 of discussion are very interesting one. It's now time that we get into what is up next with the brand love indeed has many significant implications on brand life cycle. Jiha, we have also often heard that consumer is king indeed. That being said, how does building brand love further ensure a fruitful relationship with being the brand and its consumer? To discuss this in depth, our panelists are here to elaborate the role of brand love in consumer brand relationship. Well, first I would like to welcome our session chair, head of marketing India Spotify, Neha Ahuja. We welcome you. And of course, joining us our panelists, please welcome Ashish Mishra, executive vice president marketing, Akko, general insurance, Harish Narayanan, CMO, Mintra, Hitesh Malhotra, CMO, Lelscott, Lucky Sani, head of brand Vedantu Prasanna Rai, vice president and chief marketing officer, Vipro consumer care and lightning, and it's going to be a very interesting evening. So yes, grab on to your tea or coffee and let the conversation come our way over to you, Neha. And I can't wait for it to unfold now. Thanks, Mithin, thanks Mithin. So brand love is actually one of the most important strategies that we've had as our businesses for many, many years. And I think it's become even more relevant in the current time. We also believe that once build this emotional connection called brand love serves as a foundation for a long-term customer to brand relationship and we often see the impact of this for a very long time. Like you, I am also super happy to have this, you know, absolutely stellar panel today on board and I'm sure that they will bring in a very diverse view on the topic. So without much further delay, let's get started. Hitesh, we can start with you. What we really want you to understand is that in your category, do you feel that you consciously invest behind brand love or you feel that it's all about consumer service, consistent communication, product market phase? What do you feel about it? So until now, you know, in the past, you know, it had been a very utilitarian communication because, you know, just like, you know, a pharmacy, we are also dealing in a category which is widespread and is available across all different looking corners in India, right? So every postcode would probably have two to three opticians around that. So, you know, earlier the communication, the focus was quite utilitarian where, you know, we talked about more as a value purchase, you know, more about the quality or more about simply speaking, the whole proposition that a customer can take out of the product. But over a period of time, we discovered that the only way to go about this is to accentuate brand love because the larger your category staggered or, you know, I would say, scattered across unstructured marketplaces or unstructured detail, the higher is your energy that you need to create brand love, right? If you're not available across anywhere, right? If you're the only seller for a particular category, then your efforts are not as much. But today you have to fight with not one or two large eyewear companies or eyewear retailers online or offline. You're fighting with about a plethora of closer to 120,000 opticians across India. So I think, yeah, it becomes a very, very important factor at that point of time. And we have realized it pretty well. We respect that and we understand it now. And we feel that the brand love in our case has to be category-driven since we are the largest seller or the monopolist in this category, the onus is on us to ensure that there is enough love for the category itself, right? So everything from getting attraction on the glasses, how they define the way your face looks to, you know, relieving the taboo which was there in the earlier societies talking about glasses and switching over to contact lenses or laser. I think we should be the champions of that communication and, you know, kind of lead from front. So yes, I think now it is very important because we are competing with 220 or 230,000 people now. Right, right. Thanks, thanks so much. Ashish, what do you feel? Another very fierce category, right? To be part of, what do you feel about, you know, the customer experience driving the, you know, the loyalty and hence the love? So for us at that point, you know, we believe that brand love is something that is derived. It will be an eventual outcome of all our efforts. So what we are really focusing on is a simple principle that, you know, if you consistently exceed customer expectations, you know, and we do it consistently, that's the main point. And we do it over a period of time. Eventually what will, it will result in a great brand love for the brand. So it's not a, it's not a marketing strategy for us. It's something that we would like to have eventually and we would also like to aim for it. But that's not something that is driving. What is driving is making sure that we are changing the way people buy insurance. They're having a great experience while they buy, while they renew, while they clean. And, you know, their customer satisfaction scores are at a high. I mean, Amazon is a great example, right? I love Amazon. And it just solved everything for me. And that's a brand that I can honestly say is love. You know, it's what probably would not fall in the usual range of brands that people can confess their love for. Lucky what about you? Very new category, very new brand in the country, right? What is your opinion and how has been your journey? Hi, very good evening to everyone on the panel and to you, Neha. So yeah, it's for us, it's really about experiences, right? Because we really operate in a very online, you know, only, right? We are by DNA online, right? So everything needs to be crafted, constructed from an experienced point of view. And, you know, truly speaking, you know, very service orientation is extremely important for us. So the way we look at brand love, Neha, is actually, it's not a stream of work to drive for us. I think it's a lens for us. I'm sure if I'm taking the word lens from the category, but I think it's a lens for us, right? So everything we got to look from a marketing point of view has to be looked at from that lens point of view, right? So quick examples, right? Look, for example, for us, advertising is a very small part of the entire play, right? A lot of our