 driving real connections and welcome our panelists on the screen. Well, we've got Mr. Lakshit Trapati, industry head consumer package goods at InMovie as one of our panelists. Alongside Mr. Shreya Sachdeep, head of marketing at Puma, Mr. Santoshayur, Vice President Sales and Marketing, Mercedes-Benz, Mr. Anurag Khurana, CEO and founder at New Gen Gaming, and Mr. Shubha Moy Das, the Senior Business Director at Group M, ESP Properties as the session chair. With this, I'd now like to pass on the live weight into our session chair to take it forward and have a great discussion. And as you can see, a lot of excitement and I won't overdo because of time. I'd like to pass it on to you directly. Thank you. Thank you for this. Good evening, everyone. I think Manish really set the context up well for us because the topic of discussion today is about making gaming work for the brands. So thank you, everyone, for joining in at E4M Game One. I am Shubha Moy Das. I'm from Group M ESP. And I'm excited to discuss and interact with our stellar panelists on making gaming work for brands. So just to set context, one might ask, why does gaming need to work for brands and advertisers? Like what Manish pointed out. The reason, primarily in our mind, it has the audience of its own. In India, like we pointed out, we are talking about 400 plus million audiences who are gamers actively, which basically puts it at par with as good for anything as good as IPM. I mean, these are active gaming participants that we have here with that massive a base, but fragmented and distributed across gaming, eSports and streaming largely. The purpose of this session is to take a look at how brands are tapping into the passion and seeking to engage with them in the gaming environment they inhabit. To start off, I would want to call upon Aalakshit, who works with InMovie and as we all would know, InMovie works with the largest casual gaming publishers in the world, delivering engaging ad experiences. And it's probably the first step for most advertisers stepping into the world of gaming. Let's hear from Aalakshit on InMovie's role in helping brands take baby steps into the world of gaming. Thanks, Shubhami. So before I get to tell you about how the brands are leveraging and how InMovie is helping, let's look at the staggering numbers that there are. OMD, I think, 2020 published a report which said that 3.5 billion users are available through social channel and 2.6 are also available out of gamers. So you have 74% of the total universe of social available as gaming. At the same time, you are roughly looking, if you're comparing the ad spends, it would amount to only 5%. So 93 billion kind of money gets pumped on social in terms of media spends. At the same time, you would be seeing somewhere around 4.5 billion dollars getting pushed on the gaming, right? So the skew is large, right? But the skew is bridging. And that's where InMovie also comes and plays a role, right? So bridge that gap slightly. So we talk to the brands and talk about these numbers, right? That these are the kind of eyeballs that are there, right? 43% of females are gamers, right? So that becomes a pool where it excites the brand. Like, for example, to Apuma or to Mercedes, that number might be exciting, right? Now you have to find relevance among that. So InMovie plugs in those audience segments, et cetera, and then basically helps you to reach out to the right segment. The way brands, different brands are leveraging, for example, HUL, one of you, about even the last year, right? Where they were looking at gamification as an ad user, right? You move the WEM bottle around to collect some leads, which is a very simplistic game that every user is accustomed to. And the kind of engagement rates that we generate on such campaigns also is a testimony that a user is very much accustomed to such games, right? So it's not Mario that only a bunch of us remember playing, right? Everyone has played Candy Crush. Everyone knows what temple run looks like, et cetera. Yeah. Thank you, Lakshmi. That really sets up the context for us. And as I said, you are probably the ones who brings in the larger chunk of advertising audience with their baby step into gaming. From there on, we would like to move on to Santosh, who's from Mercedes. Mercedes has been an early adopter and pioneer in eSports globally. I mean, the brand bears multiple hats as a global mobility partner to ESL, investor in eSports teams, and global partner to write games events. So what do you, Santosh, you would love to hear how do you see the ecosystem evolving and how do you see non-endemic brands such as yours entering into the gaming ecosystem? Yes, yeah. So for us, thanks, basically, when we were thinking about entering into eSports worldwide, for us, it was all about engagement. It was not about advertising to start with. And we clearly know that even you can say not street legal users at a very early age, when they start gaming, they should be exposed to our cars and brands. So we at the Gran Turismo, where we are product placements, where there is an emotional aspect of selecting that car. And I want this brand to be in the store. I want to write this. And from there, we have come a long way, in a long way in a sense where we also saw that when you particularly talk about eSports, here, the passion is huge, the community is huge, the sharing element is also high. And we then had strategic partnership with ESL, right now with Riot Games. What we find is the tangibility is lesser. We don't measure this by clicks, by leads, form fills. And I think that's not the way to measure the presence of the brand. It's more to engage. And we have seen over these years, a more and more of our own consumers. It's not only the younger target group, but we even find the S-class average age of a customer is 38 