 Hello and welcome to another episode of our special series, Eating Our Lords. The series aims at recognizing leaders who, despite all the challenges thrown by COVID-19 and the lockdown, are ensuring that the economy and the business goes on. With me today is one such leader, Preeti Murti, CEO, OMD India. Welcome to the show, Preeti. Thanks so much, pleasure to be there. So Preeti, I would want to know from you the first thing, what are the big challenges that you're facing as a leader with this lockdown and complete hold of movement and everything? You know, it's actually, which is a personal challenge and all of us are, you know, as a team are going through together, is just staying at home. In advertising, it is not about staying, we never stay at home. So staying at home and not being able to venture out even downstairs in the building is itself is the biggest challenge. And to, you know, just do calls via video, not having that interpersonal camaraderie. I think that's what is the biggest challenge. I think work is happening. The rest of the world will move. We will also eventually overcome this. But the fact that you have to be in the house and people who are like me, who like to meet people and talk and discuss and see faces, it's a big challenge. So I think that's where we're all doing a lot of video chats. And we say, first five minutes, we'll talk, like look at each other's faces and talk everything else other than work and then get into work. So that's the new thing that we are following and that's helping everybody a lot. How are you keeping the morale of your team high? So we do a Friday chai, Pichajcha. So we do a Friday chai. Otherwise also, you've just started it now. So otherwise we do a lot of town halls when I travel to go to offers or bebex and all. But now it's a mandatory that we talk of nothing in work in that one hour. We just catch up on how is everybody doing? How are the kids? We allow the kids to come into the calls. That anyway we do. But we allow a lot of family to be interacting with the calls. And then we are also doing a lot of deep dives in individual teams to understand where the challenges are. So it's not just me. The whole bunch of the management is coming together to have regular conversations. Like in a lot of people are struggling to manage homework because there are no support staff. There are aged parents. There are babies at home and you're smiling because I know you're going through very similar to kids situation. And there's a spouse who's also equally working maybe. How do you manage everything? It's too much. So we try and there are a lot of tips that have gone a lot of sessions that we have done through HR on how to work from home. What are the working hours? Because you tend to work longer actually. There's no end time because same machine and same bus chair, that's it. So these are the few initiatives we have taken to ensure that people feel motivated and feel connected. I think the most important is for people to feel connected. And currently as I'm speaking there's a survey rolled out saying that what are the challenges along with whatever else we are doing so that we know that those who were not speaking were shy to speak, also express. And then we have an excellent IT team who's on their feet supporting all softwares in our business, our important research softwares. Everything is running out of speed. They're there on a call away. So it's like it takes a village to raise a child. I think it takes a village to deal with such a situation. And that's exactly what is happening at RN. Things have started to settle down. It's been almost 10 weeks. So you know, we were prepared when our colleagues in Singapore and China went through this. So we had our testing much before the government declared. We had a trial phase of two days of work from home before the government declared so that we get used to, first we see what are the hiccups? What are the challenges? Do we have bandwidth? No, who doesn't have a dungal? Who doesn't have a network at home? We organized dungals. Those who didn't have laptops, we organized laptops for all employees like ops. This was how many days before the lockdown started? Post-Holi, sorry, post-Holi. So a lot of work has gone into that. And I think the system was crisis prepared. Hence when we landed into actually doing it, we were ready. So it was not that we started it and then learnt. We learnt it before. We had a 48 hours window to dry out everything and we informed clients. But at that point the clients had not gone for work from home. Clients are still working from offices. So telling them, convincing them that we have to be prepared for you because everything has to happen now remotely online. So allow us to do this. And that actually went out very well for us. We got good learnings for HR and IT and admin support teams and everybody. And today, here we are doing this with you too. What are some of the unthinkable things, challenges or unthinkable lessons that you have learnt from this period of lockdown as a manager? I think respect for the team has grown leaps and bounds. Because for me, what I'm so admiring my team is the commitment with which work is happening. Not a single person I think has even thought