 our first panel for the day. This is going to be an interesting discussion on changing marketing mix in accelerated digital adoption. We'd like to welcome our session chair first. He has been in the digital industry for over 17 years. He launched Isobar in India in August 2008 and has taken the agency to newer heights. Ladies and gentlemen, he is Shamsuddin Jasani, Group Managing Director, South Asia Isobar. A very warm welcome, Mr. Jasani. We also have on the panel Mr. Pawan Sarada, Group CMO, Marketing Digital and E-Commerce, Future Group India, and Mr. David Khabib, London Art and Chief Innovation and Digital Officer, Tata Chemicals. A very warm welcome to all of you. Thank you, Khabib. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. I hope I'm audible. Yes, sir. So Mr. Jasani, I'd leave this to you to go the conversation forward. Thank you. Thank you so much. So thank you all. Thank you for joining us. It's a very unique thing that we are now meeting TechMunch after so many years. We've been part of TechMunch and physically there. It's now time to retake it to the digital platform as such and it's interesting. And I've been with Pawan on quite a few platforms together. So we've been having this back and forth for a while now. But I've had this unique opportunity now to meet Venkatri the first time that we are there. And it will be quite an interesting panel, a mix of experiences across FMCG, across TPG, e-commerce, B2B, chemicals and of course as an agent for pretty much all my life. The idea is the focus on how media mix is changing in the COVID and the post COVID world. So a lot of panelists including Sapna before us have spoken about how COVID has really changed audiences and how audiences are now lapping up digital and how digital is really, really exploding. I would say over the past six months I think the change has been phenomenal. We've seen the adoption of digital and the curve really being very steep in the last, especially four months in the lockdown period. Things are now slowly coming back to I would say the new normal. It's not normal yet. But I do see that digital is now becoming, yes it's important, but the trend is now again flattening as such. The curve is not going up as quickly as it was. But there are some changes which are here to stay. And the panel here really is about what is going, what has happened. How are the media mix as well as from a business perspective, how is digital now playing a very key role in this COVID and post COVID world. And then we will take up questions from the team. So we'll give it about 30 minutes for our conversation, the number 15 minutes for the audience to really talk about it. So what we'll start off with is a minute or two from Pawan and from Inkadri in terms of knowing them better as the person they are and the role that they play and how digital really is pretty much an integral part of what they do. And then I'll introduce myself, of course that's so yeah. So up to you Pawan and then we can go to Inkadri. Hi, good afternoon everyone. I hope everyone's safe home and watching us. Yeah, I think last, I think it's been five months if I'm not mistaken. I think there's been a roller coaster ride in everyone's life. Obviously, I think that impacts business, that impacts consumers and that's brought in a lot of new things, new perspective, new way of looking at things and I don't think initially we were sort of ready or even expected. You know, I think this was one phase where no marketing book has ever taught us that how to deal with it. But I think intuitively, I think we started to react, especially in terms of how the consumers are reacting and how the business should be. I think the first thing which we did for our business is actually to go online. While I think some of our fashion businesses were already online, but I think we also took Big Bazaar online and we actually launched like shop.BigBazaar within the span of 15 days. I think that's one thing which we did. And obviously, I think now it's been five months, a lot of things are changing. I think now it's a question of where the consumer is going and what they are doing and how we can actually service the consumer. That's where we are currently. Otherwise, from a personal side, I'm the CMO for a future group apart from traditional marketing and digital marketing boards. So that's from my side. Thank you. Yeah, we can't do up to next. Good evening. Venkat Yathri here from Tata Chemicals. I'm the C-operating Officer for the nutrition science business and which I just took over a couple of weeks back. And before that, I was looking after innovation and digital for the technical part of it for year and a half. And previous to that, I was Chief Operating Officer in Rallis, an agreement company. And really, I think if you look at what the COVID had made to all of us is that it has taught us a lot of new things. It has kind of reinforced some of the old concepts that we used to think are very important and change not only the business priority, but also customer preferences. How do they look at markets? How do they look at their own self? I think there's been a lot of change. And I'm sure some of those things will come up as we go ahead in the discussion today. Thanks. Thank you both. So just a brief note on myself as well. I look after South Asia for the Isuba Group and I'm part of the exec member for the Dinsway's Network in India. Just talking about as an agency and what we feel where things are going, it's been a transformational journey for I think pretty much everyone, from brands to businesses, from smaller shops to us as an agency group and as networks. I think all of us, as Pawan rightly pointed out, the first couple of months was just about running around and figuring out what life was all about. I think it was the first month also was really a struggle for everyone. No one had an inkling of what to do. There was no right and wrong. It was just about figuring out and trying to grapple with what's difficult and what's easy. I think the entire industry and all of us are really, and as India, have really come up to the challenge and I think the speed at which things have evolved, the speed at which things have changed. From a technology perspective, I think we have to give it to everyone saying that our Internets have been on track. We are having this conversation and there is hardly a drop. I think as all of us, we've done a good job of really getting there. The companies are doing a good job of making sure that everyone is connected and everyone's doing the job and the consumers are also getting what they want. Everyone's reacted very well to COVID. The consumers have really started also experimenting. All kinds of platforms are gaining traction. E-commerce, of course, is something which I think I would say that the boom or the transformation that was supposed to happen much later, COVID, I think everyone knows about and everyone's talking about it, COVID has really brought forward that transformation. My question to the panelists, starting with the country, you and then going to Pawan, is what are any specifics that you have seen that COVID has enabled you or digital has enabled you rather in this last five months, which you would not have thought of before and what has it that has changed in your media mix, which you think you've explored in the last few months as COVID has it and as the transformation has happened for you as well? When COVID started, I was actually looking after the IT digital for Tata Chemical. I was on the side to make sure that the company gets the necessary support to be able to leverage the IT and the digital platform to reach out to the customers. Now, what was very critical is that we've always believed and from the business end that it's very important that you need to be physically sitting with the customer, talking to the customer, trying to get if you need to do business development or resolve issues, use physical means to do so. And that was one of the critical changes that we have had to do. If I look at my own company in Tata Chemical, we have a B2B part of the business, which is a big part, which is our soda ash and salt part of the business. And we have the B2B2C, which is the agri part of the business, which is RALIS, which is part of our group. And so we've had to kind of change in the circumstances in a very different manner in both the senses. With the B2B part of it, obviously the critical part of in B2B is that you need to be in close touch with the customer, trying to resolve the necessary problems. It's not much of a discovery of new customers, because in B2B, the set of customers that we have are kind of limited and fixed. I mean, it's not like a B2C where you have thousands and lakhs of them. So there, the important part of it is how do you actually use digital to be able to facilitate the business transactions between companies, make sure that we have online meetings with them, meet across, normally, one has conferences every year. So we had to do a conference with 70 of them over the web, that is from a B2B perspective. B2C perspective, B2B2C, which is the RALIS part of it, there we do reach out to almost 12-15 million farmers every year. And there our lot of work used to be in terms of marketing, used to be quite a lot of on-ground marketing, where there would be posters, there would be jingles, there would be roadshows. That's where our big marketing spend used to be with a bit of digital. But when this came about, clearly we had to change because obviously nobody could go into the market. So we had to leverage the digital way of working. So the kind of YouTube messages that used to go across to talking about the product to millions of farmers, conducting farmer meetings for 300, 400 farmers and taking training programs, which used to happen physically, happening over the web. Also, a big, big change in the way we were able to leverage WhatsApp, make small videos of the various training programs that we would normally conduct and then share it across the digital medium. So there we have had to actually substantially change from the physical connect, which almost was 95% used to be physical connect, turned out to be almost 50-60% digital connect. And a lot of investment and money also went into leveraging the digital part of it. So when can we hold a thought, I will come back to you with a question around that. Pawan, your all yours in terms of understanding what the last five months have really bought. I know you were already on a journey on transformation and digitization much before COVID hit, but your thoughts on how things have changed and how COVID has changed life for you as a marketer within the future group? Yeah. So I think I'll speak more from the consumer side. I think for a retail brand, it's very important that we acquire customers. And if the way I look at it, I don't know how much, where is it going to last? What is it going to happen? I'm talking more as digital says that it's all about the moment. So let me speak about the moment right now. So I think if you look at when we need to engage with our audience, we have limited choices. I mean, we know that there is a bit of an issue from a penetration like a traditional medium like press. We don't know where it is. And of course, television is something which I think you need to have big budgets to sort of, and I think it's good for brand building. I mean, that's the way I look at it. Currently, I think what's really required is you need to have consumers like customers who can come and buy. And obviously you have to kind of give them a lot of comfort of safety and so on and so forth. So I think that's why I think digital has played a big role. Obviously, I think the usage of digital and a mobile phone has increased multi-fold. And that's one of the reasons why we chose this medium to sort of reach out to our target audience and give them different stories. I mean, it's really not about, I don't think we are in an era of saying that it's the best offer and come and shop with me. I don't think we are in that era at all. I think there's an era which needs a lot of storytelling. It needs a lot of demonstration of what's happening in the store. What's the kind of safety measures are you taking? How are you ensuring that there is social distancing? I mean, I have got so many calls from a lot of relatives and so on and so forth and everyone's like, oh, is it safe to go to the store? And I think a lot of those kind of storytelling had to happen. Obviously, while the media makes change, the storytelling also sort of changed. Right? I think, yeah, I mean, these are the kind of huge changes which we have seen. And yeah, I mean, I think 15th August was the first time when we actually saw that customers were coming out. I mean, apart from the online side, right? I'm not talking about the online side, but at least in the physical form, I think that was one day where a lot of us as retailers, when we were exchanging notes, we realized that actually the customers have sort of come out because it's not because the stores were too crowded, but just because of the social distancing norm, we could see some queues also outside. Right? I mean, that was, I think, very positive. And therefore, I think we're looking forward to festival, you know, and hopefully, you know, things should become a bit of a normal. I wouldn't say like it's going to be 100%, but somewhere there for us, for everyone. So yeah, coming back to what you were saying, I mean, Qatari, in terms of specifically taking on the farmers now and the media mix that swapped from 95% physical to 60% digital, that's really what I think a lot of people speak about in terms of saying that because of COVID, the transformation has really, you know, kind of jumped on one side. Do you think this will sustain? Do you think now that you've tasted this working, this platform now started to working, even when we go back to, say, the new normal or close to normal that was there, do you think that you will still now use this much more than you were doing earlier? And now, you know, the new digital norm is here to stay and it's not going back to what it was in the pre-COVID days. See, I would look at it by looking at, you know, what are the customer needs and how does the company reach out to the customer. There are certain services which require physical presence. There are some things which can be done digitally. Now, for example, in the area of farming, there is a lot of work that needs to be done where you have to go and demonstrate a product. You have to use the product on the field and demonstrate that it is actually giving the benefit to increasing crop yield, you know, keeping the crop safe, et cetera. And there are other things which are, you know, where you are actually talking about the product, communication, creating a need, you know, in terms of awareness creation. What I would think is that while today we have kind of swung the other way around to quite a lot of digital, I would say that the digital proportion will be definitely much higher than the pre-COVID days, but will it come down substantially? You know, I don't think that would happen, because what we have seen is that the part where you can do offline, I mean, sitting from far away using digital media, which is communication, training programs, you know, awareness building, those are things which will are likely to continue to be individual. The place where we have to go and do product demonstrations, that will again go back to the physical needs. So I would say that there will be a partial shift back, but not a full shift back to older times. Okay. And now a question to the panel. I've been, it's a slightly mischievous question, I would put it, that, you know, IPL is coming up. And there is, of course, now that people are at home and slightly stepping out of home, there is still this anxiety of people stepping out and still the, you know, the semi-lockdown and unlock three is coming up. The questions that are floating is that will the percentage of people spends that were there on IPL remain like it was between digital and television? Or do you think it will skew more towards television or more towards digital? This is purely related to the next, you know, the largest event. Honestly, this largest event is also coinciding with festival for the first time. And clearly the eyeballs might, the spends might shift more towards IPL than towards, you know, the festival spends. How do you see that? Do you see that playing up? I mean, anyone can take the question. Do you see it more towards television or do you see that it's going to be digital first? Okay. So if I take the question, yeah, firstly, I think IPL happening per se is a great thing because I feel that somewhere I believe that, you know, advertising and consumption, they are kind of correlated with each other, right? Advertising creates consumption. And obviously to create consumption, people do advertising, right? So I think that's a good thing. Firstly, a bit of a positivity which the country will see, I think the, you know, and I think the timing is pretty right from a festive perspective and so on. So I think as a viewer, I'm looking forward. There's no doubt about it, right? As an advertiser, I don't know. I mean, you know, it's again, it depends from businesses to businesses. And it also depends a lot from, you know, at what stage they are, right? If I speak of myself and my business, I think what's really important right now is more than brand building actually acquiring customers. So I'm just putting that up front, right? I mean, that's the biggest need which we have it. I think just to create that funnel and I think obviously digital also create a bit of a more engagement and we have seen it in the past, like people like I think Swiggy and all they've done some fabulous job, right? So I think, yeah, I mean, you know, brands who have huge monies definitely go for her, you know, the main line advertising. But I think if people have restricted monies in terms of budgets, because all of us are going through that, Shams, you have to like, you know, take consideration of that, right? Because there's a huge amount of marketing cuts which has happened across, right? So anybody who has money, I mean, I would definitely advise that, you know, go ahead and spend it on digital for during IPL because I'm sure that just, you know, a consumption of phone is going to be far more active during that point in time. And you know that IPL is just not about viewing, it adds so many other things to it, right? So, yeah, I mean, that's what is going to be my team. I'll try to but, you know, I think that the whole community angle that digital really brings is where the investment in IPL on digital really works. Like you were saying, it's not just about one way viewing, you know, what your mobile phone and what that brings towards the whole. So while you're watching and while you're actually, you know, kind of because you're not at home, it's even more reason that you will use your phone and your digital presence to interact with your friends. And it really depends upon the platforms to be able to latch on to that and in a way to be able to, you know, capitalize on this whole thing saying, okay, there's IPL happening. How do I build communities around it and start being a part of that community and brands have a, you know, can leverage that? I really feel that that's where, and you're right, you know, the spends have come down, digital gives a bigger bang for the buck. And I think it's something which is critical. So even I feel that, you know, IPL will see an uplift in digital spends. Venkatry, anything that you would like to add from your marketing hat, I know you wear so many hats as a CEO, as a marketing person as well. You know, your thoughts in terms of how do you feel that that's going to work? Yeah, seeing one important thing that has happened is that the COVID has changed the behavior of all of us. So people have got used to now digital quite a lot and human nature, you know, that stickiness will continue for quite some time. So I would reckon that one, you know, people will continue to be in digital. So there is going to be a lot more focus that IPL would get covered through digital. That's one. Second thing is that let me also give you a personal example. You know, I have two 20-year-old sons, both of them love soccer. And you know, earlier when any of these soccer matches used to happen, all their friends all used to congregate in one house and watch the television where they used to have fun right up to whatever 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, those European matches. Now, because of in the last few months, they've all been sitting in their house, individual houses, and they're on their mobile and they're still having fun watching the game. So what is happening is that this is earlier, one of the things that all of us thought is that having a community fun is only when you physically get together. Now, what is new thing that has come out is that you can have community fun but using digital means sitting where you are. I think that is something which has actually come out as a new concept and that I would believe is going to be a big transformation in the way people are going to leverage the digital way of reaching out to customers. Yeah, I think that's really great. I think that works well. One last question before I go to the audience questions. The one last question now is looking forward. I think we've had a lot of these answers already but I'll just like you guys to encapsulate in a minute or so. How do you feel the post-COVID world is going to look like or the new normal is going to look like a marketer's perspective? And what is it that you would like to see from as a brand or a market or all platforms, whatever is your ask in a post-COVID world? So the way I look at it is that I think when you look at consumer is at the center and consumer has really taught us in the last couple of months. Obviously, I think it's always been relevant. I don't think it needs any pandemic to sort of teach us but the thing is you will have to change yourself or business idea or the way you engage with your customers, the way consumers are changing. I feel that obviously their expectation is that we need to serve them the way they want it, whether they want to come to the store, they want to be delivered the stuff at their home or they want to book it online and come to the store. I think the choices will be theirs and I think that's how one big transformation, at least in retail, we say that Omnichannel for the longest time was just a cool word but finally it's come alive because of pandemic. That's one big change and it's here to stay. There's no doubt about it. I think