 Mr. Aniraj Ruparel, head of Mobile and Immersion Tech Group M, India, who's here, who's going to speak to you shortly. So can we have Aniraj here? Hello, hello. Khyati, you almost forgot me. I'm so sorry about that. I know problems. Hi, hi, Thomas. How are you doing? So I think yesterday we had this chat and I went back and I was talking to my team. So at WPP India we've got a bunch of folks who are thinking beyond time I would say like the team for the future we call it. So they are the bunch of guys who focus on innovation. So I kind of went to them and I said I'm going to have a chat with Thomas tomorrow. And within 10 minutes I've got about 20 questions that this is what you should be asking Thomas and I kind of relate the topic which we're going to be talking about. And the today's session which you did was a complete eye opener. I ended up making a lot of notes as well. And Khyati almost forgot me. So I'm right here. I've got these bunch of questions just to begin with. I have partially gone through the book which you've written which is the 12 powers of marketing leaders. I wanted to know like what was the thought behind it because there was some massive research which has gone behind creating that book and like bunch of leaders across the globe you must have spoken to and created this robust book which is like a ready reckoner for any marketer to kind of access and learn from it. So what was the thought behind it? Thanks very much. That's a great question. You see when I was six I wanted to become an advertising guy. I wanted to make ads. That was my dream. And my parents said that's a crazy idea. You know ads is not a good business. It's not ethical. You should do something proper. So anyway I ignored that became a marketer. And when I was a marketing director and led the cleaning business, Kleenex household business in Europe I had I was sick and tired. I said you know I'm going to quit because the finance people seem to be making the decisions and operations. So I'm out. So became a McKinsey partner and to tell CEOs how marketing works. And in fact that was the time when I then started leading mobile marketing which was my area specialty. And what's interesting when you see the marketers and the non-marketers in the boardroom because as a partner of McKinsey you sit there you know you see everybody. And you see that some people outside marketing seem to be quite smart when it comes to getting their way you know getting the budgets. And I felt wow you know why don't we bring this to marketers because marketing is amazing. I mean it's it's the voice of the customers we got to help. You know we got to bring these ideas. And that's why I decided look you know the best thing I can do is quit. And start to research and try and figure out what it takes for marketers to have that more influence and impact. So I did that and because there was very little research in fact there is still very little research about the success of marketers. You know there's a lot on branding and stuff. And I decided okay let's do some proper research. So a team that was LinkedIn with the some associations in the US and we had indeed did that massive research and then we felt a book is a way to getting the word out. So I think what I'm telling you here is I think there is a desire to make marketers more successful that was born in 1906. Oh wow that's awesome. Now what happens in the Indian market we keep visiting a lot of our clients with tons of innovative ideas. I think we were catching up on mixed reality and immersive technologies and conversational and tons and tons of stuff on ideation. And more often than not we feel that marketers are unable to convince the people internally. So what's your sense on that? Why is that happening? Yeah that's a great question and I think it comes to the crux of it right because marketing and people in marketing I've met have so many fantastic ideas and like on your end right I mean I'm sure you have really innovative ideas and many times you say damn it you know why doesn't the company do it and then someone else does it and you can tell your client look guys you know you're against three years behind I told you. The problem is that or the challenge we have is that a lot of people in marketing see themselves as marketers but not as business leaders and I wish we could switch this because if you are believing only you are as a marketer you will stay in your little silo, you will talk the marketing language, you will work on marketing programs and you kind of like get busy to just tell other people what you think is right and then they keep ignoring you. While the marketers who have a more of a business mindset are the ones that have the better type of conversations. For example if you think look you know I'm not in charge of marketing I'm in charge of growing the business by 10% every year right that's a very different mindset and then I said look Neeraj came to me with this wonderful idea that they've developed at GroupCom and look guys you know here's not just why it's great for marketing but here it's great for the business and so you get a wider conversation going and I think that is that ultimately is the is the aim that we need to get to that marketers take a broader responsibility a personal responsibility for the business and also therefore are able to explain ideas that you bring to them or your colleagues bring to them in a business context and that's where it sometimes breaks down and if you can fix that I think marketers will be more influential and you will have more fun as well because more of your ideas will see the light of the day. Absolutely we are using with ideas we need that support for it to actually close and see the light of the day. You spoke a lot about being brave so what's kind of stopping the marketers why aren't they brave? Here's a fundamental challenge right firms do not reward people for being brave think about it firms reward people for being successful yeah and and and that's and then sometimes people say yeah but I want my boss to to support all my brave ideas what you're really saying is you know let me try this if it succeeds I get the credit if not you get the blame no people are not rewarded for bravery and will never be people are rewarded for success so the point is first off we need to we need to get away from this idea that we need to create companies that will every tell everybody to take big risks it's not how it works I think what we need to get to is that people realize that I can take risks I can take calculated risks and if I don't my business will be less successful so it's almost an obligation to take risks and I can't wait for my boss to tell to tell me so we need more people to get out of this mindset that just because success is rewarded and risk isn't I don't take risks yeah so it's the calculated risk and I'm sure many ideas that you produce their group com and could accelerate a business significantly but it will never be a success factor a case when the marketers aren't saying okay even if my boss isn't sure right I'm going to take that risk and if it doesn't work okay I have a problem but that's part of the game yeah that's why you have to pick your battles yeah that's exactly I think we fail more than we succeed when it comes to innovations on my that's my side of the story but when I succeed I end up creating global headlines you know like some of my campaigns