years. And it was as much into also gaming and to many other as form of recreation and also we're sharing with his friends and also there is community aspect to it. So here, we don't want to be missed out. As a brand, we want to be present where our customers are. So it's more strategic, more experiential. And we go beyond just advertising. In fact, for us, the ad expense on gaming is much lower compared to what we do on the experiential side, both on eSports as well as on product placement. That's our view. Coming to India, many years, we were also watching this space. We had a lot of global tie-ups, partnerships. We were a bit in the backseat. We participated in one of the ESL gaming event in Hyderabad a couple of years back. And also we have small interventions. But I can say in this platform that 2022 will be the big year where Mercedes-Benz India will also enter eSports, the gaming platforms. We will also support the community. So there is a very clear strategic plan to get engaged more in this audience. Whereas as we saw, as in the rest of the world, even the Indian audience is matured enough. They are also even our target group. And that's where we did a big market research. Is it relevant to a different target group? But I think even high network individuals, we find clearly very much interested into this aspect. The next step, if you ask me, what may happen is gaming in cars. So with autonomous cars coming in, you have the time to be in the car. Can I give that experience also in the head unit? Of course, all this has to be legalized. But it's already these discussions are on in many markets. So I think this is therefore a platform to be for Mercedes-Benz for a long time to come. Great, Santosh. I mean, you contextualize it brilliantly. The two key words which I picked from your pointers is community and engagement. And since we are talking about community, who better than Narurag here, who founded this company and is leading Penta Esports. So I don't wish to steal the thunder, Anurag, over to you. Please. Thanks, Shubnoy. By the way, Santosh, whatever you said, was music to my ear. Because that's what I've been telling all the brands across that, please use Esports as an awareness funnel because that is the biggest utilization you can draw from Esports and not calculate IROA in terms of clicks, form fills, or et cetera, et cetera. So what I always said was actually a music to my ears. With that being said, we are building up a class suite for Esports. That is because when we got into Esports four years back and started the company back, I think that was a space which was missing in Esports. It's a kind of a blue ocean strategy. Everybody is working so much on the top of the funnel, which is the pro scenes, pro players, platform for pro gamers, whereas we are very clear, we wanna be the Ranji Cup for the Indian cricket team. So that's our positioning for Esports. And since we are working at the bottom of the pyramid, the engagement with the community is much, much higher, of course. With that being said, we have taken a big burden on our shoulders because we have to reach out to those that many players, but that's what we are focused at. Brilliant. I mean, that was really insightful. And when I got to know about the work that you're doing at Esports Grassroots, it was heartwarming. Thank you. To say the least. But since we are talking about building community and working with Esports organizations and teams at large, I think this would be a perfect platform to bring in Shreya here, who leads the brand Puma in India. So for the larger audience, Puma has been demonstrating massive belief in the Esports ecosystem with their partnerships across Cloud9, E-Vos, Esports, Genji, and FPX partnerships. So Shreya, over to you. I mean, how do you see this ecosystem evolving? Oh, thanks, Shubhamai. So I think the first thing probably to note about the Esports space and the way it's evolving, right? I think in the hierarchy of the way we look at sports and performance sports, I think that definition itself has expanded over the past few years, right? So no longer are we saying that only say football or badminton or a tennis or a cricket counts as performance sports, right? I think sports brands all across are also looking at Esports as performance sports, right? And what that really does is it opens out this space from a sports brand perspective much more because as a sports brand, you would want to invest in a sports that's getting large-scale traction, right? So I think given that Esports now very much fits into the definition of performance sports, we would, as a sports brand, look at it the way we look at any other sport, right? And invest in it the way we would look at any other sport. So you would build products to enhance performance. You would invest in the ecosystem in terms of athletes and teams. You would look at followers, fans, communities to engage with and interact with them there, right? So I think given the massive shift in terms of how we view Esports, I think it's a natural progression to say that a sports brand, any sports brand is looking to invest in Esports in a large-scale way exactly the way you would in any other performance sport, right? So you mentioned a couple of teams. I think we're sponsoring about five teams now globally. We've created a bunch of products from time to time, right? Including a very specialized gaming chair that sort of helps improve performance, a gaming sock. You know, we've sort of leveraged communities such as, say, creating a Nehmar Aftar in Fortnite or creating products for our hoop stops, which is our basketball range and NBA 2K, right? So I think it's just pretty much the whole gamut of how any sports brand would look at investing in any performance sport, right? You would invest across the board, both in terms of high performance