all the retailers, all businesses need to accept this change and move forward. I will talk about B2C and I also give something which I would also like to make a mention on the B2B part of it. Like I said in B2C, clearly the examples that I gave, there has been a phenomenal increase in digital. It won't remain at the same level. I think there will be a slip back to more the traditional ways especially in the rural part of the market but it will definitely be much higher than what it was a year back. That's one. From a B2C perspective, I see digital coming down but much staying much higher than what it used to be previously. I will talk about the B2B part of it. I would segment B2B into two broad categories. One is the product B2B and the services B2B. Now in the product B2B, again I can segment the product B2B into where the customer base is very limited and where the customer base is wide. Now when I talk about the customer base which is limited, like us for example, when I talked about my soda ash business where the customers are limited, we traditionally did not use too much of digital means because there were very few customers where we have started using a bit of digital. Now what has happened is that the product B2B product where there are huge number of customers like for example the engineering industry, people who supply pumps, people who supply various equipments for example, earlier they used to send, make a lot of brochures, stuff like that and send it to various purchase managers talking to them about their product. Now what has happened is that COVID has actually taught them saying that their mood completely to digital means. Now they are having webinars, they are having quite a lot of e brochures. So I see that the large range of you know the product segment which has large number of customers, they have started leveraging digital pretty well. If I come to the service segment and I have seen that because you know when I was in the IT, I was like a customer. Now earlier all of us knew that all the IT companies used to hold very large conferences multiple times a year and this time the COVID they have been holding completely huge number of webinars and stuff like that using digital means. So there I would say that the service segment, the B2B service segment has kind of shifted and seen the benefit of digital and there again you know digital will play a very very big role. So in conclusion what I would like to say is that whether it is B2B or it's B2C, the transition to digital has happened. It may slip back from what it was during COVID but it will be far higher than what it was pre-COVID. Thank you. Thank you both of you all. Thanks for summing up that beautifully. Just take one minute and then we'll go to questions. I think we have only three minutes on the clock. So I think in summation what we are saying is that this last five months have been really transformational for all marketers. We're all grappling with what was happening and now I think we're doing a great job of actually getting there and now I think the post-COVID world is going to look like somewhere in between what it was as a norm and what we have got to right now but there are some things that are going to forever change. As for one point about, I mean yes, it was like digital is coming, digital is coming. We used to hear it for 10 years. Now we know O2O and what when we're talking about all that stuff that is something online to offline and all that was again being spoken about so much but we didn't see fruitful changes but suddenly that's really started working. So we needed this little bit of a jolt out of the blue. I think it's very important for us to keep on giving ourselves that jolt rather than waiting for these jolt. I think consumers are already much smarter than us and they are ahead of them. We need to start being with them and trying to be with them. So I think one of the things that COVID has taught us is that let's start being a little more, the speed needs to improve of how we are reacting. I think that's something that the revolutions that have been brought, whether it's the geo revolution and now the COVID revolution as I would call it, I think it's really the one thing that we've understood from this is that we need to be much quicker in responding to what the customer needs are and maybe sometimes even identifying something and being a little ahead of it. So I think that's kind of leaving it there and we have time for two questions. I'll ask one question and wait for the others because there are a few questions that are coming up and then the teams are messaging me the questions because I'm not seeing it on this. So there's one question in terms of saying and it's a very unique question because it's so specific but I'll anyway ask it is that while we speak about going digital, so this is from Riddhima, do you think brands should start focusing on innovative ways of enhancing customer experience digital? Sonic ending is booming with brands like Asterka using it across all customer points. It's a very very specific question on sonic branding. Do you think it's important for brands to consider their sonic identity to engage with the consumer, consumers and enhance their digital experience? I want to use question as an example because it's so specific in terms of saying, you know, you need to develop a sonic identity, basically you need an audio, you know, you need, you know, you need a hearing and you need audio as a sonic identity for your brands because you can't importance, how are you creating a sonic identity? I'll just expand that because it's so specific to say that innovation has always been the key of digital, but going forward, do you feel