 This is going to be an interesting discussion about decoding marketing strategy this session is powered by Truecaller. I'd like all of you to join me as I welcome our session chair, Ms. Vanita Upalrathmore, Director Sales West for Truecaller. I'd also like to welcome our panelists on board, Ms. Anagha Bhujane, Head of Media and Digital Marathon, our second panelist for the day, Kinjal Jay Shah, Head of Digital Business and Marketing and Analytics, Kotak Mutual Fund. I'd also like to welcome our panelist, Mr. Vishal Chinchankar, CEO of Madison Digital and Madison Ultra and our fourth panelist for the session, Mr. Sameer Nanjagud, Chief Manager, Digital and CRM, which is called AutoIndia. A very warm welcome to all our panelists and I would leave the screen over to Vanita to take the discussion forward. Thank you, Kati, for the introductions. A warm welcome to our panelists and I'm super thrilled to have a stellar panelist and taking out time from the busy schedules and especially on a Friday evening. We all know how crazy they can get. Our topic today is decoding digital marketing strategies pre-COVID and post-COVID times. I think so it's one of the most important discussions for any marketer who are looking at growth as well as their business to move forward. This is something which every marketer has been challenged in the last one year. We can safely say COVID has been the toughest teacher for all our marketers to learn and unlearn. Last one year, as a consumer, as well as marketers, we have seen a huge paradigm shift. The way consumer is thinking, their attitudes and behaviors are changing, which has left our marketers grappling with the fact that what is the best effective marketing strategy? What are the latest trend? How do we actually reach that consumer and engage with that consumer when the dynamics are changing and evolving every minute? What are the measurements technique? How are we actually measuring the efficacies of our campaigns now when the benchmarks are totally changed? What are the new trends we are expecting to see going forward? Are these trends to stay? What is something which we should be mindful of? So there are multiple questions we're looking at addressing in this panel with our esteemed guests and I would start with Anagha with the first question and that's a question I would like to take with all our panelists here. Anagha, you've been leading one of the most prominent and the biggest brand of this country. Last one year, all of us know has been the most challenging and especially for the marketers. Your brand is somewhere where the focal point is a common man. Every decision or any plan which is made is around that. I would like to know from you what are those two things which changed in your playbook and the biggest learning for you as a marketer in 2020. Over to you Anagha. Thanks Vanita. I think from a digital playbook standpoint, the key changes that we've made and this is at the back of last one year that we've seen. I think even for the most common denominator, the time spent on digital has really grown exponentially and by virtue of that, instead of being a small part of what we do in marketing, I think digital has become a fairly important and here to stay part of what we do. The two things that have definitely changed for us is one, we're not looking at digital as a campaign to campaign specific idea approach but it's pretty much always on right now. The exponential growth we've seen on OTT platforms has pushed us towards building a screen planning versus TV separate and digital separate and silos. We're looking at more inclusion of OTTs. That's where a lot of content is getting consumed. The second shift I think is the world has become so virtual today that there was a time when we were screaming at kids not to look at your mobile phones and today everything is on mobile. In that reality, I think one of the things that we're doing is also we're looking at programmatic very seriously because we don't want to do a platform out approach anymore but I think what's critical is to do an audience out approach and that is a big shift for us in our playbook. One big learning for me personally, Vanita, in the last year and especially because I come from a mass market CPG core kind of a background, I think we've always looked at larger platforms for top funnel communication but in the last one year what we've realized is there is a substantial addressable market even on market places and that's something that we've always looked at as the bottom of the funnel but I think somewhere that realization has happened for us. That's at least a big learning for me. Interesting. I think so that's a great insight and yes I agree somewhere all of us have seen that exponential growth which is happening in digital and driven by mobile that's another question which I'll come back to next so let's hold on to that thought and moving to now Sameer and Kinjal, both your industries are very different as compared to what Anagar talked about right where the funnel in terms of the consideration takes much more time to convert and the consumer spends a lot more time in terms of the consideration step. I will first post this question to Sameer. How did your playbook change and what are those two things and your learnings? Yes, good evening to everyone. I completely echo what Anagar just mentioned. I mean digital has been launched into the stratosphere because of the situation what we have been over the course of the last 12 to 15 months and really I think for high-envolvement purchases like vehicles, home loans, even real estate for example they have suddenly taken kind of a backseat but what has changed for us is the whole artificial intelligence and augmented reality wherein how can we now take the showroom to your home rather than inviting you outside the comfort and security of your home or office. We come to you and that's only possible digitally so that is one key learning for us as a brand what