as well as in terms of reaching out to the amateur ecosystem and engaging with them as well, right? So that's really the way we look at it. Oh, that was really great. I mean, you brought in the element of Esports and how it equates back to a real-life sport, which is still a lot of the, I mean, for lack of a better word, a lot of the senior community is yet seeing a distinction in. So the great that brands such as Puma and Mercedes is seeing a promise in that and is seeing a transition phase with that respect. I mean, the four keywords, which I think I picked up from the introductory notes of each few is one was engagement, which all of you spoke about. One was Esports from a performance perspective. I think Alakshar brought in a great part on engagement with innovation, which is what a platform such as in movie brings into a publisher's listening. And Anurag touched upon community and building community part. Anurag, actually this question is more to you. From the community perspective, how do you see streaming and the quantum of people watching the streaming part of gaming adding value here? I think that's very critical because these guys are watching that content for the entertainment purposes. So my perspective is very different when it comes to streaming for brands. It's not just only about putting their logo on the stream. It's also about talking, doing experiential branding is more critical from brands perspective than just putting their logo on. So let me give you one example, which is my favorite. There's a tournament hosted by Riot called LCS, which is the NA League of Legends Cup. So there's a big monster which needs to be killed, it's called Baron. But that Baron also gives you a power up to the team which slays that Baron for one and a half minutes or two minutes. So that is called a Red Bull moment. So that is a experiential branding where Red Bull has done, where because of that segment, that it shows that if you take Red Bull, you get a boost. So that kind of branding I would love to see on the streams. Of course, that is a eSports event but that kind of branding I would love to see on the streaming when kids are streaming also because that's where it will give the message of the brand and not just put the logo of the brand. Right enough, I mean, you're talking about the occasional, the identifying of occasions and averaging on it. Exactly, exactly. Great, Sandosh, would you want to fill in here on how does Mercedes see something like this? No, I can only extend the example from Riot gives the League of Legends, the final award ceremony. That's when the emotions are the highest and that's when the brand is present. Mercedes has been being the best brand in the world on the automotive side. We invented cars, continue to invent and that's the right timing for the brand to be relevant and present and we are there during that ceremony. So this is so the relevant contextual placements and does it connect with the brand? I think Shreya also explained some couple of examples of Puma was building a chair actually for sports. I think I found it quite interesting and was not aware of it and I think these are great examples. What can you do and extend the brand and just what we should not do is spoil the gaming experience. I think very clearly then you can have huge negative effect on the brand. So one has to be really careful in this phase. These are enthusiasts. They have a heart and soul into it. It's like any other sport. It's just that it's an e-sport but you cannot discuss it from the passion, from the community and there if there is an intuition, nobody likes it or if it is not contextual. So we have to take that equation. I think the League of Legends is a perfect example. There are brands there, multiple brands but it's well crafted and I think there is no sense of intrusiveness when you go through such a platform. Great, Anthosh you brought. You actually brought in two very key parts. I mean one is the non-intrusive branding part and the second part is on how do we see contextualization of the brand's presence in e-sports ecosystem. I'll just move on to Shreya here. Shreya, a question for you building on what Anthosh said. I mean eventually when you're talking of performance board, you're talking about performers who are the athletes part of it. And as Puma, I mean over and above the e-sports association part, you do a lot of work with talent. You do a lot of work with athletes. So how do you see that as a space evolving in e-sports? Specifically considering e-sports is gonna be debuting as a medial event in Asian games this year. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I think a large chunk of investing in the sporting ecosystem is actually investing in athletes, right? And so yes, there is something in the pipeline and keep your eyes peeled with all of our other athletes that we will be supporting in the Asian and the Commonwealth Games. You will see gamers here as well. You will see your e-sports athletes as well. So I think it's really about, like I said, the entire funnel, right? You would want to invest in the performance side, but like I said, you also wanna reach out to amateur gamers. So you would do it all across the board, right? You would invest in, like I said, product, you would invest in athletes and teams. You would also invest in communities where you can talk to amateur gamers, right? And you would, you know, to Santhosh's point, today, given the myriad of options that consumers have to engage online, right? This is no longer the space where you can force your brand logo on them and they have no option but to consume it, right? You sort of force your brand plug down somebody's throat and they'll just go somewhere else, right? So it has to be very, very smartly done. And the way we really look at it is, what are you doing to add