that let's do it later. Everybody's at it because we are in touch with them. Managers are in touch with them. And the commitment with which we are here to pass this phase is amazing. So my respect has grown leaps and bounds. That is the first thing. And I think the fact that we are coming out with new ideas to counter and recommend to client is also very interesting. Because in case of such crisis is when you pop up with these great ideas and that's what is happening as we are speaking. And the third, I think is from a team perspective I think one challenge is the ability to be doing this. 95% of the people, this is the first time or work from home. And that they have adapted it for the last two weeks and or more actually more than two weeks now. Almost 20 days and then doing it is amazing. Preeti and coming back to the industry, we are all at home. We are all watching TV or on digital. So consumption of both the mediums has seen a significant high. That's what Park members also say. Still advertisers are shying away. They're not coming up with new campaigns. We don't see much of spends also. Inventory has gone down. What are you advising to your clients in this situation? Or what is your take as an expert on this situation? It's a mixed bag because I do have broadcasters clients also. I do have digital broadcasters as clients also and I have FMCG auto and a whole lot of other. So it's a mixed bag of clients. Each one has a different take for the scenarios. But for example, auto has to advertise more social message or which is what they're doing because nobody's gonna go and test drive or you can't even send a car home to test drive. That's the purchase intent might exist but the action can't be taken. And that's true for most of the categories. FMCGs I think should advertise but keep it to relevant categories and not maybe luxury because today as of now people are looking at essentials and that's exactly what most of the... And hence that's why you're seeing the drop in advertising. Like I see the e-papers every day and I see that Baiju's advertising today for example Baiju was a front page ad in Times of India and Amul was a front page ad in Mumbai. I think everybody is going to relevancy and targeting and messaging which is customized to the current times becomes more and more important because the consumers need to know that you are with them and I'm not trusting myself on you and as a brand I'm walking the journey with you and that is what most of the brands have picked up and they're also learning and picked up doing. So I think once the lockdown period eases out I think things will slowly get back to normal production will happen, new content will come in advertising will also pick up but till then it will be category to category advertiser to advertiser and because there's a lot of supply chain challenges all that logistics also need to be kept in mind like e-commerce are not delivering in many markets so how do you even push e-commerce story if you're not ready to deliver the product? So there are a lot of other challenges one needs to keep in mind and if that is what it is, it is what it is and we just need to get over this phase and look forward to another sunshine in the next few months. Are you making recovery plans? Are you already making recovery plans for your clients? There are a lot of discussions going back and forth but it's too early to comment. Now this is, I mean I don't expect a definite number but this slow down, this scenario will slow down our economy and our industry growth. Where do you see us heading this year? I think the government is throwing up enough men numbers I am no expert to just sit and comment on this. No, no I'm talking about media and entertainment industry, our industry. So if your GDP goes down, I think the natural fallout will happen in a cross-industry so will be media and entertainment. Will be no different. Preeti, last question is what advice would you want to give to youngsters from your domain who are sitting at home might be feeling frustrated may not be from OMD, I'm talking about in general what would you want to tell them? Yeah, smile, it helps a lot because that's helped me a lot. Don't take it too seriously, it's just a phase. Our grandparents have seen war, partition, death by human calamities. This is unnatural, so it's okay. At least we have enough entertainment to be consumed and enjoy ourselves at home. It's a matter of few weeks. I think patience is what is important and keep chatting, you guys are all social beings any which way. In terms of keeping their business healthy, how can they still keep pension? So keep yourself partial with clients, simple as that. Keep talking to the, like when I talk to, I talk to as many juniors in a team when I'm having my team calls. Like today morning also one of them said I spoke to the client, factory guy issue here, supply chain, be on top of their business, understand that, have the empathy to their business. I think that becomes the key at such times because you are real partners if you have empathy to your brand's business. That's a big tip I will leave behind. Vicky, thank you so much for talking to us and be safe and be at home. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye.