 His topic for the evening is tailor-made Personalizing mass communication. So ladies and gentlemen without taking any time of yours. Please put your hands together and welcome him on stage I can assure he's the last speaker. Let the end to be a little more. Can we thank you guys? Thank you Good evening everybody Good evening. I Know that I'm painfully. I'm aware that I stand between you and cocktails So I promise to make this session number one shot and Number two, hopefully engaging as well Can I have a pointer which say that again? Yeah, I thought I'll start on a healthy note and then we'll see how it goes Okay, so what I thought I'll do was you know before I started talking about mass personalization I thought let me take you back 50 years Yeah, let's rewind a little bit and of course. We're all familiar with this iconic movie. Which one any guesses Godfather and we've all heard this line right which says it's not personal sunny. It's strictly business Yeah, and you know that was a iconic line from that time And I was thinking that if you sort of now fast forwarded 50 years and think about what a marketer would like to say It'll probably sound something like this It is personal and it is business. Yeah, so personalized You know mass personalization or personalized communication I think is a very critical way of actually generating business for brands and something that Market years and brands need to look at pretty seriously. So in the next 15 minutes What I'll do is I'll just talk a little bit about the the what why and the how and really end with giving a few examples Which which I think stand out today and obviously there are lessons to be learned from those examples So, I mean if you go back to the genesis of where this whole personalization thing came from I think it finds its roots in, you know luxury marketing There were few people who had who were rich famous had a lot of money to spend and really wanted something which was a personal thing for them and literally that's how this whole thing of Tailoring to your needs came about so if you go back It's about London Saville row where, you know, there was Janta who bought shirts and suits from the market And there were people who got it tailored a particular way, right? And that's that's where it started from but however as things went along a lot of it started getting democratized, right? So there were more and more people saying hey, why should it only be for those kind of people? Why can't I also start to have personalized experiences and that's how it started getting democratized over time and really the process of using, you know data to get Seemingly one-on-one communication where the person feels that I am being talked to is really what Personalization and mass personalization is all about and if you look at it as to why is something like this important Of course one thing is that it gets consumers emotionally invested in the offering So what does that mean as a consumer? I would love to be spoken to one-on-one I would like to have that connect with the brand or the product that I'm using and once that connect or the Relationship is established and then much more amenable to a Building a strong, you know cohort with that brand Talking about it to other people and really being a brand evangelist, right? So that's that's what matters Second of course it makes me feel special because somebody's talking one-on-one to me and that's something that obviously works for me And last but not the least if you really look at it today, thanks to you know people The advent of internet and the digital options. There is a lot more self expression that happens So in a way the personalization is really about a reflection of the self expression that Consumers have in today's context, right? So these are some reasons why mass personalization would make sense from a consumer point of view Having seen the what of it and the why of it if you really look at how one could go about doing it. I Think there are a couple of you know learnings here in terms of what could be used in terms of the how of Personalization, I think the first one is around, you know cultural insights and how that can be leveraged now It's no, you know the rocket science to say that all brands and marketeers look at using insights, right to build their propositions whether it is product propositions or the communication propositions and If the insight is also rooted in the culture and the local traditions, it makes it even more powerful So therefore one of the key things to look for is how do I leverage, you know insights and those cultural insights in order to make it more relevant and meaningful to the consumer The second part of it is really around how do I Empower consumers, right and actually give them the power of choice Now if you look at it consumers would like to have the option of selecting stuff So if I am able to tell them that look this is what you need But I can offer this to you in five different colors in four different shapes and basis your choice and preference You could sort of tailor make it to suit your needs, right? That empowers me and makes me feel a little bit more closer to the offering that's being put forward and Last but not the least again Thanks to the massive digital footprint that we leave behind today through the various Mechanisms and means that we use there's a lot of data floating around some of them We give voluntarily out some of them get collected as we trawl through the various You know for forums of internet and all that data can be sort of analyzed and Used to you know tailor make things for the consumer sometimes with their knowledge and sometimes not necessarily with that But at the end of it that data is a powerful mechanism for Personalizing a lot of offerings and content. So if you look at it, I think these are three ways I thought in which you could personalize You know for for the masses and what I thought I would do was in the next three or four charts Just share a couple of examples of how some brands have really done this You know in a very nice and meaningful manner So the first one I'd like to talk about again One of the things I've done also is in the true spirit of being non Intrusive I've not plugged any prophetic brand into this presentation. Yeah, so the one example I would like to take is Coca-Cola we all are familiar with the brand So one of the things that they said was Coca-Cola of course stands for happiness open happiness There was a campaign that they did in the summer of 2011 in Australia where they said why don't we do one thing in Term in order to make it a little bit more personal Let's take the coke bottles one side of the label. Let's personalize with names So they picked up the top 150 names in the country, you know through most common names that are being used And then they sort of put that into their labels and they started that as a campaign about you know share your Coke kind of a thing now what happened was this became a massive hit and then it got expanded to almost 50 plus countries and When Coca-Cola looked at it for India what they said was can we take it one step ahead? One of course is to find the most common