 So well on that note ladies and gentlemen, it's time to March ahead towards our next session as well But on that note, let's keep those tweets coming using hashtag screen age as I've already mentioned Most innovative tweet will also walk away with some exciting prizes We're going to be announcing the winners over the course of time during the next set of sessions So keep those tweets coming using hashtag screen age Well on that note, let's march ahead and invite our next speaker for the day He in fact is an accomplished marketing leader with more than 15 years of experience in brand and consulting Sphere and he will also be sharing with us about how or why Mobile first approach is the way to go or to connect with the new age consumers Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us the marketing head of uber India. Please put your hands together to welcome on stage mr. Sanjay Gupta So good afternoon everyone Very quick intro I have about 17 years of work experience a lot of it was in consumer goods some of it in e-commerce and then probably my most interesting stint, which is the current stint at uber What I'm going to do is just take you through the next half an hour a model that Can enable us to engage with our audiences, especially the millennials in this new environment So first and foremost, I think it's the most exciting time to be a marketer today the rules of marketing are getting rewritten and You me and all of us have an opportunity to rewrite these rules And I think if you look at how far long marketing has existed There are very few moments like this where you get to redefine everything that's written So find it an exciting time to be a marketing person So the framework that I'm going to use to build this engagement really resides on three pieces Three pieces which haven't changed over the course since we know marketing But how we do is going to change dramatically the first one is choice You know everything starts with multiple options with consumers looking to evaluate and then choosing you moves to advocacy Where or moves to habit where they start choosing you every time they choose that service But the real joy is when they start championing your cause your usage and your brand and that's what happens with advocacy So let me take you through a framework that helps build this Just seeing if this works perfect So the role of brand as I mentioned earlier hasn't changed much right? It is to simplify It is to simplify it is to abdicate the responsibility of thinking that if I choose this brand things are gonna go right Look at it in terms of food fashion mobile anything that you may consume you want the brand to simplify your choice What's changed is that we live in a very over Stimulated environment the number of things that compete for our attention are only going up and The clutter around the world is only increasing. So I remember when I was In media 10 years back the conversation was we used to have so many TV channels and now there are so many more TV channels Today we're in a space where we're saying TV is a small proponent of what the consumer consumes and this is only going to increase So the real challenge is how do we keep maintaining what the brand does which is to simplify only in this Context now which is over cluttered and over stimulated So this is This is the framework. I think what's important for us is to move away from Preference which is to say that my product is better or my advertising is better to relevance Which says that this is the right product for you at the right point in time And if you look at a lot of the marketing conversations today, it's not about whether a is better than be It's whether a is the most relevant option for me today at this point in time and some of the things that help build that is one Moving from choice to advocacy. I'm just going to repeat it once that everybody gets it start with multiple options Evaluate multiple options and then win on proof points. This is something that is true across industries moves to being the preferred option every time and I think what mobile does for us over here is that because it's So omnipresent if you're able to make usage of your product easier If you're able to reduce the cognitive load of losing your product more and more consumers will use it more frequently And that's really the habit part of it. How do we increase? The reduce the cognitive load and increase the ease of usage it finally moves to advocacy Where when the consumer interacts with your product they experience joy and they're the ones who champion your cause So really for us, it's about how do you move from choice to habit to advocacy? Why is this important today? So everybody knows the human attention span is dwindling. I experience it personally I always feel myself looking at multiple screens doing different things at the same point in time and Every time I speak to consumers every time I speak to other people. I see them experiencing the same thing It's even lower than a goldfish. That's just a provocation But what that means is that we have extremely low attention spans today What fuels that mobile phones? They're absolutely only present. I'm going to share some facts Obviously this group is educated on this particular topic really well And you'll have a lot of those facts on the back of your head But it's just to tell you that in an economy or in a construct where attention is dwindling There is this one microcosm called the mobile phone, which is only present Which is there 24 hours? Quite