. You go make, create your product and list it on one of the marketplaces and get discovered. Innovation and rate of change and experimentation of products is also going to see an increase. So now is really the time for smaller brands to go out there, get the feeler, understand how their consumers are, start fast, fail fast and firm up their way ahead. So no brainer, smaller brands should jump onto the bandwagon. And if they have, of course, there are other challenges like if you're a startup and you don't have the runway right now, that's a different issue altogether. But if you have the funds to start experimenting, now is the right time. And I would like to just add to this, another word of caution here is if you are starting off, you just pick the existing data that you have. Okay, if after say a gap of 90 days, we are again picking up. So there would be some sort of data which you already have, which people have traversed through your product or service, but they haven't bought it. Just pick them up again, try to warm them up rather than spending additional dollar right now. See for next 15 days how they react, act. Then on 16th day, start spending your dollar according to the learning that you have. That's just an additional thing I would like to convey to the fellow who raised this beautiful question. Totally makes sense. Primary detail to that one bit from me as well. Since I've learned advertising or other digital by rolling up the sleeves. Two things that are three things I would say are the most critical is first of all, double it yourself before you start spending money. You have to get into understanding of what is. You will get fly by night operators. Yes, I'll do SEO. Sir, you will see in Google in three days. You will add your Facebook page. You will get into business in 15 days. You will find a diamond dozen people like that. So you have to be very careful and first do it yourself. Do DIY for it as much as you can and then choose the right partner. Getting a right partner is the most essential part who understands your business and then gives you suggestions because that's something which I've learned the hard way. But it's the most critical part in business. All right. Perfect. So thank you very much. Very insightful. Thanks all of you for being an excellent panel. We have a lot of interesting insights from all of you. And thanks to your audience as well for tuning in and for all those wonderful questions. Thank you. Have a great weekend everyone. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Bye. Thank you everyone for giving a valuable time and such a valuable input for the session. Thank you. Thank you.