we have taken is that digital is now because it's non-physical we can take it to the screens we can take it to the devices of people wherein they can still engage with the brand and they can still engage with the offerings that we have to give. We also layered this with a very heavy artificial intelligence messaging platforms and and talking platforms because the the action has to be backed by some kind of a call to action as well so using digitally as well as layering it with mass is something that has been a key takeaway and that's the change we have done in our playbook. I think that's a that's a great point Sameer in terms of the growth and how you're actually using virtual experiences and actually giving immersive experiences to your users and creating those virtual launches I think so it's a great experience. Moving to Kinjal, how how is it different for you? Hi and what are the two things that changed for you and as Sameer mentioned like AI is something which they're kind of implementing and using that intelligence so how has it been the change and what are those two things from? Honestly nothing much changes except the budgets obviously the kind of crash when you see that's the first thing which we all would have gone through I mean on the lighter side but honestly yeah when we look at 2020 the entire financial year the kind of panic which we have seen as a category in the market so for us it was always important to keep a right balance between you know a brand and a performance campaign which we do and it was always calling for a higher investment on education which we as it is do as a brand but it was extremely important for us to hand hold the customers because this is a time when you are seeing your portfolio crashing to almost 50 percent and the panic sets in and you actually end up booking the losses so as a brand yes we had to shift ourselves from performance to brand at certain point in time we had to invest a lot on educating the customers that there is life beyond COVID and this is not something which we are seeing for the first time as market we have seen this in past also and things do settle down after a year so yes as a brand we had to invest a lot on education so that was one change for us apart from our regular performance campaign because performance as it is would not get triggered when the sentiments are extremely negative so that's where the education campaigns got triggered for us and obviously we had to be focused on channels that matters the most so we have to invest where the customers are present more rather than trying to hunt for new customers at this point in time our focus was on existing customers who are already investors and how do we hand hold them so these were two major learning for us that yes when the sentiments are extremely bad people are only looking at moving out of industry so rather than acquiring new customer at this stage it was extremely important to hand hold the existing customer so that was the major thing which we learned in last year. I agree with you I think so last year customer retention was one big point for most of the market is right while we look at acquisitions but retaining that customer and growing that customer and hand holding was one of the most important aspect thanks Kinjal for your point of view. Moving to Vishal, Vishal you wear multiple hats right you work with multiple verticals and you have to look at different objectives what was from an agency point of view where you're leading a digital mandate across so many brands what was your playbook change and what was your recommendation also to your marketeers in this time. Yeah thanks so let me just give this question to the parts so look you know what happened was you know consumers were shifting from an adapting sort of an attitude towards you know owning the uncertainty part right during this whole first lockdown and second lockdown you know minimizing of face face to face interactions during this second wave actually became more imperative for them to get into online apps and many other online stuff. I'd like to call these categories as EFGH E stands for e-commerce and edu tech F was food tech and fintech G for gaming groceries and H for health tech or health care right now these categories made the most of it when it came to really acquiring some great custom acquisition by pieces. I think their lens on performance marketing really went up I think I think the needle really worked out towards eight or eight or ten sort of thing right hence I would say in our in our overall playbook I think performance also became one of the most important change invariably what was happening is spends on other mediums like cinema or even for that matter activation were really going at minimal and hence that sort of boosted most of the performance investments. I think the lens moved very sharply on e-commerce performance marketing that was one of the biggest change at least in this whole year. The second part I would say that you know most of the larger brands across all mediums looked at it more from an integrated media and really with it's really taken out the fingers. So TV plus as the marketing is the most effective in building higher cash season. I would peg it saying that these two large things is that it's not I'm assuming it's going to stay there forever. I like that description of ECFGH in terms of the category distribution and as well as how you saw the focus shifting to a lot more to performance marketing and TV plus. Moving on I think so somewhere all of you mentioned about the digital growth which we saw right and while there was a mandate of digital India and the companies were geared up to the fact of going digital fully say about which was more of a two to five year plan. Thanks to pandemic I think so it got accelerated and it went on a super fast mode and which became somewhere around three to six months. We heard about companies adapting so fast as well. This digital growth was