literally People spend about five hours with their mobile phones on a daily basis. I'm sure that's longer than the most interesting person in your life It's definitely longer than any any other activities that you engage with The second people tend to check their mobile phones about a hundred and fifty times a day If you will compare this to the time when you're not sleeping that's for about ten to eleven times a waking hour There was this piece that I'd heard from someone that if you feel your phone is lost Just rewind to seven or ten seconds back and what you were doing and that's where your phone's going to be Because you were so obsessed with it So it's really something that is with you all the time and you're very engaged with that particular metric I found this really surprising. I don't do this So I have a checkout time half now before I sleep my phone kind of leaves me with 78 percent people go to bed with Their phones so the last thing they do before they sleep is is not wish their loved ones good night It's actually just to see your screen and go to sleep So in an attention deficit economy or construct you have this one Entity that is with our consumers all the time How do we leverage it in the best possible manner? One of the things about India is that while this is a only present construct globally for us this phenomenon It's just getting started So if you were to look at how mobile phones have grown over the last five to six years in India What people tend to tell me who more educated on this topic that it's gonna be five to six times Beyond this I can't even imagine that but I couldn't imagine a lot of things which tech has bought to our lives So if they were important today, they're gonna be supremely important as we go ahead So really if there is a mechanism, which is so prevalent and gonna go up six to seven times What's the best way for this marketing community to leverage this and how are you gonna do it differently to what you were doing? Say maybe a year back or three years back because if the consumers changing so dramatically the way you engage with them Needs to change dramatically as well So here's a proposed view It's not a popular view, but it's a proposed view so far most of us have used advertising and a lot of conversations that I tend to get into is that Marketing is equal to advertising and there are many ways to find a relevant audience and give them multiple messages Till they convert and I think there is definitely a role for that But the argument for us as marketers is how do we look beyond advertising? Especially with a framework that is so deeply integrated We didn't have this earlier when the rule books of marketing were written You had a 30 second TVC and the only way to increase awareness was mass advertising Today when you have a platform that is with your consumer Engage very deeply 24 by 7. There is a different way to play this game Some of the facts around advertising and why I believe that it's very important that we look beyond it is one We have very few apps on our phone. So if you look at your app screen, you know Even if there are greater than 10 to 15 apps, you don't use them that often So quite honestly the final choice set is going to be about seven or ten apps on that screen a screen That is really really important Many many people have started blocking advertising So while we may come up with new constructs of advertising You know the erstwhile full-page ad when it was in the newspaper construct and today when you look at your newspaper They're like five newspaper full-page ads till you come to the news right we find that funny when it's someone else's medium That's the same thing that's happening to us every time you open a website The first thing that you see is an ad and not the content and more and more consumers are gonna not like that I'd be I remember being in a meeting where someone was telling me we have a new ad format Where the cross symbol on the ad is not on the top right and on the bottom left So at least for two seconds consumers will try and figure out how they need to close that ad and that's how they'll engage with it And that's a very Big advertising how very big content strategy, but those are really not ways in which we can build engagement You can interrupt maybe distract, but that's not how you'll build your brand and engage with consumers and the last one is and I always use this with folks like you were much younger than me look at your own life Right, which was the last time you saw a piece of advertising and changed your behavior towards a particular product It's really what the product does and what you consumers say about it So the best way to use the mobile is to definitely engage in terms of advertising There's definitely a role for that, but really the greater piece is to look beyond To look at if there is something that is so deeply entrenched into the life of our consumers How do we is marketing professionals? Engage with that platform with that device and not with the spec of that device which is advertised It's really my push for you is that when you go back and look at your businesses and look at Your means ways of engaging with your customers Look at the mobile phone as a more holistic construct and just an advertising construct What I'm going to do now is share some examples The brands that I've picked obviously there's uber because I believe very strongly in this approach and we do a lot of work And this the other brands that I've picked a more general They're large