names, but India being such a diverse country I guess that would have been a massive challenge in terms of getting names that are truly common across the country So what they did was when they did some work They found that one of the most relevant things from a cultural point of view is relationships, right? so there's a lot of Importance attached to relationships in the country and it's not just about the relationship So it could be bro. It could be dad. It could be mom But the meanings around the relationship are also very important So what did they do they said instead of putting names like Rahul and Shikant and Neha they said let's use Relationships and they did a whole campaign around having the labels with various relationships, right? And they did a whole sort of communication around it which really elevated the brand and made it you know reach out to consumers at a Mass level yet personalized it to a large extent So what we'll do is now just see a couple of copies which sort of actually bring out this point Can we have a sound please? Should I go back? I mean another one another example of that Now I'm packing the kitchen and after that living room and then dining room. I mean it's not even time to breathe That too sits like this and eats my credit That's a true example of cultural insight. I got a lot of you at least Relating to it and nodding vigorously. Yeah, so again great example of you know how The brand leverage that to get to a I mean Beverage is of course sold widely across the country yet. There was a large element of personalization in it, right? Another example is Nike again, right? So this actually Nike did stuff even way back in 1999 and I quote from you know one of their CEOs at that point of time who said Nike's goal is to get more Personal but at scale, right? So they talked about it even back in 1999 And over the years what they have tried to do is I mean if you see the example on the on the right They have you order a pair of shoes and then you can change the color of the pair to whatever you would like You can even have something printed on it, which is very very exclusive to you, right? So you could do all sorts of customization with it and the point was they launched something called consumer direct offense, right? Which was all about saying how can I drive business and growth for the brand yet in a very customized and personalized manner and that's something that has been in their DNA for the last 20 odd years and They have in fact taken it one step further in terms of backward integrating it in Actually buying out two companies which are huge on data analytics So they actually picked up two companies called zodiac and invertex over the last few years to which actually Enable them to churn all this data and try and personalize it as much as possible And of course supported by the data that they collected from the Nike app and the Nike You know loyalty points So again a great example of how a brand with an attitude has actually managed to take personalization to the next level Another interesting example is again Amazon right all of us are familiar with the brand It's been in India for a few years now and again here Jeff Bezos laid out long ago saying that We need to find a way to sort of understand what the consumer behavior has been online To figure out what they are looking for what they are not looking for form a sort of a pattern around the consumer and then make sure that you deliver offerings Which are tailored to the pattern right so I'm sure all of us recognize these things when we see when we are shopping online Which is recommended for you? Frequently bought together or you know customers who bought this item also looked at right these are some things that we see Which actually comes out of something called affinity analysis where they really look at patterns in terms of what you pick up What are some of the things that you prefer you don't prefer and then sort of Guide you in the direction of where they would like to take you the whole idea being how do I keep? maximizing the value of the ticket size right again a great example of how some companies do it Another example one of my favorites is what Netflix does right again Netflix is all about you know everything is personalized out there and interesting Fact is that what you see there on the screen when you you know go into Netflix is a lot of what you see There is actually recommended for you and you think what you see as popular on Netflix is Actually, not popular on Netflix. It is popular for people like you on Netflix So basis your browsing behavior basis what you search for basis what you watch pause or play Netflix actually recommends stuff which is pretty much customized to you know what your viewing preferences are and again taking that to a interesting level in terms of actually trying to drive behavior by gently recommending to you what would be of interest to you and You know I would end by taking one example of the most common way in which we used to spread messages It's just through television where it's totally democratized You put it on a TV and then everybody gets to see it even that in US is going through a change where on smart TVs What's happening is people are able to see ads which are targeted to them, right? So there is a way where the ads are getting targeted and I think as we go forward That's likely to be the norm in terms of even the large screen where of course in digital It's very personalized and very targeted, but even on something like a mainstream media on television That's increasingly happening as well. Yeah, so those were a few examples I thought I'll share and again I'll end with going back to Godfather in terms of what was another interesting quote And I think it's really about marketeers saying and how am I going to make an offer to them that he or she cannot refuse, right? At a very personal and at a very direct level So I think mass personalization is certainly here to stay and the sooner and the better way in which marketeers can sort of Imbibe that and translate that into more relevant and meaningful communication. I think the greater chance for the brand to succeed Thank you. I'm happy to take some questions. If there any Since you asked the question, I'm replying. I'm not plugging anything But you know, I think a couple of examples not yet done in India But globally we've done is for example on our lollipops, right? Chupa-chup lollipops you have these icons So the whole concept is do you love me and there are broken hearts and there are two hearts getting together So whole bunch of icons from which you can choose. So that's an expression of you know Communication between teens, right? So that's something that we've done in Europe quite a bit mentors Again, if you take the dragees, there are printed message on that what we call Compliment us, right? So there's a way of giving compliments is a way of connecting with people So again messages printed on the candy which can be sort of traded with people So I think there are interesting examples of it in the confectionary world and also in other food and bevs categories Which are quite interesting and relevant. Thank you so much, sir