of course driven by the fact that our country is mobile first and that's where we saw consumer downloading multiple apps adapting to new habits. From a true color perspective also we saw that market is kind of taking advantage of the solution. There were so many new verticals which opened up to our platform as well which would of course back from the fact that this was about consumers being mobile first spending more time on their mobiles at least getting minimum 20 to 25 calls in a day and being scalable and data driven. So I just want to know as marketers did you have any shift in terms of your mobile marketing plans and how did you play with it? I would start Vishal with you. How did you see that shift with your categories across? Look in my mind I think digital is mobile okay there is no other digital it's all about mobile and today's where we're living with a cookie less area and the ecosystem is more moving towards device IDs and all that stuff it's all about mobile. But I think from an advertising lens if I look at some of the indicators what we saw is obviously there was a huge amount of supply that was created on inventory levels. People sitting at home really consuming a lot more inventory on digital through mobile was really going upwards upscale. Demand was growing gradually but this sort of you know resulted more into the currency. Some of the advertisers really took a great advantage of it and went after you know really spending this all. Look it also resulted in the efficiencies for the clients. The sharpened therefore more on the bottom of the funnel and actually more into you know an acquisition drive and a better ROI or a better ROAS or what we want to call it. But having you know and eventually what happened that led to more data right. So now today most of these advertisers are building their own first party it's building their own audience cohorts they're doing a lot of personalization communication so I think these are some of the trends that we saw hopefully and it's not about the private moment but I think it was more about the personal moment and that's where most of the marketers eventually went into this one-on-one sharp marketing. So I think that was one of the larger point that I would put in place. Thank you so much. Picking on that point itself I would want to move to Kinjal how did you use mobile marketing during these times and did you see any shift as well? So honestly we are a low investor when it comes to acquiring customers so our strategy would have not seen a massive shift during this period but obviously mobile we do consider it from the brand campaigns when we do it. We obviously consider the social media as a very high impact channel for us and obviously Twitter and the other platforms have been contributing to our traffic and it definitely helps us influence the customer. So when it comes to mobile marketing not much on display but yeah social media marketing considering the top channels on social definitely we had invested during the Covid period as I told earlier also that education was important so yes our investments in normal time I would have not done it but they were a little higher compared to a previous year on social media yes and apart from that obviously when it comes to mobile as a channel we look more as a product rather than digital ads at that point in time so we were forced to launch bots on all the possible channel so to increase more branches right so to create virtual branches so you look at WhatsApp bot or probably a Google assist you try to get into it immediately something which I would have done probably in six month or eight month I would have been forced to do it in a month's time during this so yes mobile was important and always remain important but yes so certain strategies shift was to launch bots ASAP and create more virtual footprints for customers whether it is from service point of view or transaction execution point of view yeah so more than advertisement it was more of product launches on digital from the app side I think so I realized that that would be the most critical and more biggest priority for you right because especially when the consumer cannot interact and visit branches or you know have this conversation it's important to have those chatbots to give that virtual experience and solve for them picking up from that point thanks Tindall. Sameer I would come to you and as Tindall talked about chatbots and how did you adapt to mobile marketing or what were the new things which you kind of saw? Yeah so there was like Vishal and mentioned that you know mobile is digital I largely agreed to that point also but we had seen it coming for the last couple of years and like you mentioned it had suddenly accelerated but I just want to talk about a couple of things apart from media there were quite a few initiatives that we were not supposed to take but we were tempted to take and we did take from a digitalization point with you and that how it is associated with mobile so we launched three products like I said if the customers or the consumers are not able to come to the showroom let us go to them so we launched something called as contactless virtual demo which sitting at the comfort of your home or office and safety of your home or office you can take a live demo of the car and this is not just a 3d model but it's a video chat integrated with google meets wherein the sales executive erstwhile would have shown it in the showroom but now we had arranged for gimbals and things like that wherein they gave a live video session for a live video chat with prospective consumers and perhaps many things would you know and that also was backed up by ecom as an option for a call to action wherein the links were sent to them and they could put the car online if they wanted to and the entire process of financing to loans was done online and just on the day of the delivery the car was completely sanitized and was delivered to the consumer so