brands and that is not to say that Other brands are not doing this the only reason I've picked large brands is that in an audience like this It's very easy to relate to it and a lot of it would be and a lot of you would be consumers of those brands So it is easy for you to look at that example and then Leverage it back to your own business So the first one I believe that to truly leverage the power of the mobile to truly look beyond Advertising we have to leverage the mobile so that it seamlessly fits in the product experience It's it plays a role in making sure that the consumption of your product is Enhanced and I'm going to take you to three examples and most of you would have experienced this to give you how brands are thinking about that How brands are going beyond advertising and thinking of how to leverage the mobile to deliver the product experience How many of you've heard of Amazon go Some hands how many of you like standing in that shopping line and waiting for your bill to be Built out and that's the worst part of a shopping experience, right? You love the part where you discover products go try them on and then you're ready to go and then you see this huge line Where people are just standing on an aisle and they're waiting to get built So deep consumer insight if they have the mobile phone with them the ability to change that narrative is very very hard So when you look at redefining retail, it's not about sharing with them Which is the latest fashion trend on their mobile phone? It is leveraging the mobile phone to enhance the retail experience So go beyond what advertising could have done in terms of awareness Look at that phone as a carrier of things that enable the shopping experience to get better The second is Netflix. I was watching this documentary on Manchester City all or nothing and it's a longish documentary and not all of us get time to watch it and One of the things I loved about that experience is every time I stopped and I went back to Netflix That was a screen that came in front of me. That's where they asked me to start So they have a non advertising model. It's a completely turned it on its head and built a completely Content-led construct, but the way they've defined the user experience and how the mobile phone can play on it Makes it very very interesting for consumers to engage. I found that feature super exciting and I believe YouTube has it in the States not yet here, but that's definitely something that enhances the mobile experiences and makes it a lot richer The last one is Starbucks One of the pieces about Starbucks the only thing that is disgruntling is the line for ordering and especially if you were to go during lunch or the regular coffee breaks in an office building Where everyone's over there makes it really difficult. They have this really cool feature where you can order on your phone And by the time you get there your coffee is ready So again, how do you leverage it beyond advertising to put a feature in place? Which increases the chances of consumption which reduces the cognitive load and makes it a lot easier for the consumers to engage with Your brand I picked these three examples that you can experience them as customers and then look at your own business and say How do I leverage the mobile phone? What extra can it do for me in the purchase construct in the way? I experience the product in the way I want to build out the customer journey and the problems that can solve beyond just awareness The next one is reducing the cognitive load during purchase one of the keys around Building habit is that every time the consumer wants to buy you or consume you're there Traditional companies used to stay within an arms length used to be a huge focus towards distribution Now the distribution is kind of reduced as a challenge because of the internet and because of Amazon The real key challenge is how do you reduce the number of times the consumer needs to buy your product? How do you reduce the number of times the consumer will re-evaluate whether you're better than every other option that she gets and One piece that is really gaining ground is subscriptions. So as you look at building your model I believe today 15% of all people who do e-commerce on the net have some subscription model attributed to them And I feel going forward This is really going to increase because when consumers need to make a lot of choices They start making lesser choices if you come here for example Let's play this game right if you come here and all seats are available That's a lot of cognitive load right suddenly everyone should I sit here's rest there who's gonna sit There's only one seat available That makes it a lot easier. That's what just happened to me. So I was like very clear the one seats available I can go and sit back so similarly How do you reduce the cognitive load and especially when it comes to usage and purchase? How many of you Amazon Prime members? Right and if I would ask you specifically what Amazon Prime does Some of you will be able to articulate it most of you will be like it just takes care of everything I know delivery will be faster and some of the prices will be faster. It just it's just easier Right. I don't have to think about this multiple times. We did the same thing with Uber One of the challenges we face is that the pricing especially during peak hours is variable because it's a two-sided marketplace Right if you don't have enough driver partners on the platform Then the rider needs to pay a lot of money if there are