that that's going to be a very important part of it? This was a question on this expanding on to that. So anyone from the panel wants to take it? Yeah, I would think that technology is going to change. See one of the big things along with sonic, where I believe there is going to be a big impact is the whole concept of AR and VR, artificial, you know, people are going to be, you know, people want experience. So the way I would think is that people would be, you know, the marketers would need to create something which, you know, you can actually bear it on your eyes like a goggle and then see, you know, virtual reality, how things are happening. I think there, what would effectively happen is that along with getting to know about it, one can also experience about it. So I'm surely looking forward that there's going to be a lot of VR and AR that will impact the marketing communication and the story that companies will have to put it forward. Yeah, I agree. And especially from a B2B perspective, I think, you know, I was wanted to add that augmented reality is actually taking place, taking the place of actually going and physically showcasing, you know, how a plant works, how safety measures in a plant are working, how to go about, you know, giving any kind of instructional videos. I think AR is playing a massive role in terms of just cutting that out in terms of walking into and physically going there and doing stuff. So I think, yeah, I mean, that's something that is really key in terms of that. So I just want to add here, you know, I don't know what the sonic thing in particular, because it'll depend from business to business, right? But I think the, you know, the way to innovate, I think it's always been a requirement and it's going to be a requirement. So I can tell you some of our fashion business, for example, and wherever there was a lockdown, right? It was so difficult to sort of sell because, you know, obviously there's a lockdown and I don't call it like innovation, but I think it's just a simple human logic. We reached out to our customer and we were doing, you know, shop WhatsApp video selling to them, right? Because we were showing it to them, you know, what they can possibly buy, they were selecting it on the phone and then we were delivering it to them. So I'm just saying innovation is part and parcel. So obviously, an experience like this, if one is able to put it in a far more, you know, customer friendly way, I see there's a scope, which can become a part and parcel of an entire retail ecosystem, you know, tomorrow. And I'm sure lots of brands would work towards it. So the last question, because we have a time on this. So the last question is that things are changing all the time, but there seems to be a growing consensus that we can't just flick a switch and return to things as they were. Do you think it's just going to be easy as just stepping out tomorrow and saying, okay, you know, things are back to normal? You know, and we've taken this question in a way earlier, but you know, I'll just take this up. So is it as going to be as saying that, okay, we're all out, COVID is out, let's just go back to our offices and marketing is back to what it was in the pre-COVID. Is it going to be as easy as that? Looks like a good, you know, at least a dream to have. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think it's a very tough question to sort of answer and say that, you know, things will go back to normal. I particularly don't think so because I think, you know, I think there's a huge amount of changes which has happened as consumer, as emotions. I think there's a lot which has gone through and we are going through. It's not that it's something which is out. So I think just going back and going back to the earlier era of pre-COVID, I think there's a lot of time. I mean, I particularly don't think so. Yeah, I also agree with that that consumers have changed what they are, the way they want the messaging and having got, you know, gone into the new wave of leverage in digital. I don't think consumers are going to go back to the older ways of getting message from a brand so easily. So I think, you know, there is going to be a lot more stickiness digital is here to stay. And going back to old times, I don't see it happening so fast. Okay. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you, exchange of media for having us on tech months. I think we are now just about running out of time. We're already five minutes over, but we started late. So thank you. It was an engaging conversation. We were supposed to have a few more panelists, but I think we've made it work. And thank you for having us here. And I really feel that I do agree that the new normal, it's going to be a new normal. It's never, I don't think we're ever going to go back to from a marketing perspective, from a business perspective. Yes, from a, you know, from a life's perspective, we'll be back to normal. But from a marketing perspective, from a digital perspective, we're never going to go back to that normal that it was. So thank you. Thank you for having us. And yeah, so that's about it from us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sardar, Mr. Ranganathan and Mr. Jasani for that wonderful conversation, a lot of takeaways for all our audience members. And thank you for addressing so many questions of yours. We're also steering this conversation online on Twitter using our hashtag techmunch. If you guys have any time, then please go ahead and give us your feedback as well and see what the audience viewers are also talking about. Thank you so much gentlemen for being here and taking out the time. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.