has one like all possible about last year so failure is part of it it's part of the game now another question was how can marketers become more innovative this is from one of my colleagues at google bay I think it's a great question it comes back to the question of what is your job and the moment you think my job is to do marketing and here's my job description and here the five things I'm going to do every single day and I'm going to do my Facebook campaigns I'm going to do this and that it's very hard to be innovative because your job description already tells you what to do why do you need to innovate I think the picture changes if you as a marketer get you sit back on your sofa have a drink the tea for that matter and say if this was my firm what would I do or if I was a customer of this firm what would I really want and we need to ask these future forward questions way more and we're not doing that today and a second reason is that a lot of people spend a lot of time inside the company most of the emails that people create are inside the firm why don't you go out as a marketer you have to be out and about if you work as a marketer in mobile you have to know what the trends are you have to you have to go to some of the big events like this one today you have to see what what people are saying what the trends are work with people like you with other external people who give perspectives I think too many people are cooking their own little soup inside the firm and get busy pleasing everybody around so that outward looking mindset is a long term for saying don't just look at home in mobile is crucial because mobile is still you know what is the new innovation in mobile and I'm asking you I mean lots of people are talking about innovation in mobile I mean yes we had two is two g 3g and 4g and 5g right but you know largely people buy a sim card and make phone calls and then serve the web now that's of course great but we could innovate so much more in the marketing space we could understand customers so much more but we have to get out of our job description and ask yourself what is our real job and that to me is growing the business which means it got to have innovation absolutely so I've been doing mobile marketing for a decade now so I think initially we started with sms and voice based marketing predominantly addressing the rural India and then we made a lot of solutions over the years basis location fancy banners rich media creatives and stuff like that but I still feel there's a lot of growth to be had in this particular space so what's your advice to the marketers so first off as a marketer ask earlier what is your job your job is gross so if if your business isn't growing fast then you're already not doing your job well I mean that's a starting point yeah so now of course if the business is growing great you know why innovate what's the point right I mean you know you don't innovate just because of her fun but typically firms hit gross hit curves where you know gross isn't as fast and that is where marketing comes in Peter Drucker said you know the business only has two main functions it's innovation and marketing and it is true now if marketers don't innovate who else will you know the firm the firm is looking to marketers but it comes to the same point if marketers are just doing what's in a job decision there will be no innovation so I think it's your job and ask yourself and that's the question I would leave and here's another way of looking at it if you are in marketing you work in a firm I would ask myself what's the legacy that I want to leave when I get fired here one day what will people remember they will not remember that I answer to all emails on time they will not remember that I delivered a few projects on time they will remember the things that I changed that left the mark on consumers and that is typically an innovative idea absolutely totally zoned Thomas Sam as we speak I want to make notes of all this and apply it my daily lives perhaps and try and crack some new innovations let's just hear it from the audience in case they have any additional questions Khyati Priyanka there any additional questions maybe we can take that up now oh we can't hear you Khyati you're on mute yes I'm back and we have a couple of questions but firstly I wanted to do a round with you Neeraj and Thomas just quickly asking you that how every age that we've seen whether it's been a stone age the age of internet and now we're talking about the screen age how long do you think this is going to go on is this for eternity or does this have like time period for it as well according to you Thomas you want to go for it what's the stream age sorry I'm old school are we in a stream age now is that is that what we call it we are like using too many screens right like we're talking about screen age right yeah well tell you about my personal view I hope the current age of sitting in front of screens every single day and not going out is hopefully going to end really fast and you know what then there will be the connection age hopefully again because that's what we're in I think we are in a ultimately look we are in a relationship I mean everybody at different ages I believe from a marketing perspective we've moved from the selling age to the relationship age because because of technology right and you know that of course you would have much more the experts we can now create relationships with people at scale time and time and again that to me is really and that's a long and I think we still have 50 80 years of getting this right because we currently don't if you're very honest how many stupid emails that you're getting where people get your name wrong where it's an offer that you don't care about at all where it's like I get these LinkedIn invites by saying aren't you also like blah blah and they have no clue who I am so there is so much to be done in a relationship page so my view is we're going to be you know most of people before we die will be busy in a relationship age that's that's really wonderful I would say the screen age is here to stay however a lot of technology interventions you would see in coming years wherein XR would play an important role which is immersive technology so you're going to be actually machines and humans would come together and relay an experience together right you can have virtual concerts going in there you'll be running a lot of these virtual presentations which is right now happening on a q&a fashion but to be machines and humans coming together to relay that kind of experiences so XR is what I believe in voice is something which I live on completely so you're you're going to be talking to more and more devices in times to come and Alexa and Google are already driving the wave in a big way so this is going to be all screenless experience where you're talking to any hardware and you get a response back that's something which Future is moving towards and voice comes pretty naturally to us so it's going to be the voice age in times to come wow so I think I'm sure P4M team is listening and they're going to be coming up with the new IP which is going to be about voice aid right this is amazing thank you Thomas for taking out the time and being here I'm sorry Neeraj on the confusion all right thank you so much have a great evening guys thank you thank you thank you all the best to your conference all the best thank you bye