too many riders and the driver partner doesn't get their income So we launched this I think just today in five cities in the US Where every user can just buy a pass and they're guaranteed a certain price For their travels so you don't have to worry about this is the price I'm being right now What's the price that's going to be when I'm coming back or I can plan my travel budget for the entire month Knowing that ubers got that coming so just how do you build the mobile phone and the entire construct in the experience around it? Which enables you to drive consumption over a longer period of time than looking at advertising or looking at push messaging or ads that are difficult to close to try and build that engagement One of the things that we push for very hard and you saw that in the Netflix example as well How do you build it in the product? So what is it that you learn about the customer through AI? What is it that you learn about the customer behavior on what they do on your platform to make the app experience better? Me that is really the key in terms of driving consumption and pushing this Can we play the videos you're working? It's a new beginning that starts with a familiar question. Where to? It's a question you ask yourself every day And now it will kick off countless trips in cities around the world and make it easier than ever To find the right ride So all it's left to do is hop in And go because when you start with where you want to be You're already on your way The reason I love this feature is that if you look at the number of users around the world we use Uber and The fact that you're willing to take the chance that on the first moment where you pick the ride You're going to change the interface. That's huge, right? But the thing that gave us a lot of confidence was that's what our riders wanted When you're looking to get out of your house at 8 a.m. In the morning to your work, you don't want to say Where you're standing at that point in time? We just want to put where do I have to go and that little switch that little piece of making the customer experience Better that particular thing that makes a customer experience more seamless really goes a long way in driving adoption Makes the experience a lot better And I wanted to give you that example because it's so simple. It's so first up It's a lot of things that we can do and a lot of businesses that we adopt The second one is a really good feature which is driver destinations a lot of you may not be aware of this But once the driver partner starts they actually don't get to know which destination they're going to so they just trust the app You get in and once you get in they know that this is the destination so what that does for them is that they start their day at their home and Then they're traveling all across the city and then they need to get back Right because it's very difficult for them to conjure a ride right up Or they need to stop their rides and then drive all the way back home without a ride in case this feature doesn't exist So the feature we built out was when you're ready to end your day when you say that I've had enough number of trips This is what I want to do and I want to get back. There's a feature which says that Put the put your home as a destination and all trips that are heading towards that direction You're only going to get those trips Now if you're a driver partner on uber and one of the pieces that we have is around flexibility Your own time your ability to manage your own schedule That's a fantastic feature to have because you don't want to be stuck in the other corner of the city Not knowing how you're going to get back or drive all the way without earning any money So my push is that when you're thinking of the mobile phone think of it is greater than advertising first Think of it is how you can enable the experience of consumption to get better How you can think of that experience to become more seamless The basics of the genesis of it doesn't change. I remember when I got into the tech world a lot of What marketing people and advertising people discuss mostly is targeting options and insights for communication One of the things that a lot of these companies are doing well is that the marketing team is not focusing on communication concepts They're focusing on the customer journey They're focusing that if the mobile phone is integral to how the consumer lives What's the best way to integrate it in the customer journey? So a lot of it is moving around how we enable the customer to interact with our product using this only present piece called the mobile phone So two keywords before I get into some pieces if you need to advertise what we should be doing So first reduce the cognitive load everything that we do as marketing folks should go in a Construct which says that how do I enable our consumers to consume or use our products? Using lesser and lesser cognitive skills and abilities because there is so many things for the consumer to think about The last thing you want to do for them is to think about your product make it seamless make that experience so seamless Keep pushing it that it just becomes a natural part of their existence It becomes the default option that they trust because that is what brands do we will be existed to simplify choice And with the mobile phone I think the ability to do that is much higher the second one is build join interactions Every time they interact with you on this mobile platform Let it not be that ad which doesn't have a clip button