mobile really played a very important role in this entire you know journey consumer journey the second most important thing that we launched was something called augmented reality filter or AR filter for one of our vehicles was also for the people to interact so mobile layered with that on the social media and that's how you get great engagement so engaging with the fans engaging with the consumers is something that you also looked at and not necessarily driving in sales or you know filling up the funnel but also focusing on the engagement aspect of the brand so these two things the third thing i think tindall touched upon already is launching the AI intelligence based bots so we were observing that the way meteoric rise of whatsapp as a platform has happened and we definitely wanted to take advantage of this and write the way so we came up with a bot in which it could answer all the questions wherein we can take both whatsapp as well as mobile as a way which is coming up take advantage of it and reach out to as many people as possible so apart from media the things that we shall mention that guess there has been a specific focus on mobile these three initiatives were taken from purely from a digitalization point of view right i think that's an interesting point that as much mobile marketing was a option but the focus was more on actually going digital and making customer experiences and engagement yeah so what just one last point would be that mobile now we feel is an integral part of the consumer journey you know so at each of the touch points the go-to device is a mobile perhaps a laptop or a desktop or even a tablet now i think so all of us can vouch for it we are 24 bar 7 with our mobile in our ways so yeah thanks so much savi for your view and moving to anaga of course kenjil and samir you know there was a lot of investment in terms of digital and they introduced chatbots and you know the kind of nature of the product and the journey they have is also very different however when it comes to fmcg it's still a very impulse driven buying right so what exactly and you mentioned earlier anaga that yes you sure saw a huge shift happening in mobile advertising where you looked at ott you looked at programmatic platforms right uh so i would like you to kind of diverge a little more into that please sure so for us it was still not a tech support really but mobile is a part of digital marketing and i would tend to agree with what vishal was saying earlier from a consumer standpoint that mobile is pretty much an integral part of digital i don't think there is a conversation at least at our end where we look at mobile and versus something else there is no something else it's largely mobile for us so it did not change as such but a couple of things that i'll just talk about which stood out for us uh one was social commerce i think the intent of going direct to consumer for us accelerated in this last one year and for that trying to advertise through social media to take consumers to our stores or our website our online store or our website i think that was a big shift that we made um and the second thing is something that both kinchel and samir also spoke of i think at that point in time especially in the first two three months when there was a huge disruption from a supply chain standpoint from availability standpoint right it was a big disruption for fmcg as well i think at that point in time we did try whatsapp bots at least to reach out to our consumers to engage with them to interact with them to give them an update on which is the closest store where these brands are available so somewhere that also played important role for us for sure that's very interesting to know actually yeah that that's quite insane great thank you so much anika now i would like to actually get into a little more specific in terms of your sector and while the consumer behavior change marketing strategies changed how did measurements change right we're always looking at that optimal measurement for our campaign success uh you know i would want to know about few campaigns you did and what were the what were the measurement techniques or the matrix used by you uh because somewhere the kpis also changed we were all looking at long term outcomes but somewhere we had to look at much more shorter plans we were becoming much more flexible and agile so i will start with samir i know you know being one of the leading auto brands from the country you had three launches last year in 2020 in the midst of you know pandemic i know you're preparing for one big launch coming soon in next few days as well yeah best of luck on that thank you so and you earlier mentioned when you were talking that you know CRM is something which you kind of it's technology which you adapted right yeah if you want to get a little more in-depth on that and that'll be interesting to know for all of us and our listeners so back in march last year when the whole thing started the pandemic thing started we had very little time to maneuver ourselves but because i mean this is what i believe that because of the nature of digital as a function or as a media we are able to maneuver pretty fast implementing technology in india is relatively easier as compared to the other parts of the world is what i feel and this gave us a unique advantage wherein we were able to sort of connect to the prospective consumers and existing consumers at the same time and from a CRM perspective the idea was to give them reassurance especially for our existing customers that we are there for you don't worry and this is especially true in case of luxury cars in case in case of cars upwards of 50 like rupees wherein what happens if i miss my service what happens if some part is not available so that really was the idea to reach out from a CRM perspective to the people and give them a reassurance that don't worry we are there for you and we did all of these things digitally the other thing that we did was