to the experience, right? That's really the way we look at it, right? So even with, you know, for example, when we launched our Nehmer Junior Collection, we didn't just go out there and tell gamers, hey, you know, I can just advertise to a Lakshad's point, right? You can literally tailor make your audience and just talk to the people that you think are relevant. But if you really wanna go the next level, creating a Nehmer Aftar and letting his fans actually play as Nehmer, right? That's when you're actually adding to the experience as opposed to interrupting it and really trying to, you know, get a bit of visibility. And frankly, look, ever since the advent of digital marketing, I don't think logo placement has worked for anybody anywhere, right? We all know this very well, right? So anybody that does not take the route of engaging with the consumers in a way that they find value-adding, realizes that the marketing spends that they are making are just not as efficient from an ROI point of view. Great that you brought that up, Shreya. Actually, that gives me a great segue into moving to the question to Lakshad. Lakshad, I'm just giving in from what Santosh and Shreya said. It's about being non-intrusive. It's about being more than just brand visibility. And I think from the tech part of it, I mean, there is a certain part of identifying patients, but there has to be ample amount of tech involved in delivering those experiences also. So I would love to hear from you on how's in-movie envisaging this space and how are you building the tech capabilities so as to address to these brand rules. Right, so the non-intrusive part and the tech part comes together, right? So there are certain amount of intrusion that people are already used to also, right? When we are consuming something on the TV, you know, OTT is going to be more or less a replica of that. Game also from the very start, you know that it's going to be appearing some ad in the game break, otherwise I have to pay for it. Pre-versive space of a model, right? So people understand it's the game break also provides an opportunity for someone to be, for a brand to be like a brand, in a brand safe environment, right? There is nothing that is there on the screen except for the ad, right? It's not overlaying on something. So there is no language barrier anymore. There is no context anymore. It's just purely ad over there. That is one. Second is, how does the technology play a role, right? The technology can make it very relevant for you. So I know that you are a female, 25 plus kind of an age, you are a mother. So I know Hollicks might be a suitable brand for you, right? So I'm going out to you with Hollicks, right? And then maybe I'm giving you a gamification on top of it, which is about packing a lunchbox for your kid, right? Or just having a candy crush experience for that matter, right? So that you win a reward or a coupon or something of that sorts in the end. And then you can give the reward also. You can ask that, okay, go and redeem this coupon in next 20 minutes, right? Otherwise, why? So something of that sort. So the tech actually goes beyond what we look at typically. It is about engagement. It is about being very relevant, right? And you are serving it at the right moment of time when the user is expecting it as well, right? You are not curtailing his game flow and then putting an ad right there. Nice. I mean, it's resounding to know that there is a requirement from the consumer's end from a gamer community, which there is a tech platform who's wanting to service that. And then there is a brand who's wanting to be in that ecosystem. So I mean, it seems like a perfect recipe for success here. But bringing on Anurag here. So Anurag, since you interact with the community so much, I mean, on a day-to-day basis, would love to hear from you on what is their expectation from the brand's point of view as in everyone understands that the community is large. Yeah. It's also important to have the right, I mean, I might have 10,000 solutions, but if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for anyone. So would love to hear on that and the rest can fill in there. So community is independent of the brand because they just want to enjoy their gameplay. It's the viewers who want to see that because one more point which I know are both the friends from the brand only and always already understand that part. But just for other brands, I want to just mention it, I know the viewership is 15 to 30 odd, but even that 15-year-old guy is the CTO of that house. So it is even the Merc, Mercedes, they are positioning their brand in eSports, but I know it's not the guy's first car which has got to be Mercedes. It's got to be his third, fourth, or his father might be buying a car because Mercedes engraved it to his head, courtesy League of Legends, right? He's gonna at least push his parents, have a look at Mercedes. He's not the decision taker, but he's the good voice at the house. So on that side, what the community doesn't matter, brand doesn't matter to the community. They just wanna enjoy their gameplay, but the viewers wear the brand matters and wear the brands also because if there are 10 people playing the game, there are 100,000 people watching the game. That's where the brands need to position themselves. One thing which we discussed earlier also that it doesn't have to be in the face marketing because that is the worst thing any viewer would take on them, that if it's in the face marketing, so it has to be subtle, experiential marketing, positioning with the right messaging, et cetera, that is what is more critical. Secondly, if you wanna interact with community, I think what I expect from brand is to do more, at least enable more to the minds for those guys to participate, for the community. So I think from community