because while you would have got attention for those next two seconds I know a lot of folks have told me that I was served this ad which I could not shut I'm never going to consume that product because the disrespect at my time and the way I looked at it So very very important for us to move from intrusion to creating joy And the way to do that is to build in experiences that fructify that driver partner who's on the other side of the city gets a Trip to go home earns on his way back would love that experience So what do you do if you need to advertise and what's the role of advertising in today's world? I think there are two pieces one we were compelled to generate awareness around product usage when Consumers were not as aware about products But as you can see with multiple cases right whether it is Geo whether it's Netflix whether it's uber whether it's Amazon Not many of these guys use advertising when this kicked off It was their experience that enabled that to build it. So while it's important at the awareness stage I think as we look at consumption and as we look at our Sets of consumers and move them from choice to habit To advocacy it's really important to push the storytelling narrative and not the advertising narrative I'm gonna show three examples the hashtag views internally is acts not ads What consumers are more and more interested about is what is it that you do for me? What is it that you do for the society? How do you entertain and engage me on the mobile phone rather than deliver plain vanilla advertising? We can start with the first one, which is the ice cream piece I don't know how many of you saw it, but I'll give you some commentary on that Uber reads brings to you the world's first anti-aging ice cream a revolutionary recipe that works on eight signs of aging And rejuvenates your skin from within Crafted with deliciously smooth and creamy dark chocolate Feeling young is just a bite away. So how many of you have ordered that at Uber Eats? So that was an April foods prank for us. We are the number fourth brand Very difficult for us to break through the clutter. So you need to give something exclusive on your platform I think 10,000 people registered and then we gave them a very nice coupon to buy a lot of deserts on on Uber Eats But very different from that we have deserts at 20% off Which is something that happens all the time. So really really important to have landmark pieces when you're looking to build Awareness because that's what people will engage on when it comes to the internet The second one is a is a really really special one for me It happened about a year and a half back when we looked at our driver partners And we had this conversation with them and one of the pieces that they always came back to us with is that The reason I'm driving is to have a secure a better future for my family Especially my children and so on Father's Day We played this piece out and we played it across All of our GL centers and we were able to send it out to our driver partners because we have a One-on-one connect with them on the mobile phone. It's a long piece of content But when you see it you realize why it impacts the relationship with which is so transactional Otherwise in a very meaningful manner Can you play the father's day video please That's one of the proudest pieces of work we did because it just changes the equation and You know reframes how everyone's the same irrespective of what profession you do The last one is how do you so one of the quotes we have internally is that you know We do a million trips every day and a one in a million happens to us every day So instead of again doing advertising that is push-based is Intrusive how do you take real stories that happen on our platform and share that with our riders and driver partners? So the last piece is of Richard Richard is actually someone who works in Now in Bombay and maybe in Bangalore works for directly. I'll show you that piece. It's it's him So that's the rider who takes our platform and just how he interacts with us and how it's enabled him We have the last I started coding at 15. I spoke to machines in zeros and ones They replied in zeros and ones My conversation with technology was a sum of these digits My conversations with people were a sum of doubts and uncertainties. How will you manage all alone in the city? How are you traveling around? What if you have to go somewhere and one day? Something changed over the zeros and ones. They had a voice You've ergo selected finding your ride Your Uber is arriving Then the question's changed I see the world in voices Some are new and strange some fond and familiar And there are ones that don't leave my side Where to ride for a minute from your pickup at Cendida apartment yet, you know, 16 p.m. Arrival The world I see is full of possibilities and great adventures There are obstacles too, but there's always a way around isn't there My name is Richard. Hello. They are if seeing is believing then I believe in a world that moves forward So that's it. Thank you so much Really appreciate the time and patience that you show Thank you very much indeed mr. Gupta Unfortunately, we do have a paul city of time So we may not be able to take some questions But I'm going to request you to please remain on the stage and I'd like to invite mr. Sean E. Charles the senior vice president digital with times network So please come on stage and present a token of gratitude and let's have a huge round to cheer one more time ladies gentlemen for mr Sanjay Gupta