quickly from turning it around during the pandemic was also offering a e-commerce solution wherein people who were who are fans-sitters but perhaps now have to sort of postpone their you know a purchase decision we gave them an option you can go online you can book it online and just touching upon the point that anagar is in terms of the social commerce that also worked in a favor quite nicely so all in all what i would like to say is that e-com followed by augmented reality from an engagement perspective these are the two things which worked in our favor in terms of measurement of course we we measured all part of the money but what was critical is during augmented reality as well as engagement campaigns engagement was the key factor which we wanted to really keep the conversation alive so that when things improve we don't have to you know restart the engine again so that people are aware about what the brand is what the offerings are and so on and so forth thank you so much Sameer for that in-depth you know talk i also wanted to say that as you talked about engagement was something which was very important especially in this scenario or to actually engage with your audience and continue to have that conversation with them was becoming very difficult because it was so dynamic i would put that to kenjul as well just one point just one point kenjul before we go to kenjul the other part was that as marketeers and i think we can take pride in being marketeers that we had to do all of this in midst of a bad mood that everybody was in people are not really in the mood they're not really ready to buy there is negatively all around so i think as marketeers we need to feel proud about that aspect that in spite of all those things we have been able to keep our brands alive you know that's and then thanks to digital to engage in this time and especially when as consumer and i'm sure all of us as consumers also had you know times which we all went through and you saw each and every consumer having their own stories and going through these challenging times it becomes much more difficult to strike that chord and continue you know that engagement and that brings me to kenjul i think so you know as you talked about earlier as well knowledge and education is something which was very important for you always but it took priority in pandemic specifically and from a from a sector you come right the first topic i think so everybody was thinking about health and wealth but when they were thinking about wealth they were risk averse right and when we talk about mutual fund as a sector that is something which they were becoming a little very often we saw that trend in the early 2020 when there were a lot of outflows happening however as you mentioned the brands started looking for how we could do purposeful marketing and push that consumer to continue with the you know that investment so just to take certain examples like sentiments were extremely low and we all were facing that you know investors were in panic and were stopping their SIPs SIPs being a very prime investment vehicle when it comes to mutual fund so we saw a lot of investors you know just straight away stopping their SIP so again we were forced to launch a product as well as communication which helps customers to understand there are various other ways rather than stopping you can also pause so certain additional campaign has to be put in immediately in month of april probably right in the beginning of april where we are talking to customers and we are trying to say that hey you don't need to stop your SIP rather you can pause it for six months if you are in a panic scenario right so certain quick fixes were required and they were obviously video ads so that customers are able to understand more rather than just a banner kind of a performance ad so yes initial first six months we were more focused on education driven campaigns and they were video driven and supported by display but primary focus was on video based education so there were two back-to-back campaigns one of them was something to do with SAPNOPE lockdown where we are talking to customers there you don't need to stop your dreams right these things keep coming and keep going but you need to keep again investing and build your wealth and this are great time to build wealth because historically again so this was education driven so over here the focus will be on driving the video views at the same time the additional matrix is to get the higher view through rates right that number of percent I mean the percentage view rate is very very important so these are two additional metrics I mean you try to put in while driving the video views and obviously then ultimately it will result to your click-throughs and whatever we are looking at visits on the website but yes the primary would be the video completion rates where the focus will be and education. So in terms of it was more from a video driven and you were looking at more from a video metrics to kind of engage so yeah that I think was something which is a good view for us. Moving to I'll quickly move to Anagha because we're running out of time as well moving to Anagha. Anagha brand loyalty is something which is very important in FMCG is a category right and we talked about consumer retention before as well when utility took over right like FMCG did have demand last year huge demand but there were supply chains affected so it was not so much about the brand it was more about the utility. So how did you measure success from in terms from when as a marketer you look more from rich perspective right and so and discovery so how did you actually look at that brand saliency? So at that time Manita I think it was a temporary disruption for sure in the first two three months we did see a concern with the front end right availability was a concern on most of our brand supply chain was disrupted. I think a lot of people chose an option that was available to them I don't