side, that would be my input to them. Brilliant, I mean, it's great to know that the community is, that there's hope for the brands to do more on the community. Having said that, it's also important to hear the other side of the story. So Shreya, I mean, I'll open this up to you first. See, we are in the cusp of eSports and gaming to just explode now. I mean, it's fairly clear on that front. And it would be worthwhile to set the ground rules from the advertising side for the community to also know that what is the expectation. So over to you, any closing remarks on that? Sure, no, I think, look, there is no confusion or any doubt in our minds that the gaming community is a community that we wanna engage with, right? I think we've also done a bunch of research and I think about 70% of our audience today are amateur gamers in some form, right? Whether it's mobile gaming or console or whatever, right? I think, so for us, engaging with this community and look at least from what we've sort of realized is as a brand, it's super critical to be able to talk to an audience in the way they want to be spoken to, right? That's the only way that you as a brand will generate any sort of ROI, right? And here I'm not talking about sales, right? It could be just brand recall, for example, right? You want a gamer to consider you, like to Anurag's example, right? Maybe a 16-year-old doesn't really have control of his own wallet and to be able to go out and say, this is what I wanna buy, right? But I'm solving for the long-term conversion of a consumer, right? I'm making a consumer for lifetime. So I would want to engage with that consumer in the way that they want to be engaged with on their terms, because frankly, that's the only way that you will generate any sort of recall, right? So it's very clear that if I'm talking to a gamer versus I'm talking to, say, a motorsport and who's he asked versus I'm talking to somebody who watches tennis or who watches cricket, I would speak to them in their language and I will engage with them in a way that they want to be engaged with, right? So I mean, there's absolutely no doubt that that is the way forward and there's nothing else that would really work in terms of as a brand making any inroads with the gaming community. Fred, Santosh, anything on that? Yeah, I think this entire industry is also growing leaf-time bonds on one side. At the other side, there's also some ethical responsibility. So from our side, we also have a clear code of conduct on how we can engage on the platforms. But there's also a lot of criticism. Criticism on obesity caused by gaming, for example, mental health and screen times and many other issues. So we have to be careful when we are engaging on this platform. Sometimes, we can also have parents and others feeling, hey, are you promoting something which may not be there? My colleagues at Stuttgart, I think it was 12 to last year, they came up with an interesting concept with the Mahombar Foundation. They said, the SK Gaming, which is the Rane contest where as long as you run on the treadmill, we will keep donating two euros to the Mahombar Foundation to promote health and awareness of walking. And also in between that, yes, you are just not stuck to the couch or to the console and you do it. And the more you do it, the more we donate certain proceeds. So I think the brands have to be responsible also here. And it's one side is, get your objectives out. But if you are really a responsible brand, one has to look at the entire 360 degree context on how you have to be present. And I think as Mercedes-Benz, globally, we have done a great job. Over these years, we have learned from it. We have learned from criticism. We have learned from also a lot of love and affection from the gaming community. And I think that's what we now want to bring to India and also see how can we participate in India and engage with our audiences here. Great, Santosh. I mean, you brought out a very important point on being responsible while being engaged with, you brought in a very important point on being engaged at scale responsibly. So Alex, do you want to fill in anything here as closing remarks? Oh, as closing remarks, I would put it this way, right? So a lot of brands have started seeing value in this area where it is talking about the right message to your end user, right? And you should be looking at it more just from the perspective of the people that are always there. And I think that also, you should also be looking at influencers' leg. Intek is there. Don't constrain yourself thinking that, okay, if I want to do this, right? I want to target hijab wearing women in Mayur Vihar, who also have cats. And I think that's a very important point that we have to be aware of. And Mayur Vihar, who also have cats, don't restrict yourself thinking that I don't know how is that going to be possible, right? You come with a problem, you know, probably figure out the right surrogate for you, right? And we'll figure out the right environment to serve that. Great. Mr. Das, your final words before we conclude because we're really running out of time, please. Absolutely. I think it was quite a fruitful session here. And the key takeout for me that I got to learn today is about gaming, providing engagement at scale. We have multiple options, be it community, be it esports, be it in-game advertising, and the plethora of other options. So thank you, the fellow panelists. I mean, it was a really fruitful conversation and it was amazing to interact with you here. Looking forward to working more on the, and seeing you guys more often than not on the gaming side as advertisers too. What do you call them? Absolutely. Thank you so much, Mr. Das. And thank you to all. I am an infamous for sharing your expertise and being with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.