think at that point in time anyone was really thinking which brand and at what price to a certain extent but I think once we got the supply chain in place and it was fairly fast because we still came under essential services so we were not as disrupted at least under foods and essentials. I don't think we've lost brand loyalty I mean because and that's just a testament from the way we've seen at least the core brands bounce back of course we saw some issues with the discretionary items which is more of the fact that you're sitting at home and not going out so it's not top of mind right now but when it comes to hair oils edible oils at least the core brands that we work with these are also utility brands right they are as a part of my buying basket so once the supply chain disruption was corrected for we saw them bouncing back. Thank you so much Anagha moving to you Vishal quickly you know you talked about ROI became more important and performance is something and down the funnel is what you were looking at so do you want to just highlight for a minute in terms of measurement what were the things which changed? Sure so look I think every campaign that we do it has its own soft KPIs and hard KPIs right you always had your majors in terms of soft KPIs like your brand law or your mind major sort of thing and then you always had your harder KPIs like your CTRs, VTRs, CPCs whatever you want to call them but if I had to see it more from a funnel marketing approach you know top of the funnel is more of a region frequency and then engagements and then your hard KPIs what we've seen is that on when it came to bottom of the funnel we saw a lot of you know improvements in the in the KPIs the harder KPIs as well as in the softer KPIs because the time spent by the consumers were not more and there was a huge amount of engagement coming in but you know more than matrixes I don't think matrix is changed right I think clearly the the name of the game was optimization to bring in a lot more efficiencies and I don't think marked years really looked at an input versus an output but it was more about you know outcomes on the businesses right so I guess the biggest change I would say was how the campaigns were really devised keeping in mind the end poll and obviously business outcomes was always there but it just got a little sharper so that's that's my point of view. Great thank you so much that makes a lot of sense I just want to end this with the last two questions quick we'll make it like one word and brief I'll start with you Kinjal as from publisher partners what is that one thing you're looking at? See I think considering our industry being highly regulated we look more of a tangible campaign solutions which are driven towards acquisition so that's something which we look from partners yeah that's for one thing acquisition I will move to Anagha now Anagha what do you think from publishers you're looking at and as you mentioned you know reach and e-commerce is also something which has become big for you and programmatic is something which you're driving so yeah I think in a short phrase Vanita for me it would be to be able to drive performance at scale sure it's encompassing content to reach everything but I think for the brands that we have scale is what I would look for okay so I'll take scale from there and acquisition I'm moving to you Sameer one word in terms of what you're looking from the publishers implementing more artificial intelligence is something that I look from publisher sure over to you Vishal one word data okay sure I think so data is the new gold mine anyways so yeah our last one question it's you know from you know we have such experienced marketers it'll be nice if you could give one trend for your fellow marketers to be bullish about and something to be mindful of I will start with Kinyu I can say something about something to be mindful of it's don't fall prey to FOMO you go you work in a very very difficult industry where your competitors are doing something a lot of time you have pressure from your management but we need to put our foot down that what will drive ROI if you're focused towards it rest all will fall in great thank you so much and over to you Vishal please well I put it this way that don't look at media in silos look at it more from an integrated approach end of the day whether it's a six inch screen or a 52 inch screen the consumer is the same so look at it from an integrated approach great that's a great point as well over to you Anugha I would say something similar to Vishal in my mind I would definitely bullish on audience data so customization at scale personalization at scale that's something that I would look forward to what to be mindful of I think sometimes we tend to overthink things and overanalyze things I think it's important to also get data along with art there is has to be some balance of intuitive market hearing I think that's something that I would be mindful of I'm sure more so now with the changing times we have so yes as much data we have we still need to be a little intuitive yes that's true thank you so much Anugha moving to you Samir please I think it's a combination of both what Vishal and Anugha said data-backed consumer insights and consumer behavior insights I would say you know and really what what I am definitely a bullish about or whatever that there's interest is really utilizing data and applying to each of the you know funnel metrics that we measure all our performances on that is something that I'm great thank you so much I think so those are really great takeaways for our listeners as well as the marketers who are a part of this conversation listening thank you so much thanks a lot and we've actually run out of time but thank you to all our panelists for taking out the time and sharing your insights with all of you is thank you Vanita for steering this conversation we once again thank all of you for your time here thank you so much thank you so much