experience building happens online. So we have a very big charter called branded service design, which means that very carefully and, you know, very with love crafting delightful experiences from the onboarding to the time someone is unhappy, to the time when someone's kind of referring you back for the next year. So I think it's extremely important to see journeys. And I think I can't emphasize more in the importance of consumer journeys here to be able to really understand the consumers in terms of different need states and what are they looking for. And then for us as a service category, we really look at brand love from that lens. And a lot of initiatives make a lot of sense for us. I think, like I said, in thoughts, actions, and also in a lot of ways, communication, but take the context of COVID now, right? A lot of, you know, we know a lot of people are getting impacted and kids are getting impacted in a big way because of, you know, obviously losing parents, sometimes one, sometimes both. And what's happened is I think we were also thinking of what could one do, for example, which is meaningful, right? I think for me the really the golden word is meaningful, right? So we didn't really kind of straight away jumped on to, you know, working with let's say a few NGOs to kind of craft something which kind of, you know, does a little bit of benefit to the children because this is at the heart of what we do. We actually launched a new initiative. It's called Help India Learn. So where we've actually earned mark a certain amount of money, but money is not the point. I think we've taken the responsibility of really taking 12,000 kids on board for their education throughout. So I think for us, this is brand love, right? I think it's communication is a small part of it. We live in breathe in the service industry. For us, experience is matter most. So really crafting a superb thought through meaningful consumer journeys for different kind of students and parents who come to us and also try and value add across the spectrum. So it doesn't matter if someone's, by the way, you should know we are the largest online free education platform in India today. So just because, you know, there's a value to education, lot of students, by the way, don't come to us for paid education. We are the largest YouTube free YouTube channel in India today, which means that we continue to invest in it, not because of business sense, because we believe that the value of education is really about giving that value to students, no matter if they can't afford you also, right? So I think for us, it's a kind of an interplay between a very uniquely crafted thought through meaningful service design, a very strong action on ground in terms of how you support contextual or how you support your community, your core audience in times of highs and lows. And obviously, last of it is really crafting, communication that is purposeful. And I'm a very strong believer that I think it's time that marketers move away from mind share, marketing to really purpose and more cultural nuances. I think if you consistently build it, I think you're home. So I think that's how we look at brand love and it's a goal, it's a lens, it's not a stream of thought. Thank you. Harish, moving to you, how do you keep the love alive? I'm sure that you often engage in, you know, sort of trends that allow you to maintain that relevance to stay top of mind. So how do you keep the love alive? First of all, hello to everyone who's listening and nice to see friends. We meet in these kind of meetings, so that's great. See the way, love is a very loaded word, Nayan, if you ask me. We have not been able to define it in real life or personal life as well. So I don't see it being defined very well in terms of brand and the presentation before us, right? That talk about landmarks and maybe build something that is loved and respected and so on. For me, brand love is an outcome. It's an outcome of doing the right thing for the customer again and again and again. And that's what brand love means to me, right? So I'll give you some examples. Examples of being relevant, examples of being helpful what Lucky also was talking about. Examples of being conversational, letting the customers speak the voice of the brand rather than me telling what the brand should say. We were one of the first e-commerce companies to start communicating again when we got out of lockdown last year. And the first thing it did was called lockdown stories, where a girl and a guy are sitting at home and they are buying essentials from Mintra, right? We are fashion, we are a very inherently, very personal, very creative kind of a category. And it was a story about how a girl and a guy, a couple living in a house are able to do stuff in their homes by using Mintra. That was a start. Then we have been doing Mintra fashion superstar for the last two, three years, giving voices to people who never had a voice before. Folks from different parts of the community in terms of diverse population. We started bringing participants across the nation, across types of fashion sensibilities. And everybody loved it because we were representing everyone. Again, we were being helpful to the end customer. Third one I would give as an example is we started master classes, right? So again, India's top stylists, Bollywood celebrities, coming and teaching you how to put on a lehenga or dress for office occasion. These are things as just an e-commerce platform or a transactional platform we don't need to do. But we do it because this is being helpful. This is being going above and beyond. And this is what brand love will ultimately be driven by. And to the earlier points made, right? Brand love is not something that is driven only by marketing. I think a brand is driven by every single touch point in my first company, first job ever, used to call it moments of truth, right? In every moment of truth, whether it is somebody buying a package, a T-shirt from Intra, the first time they tried on and they feel, wow, I just paid 400 rupees for this and this is so amazing, right? I can't believe it. Or the first call they make to us to return something or the first experience they have after they call the contact center or the first experience they have when they become a Intra insider. I think each stage, each brand stage and each moment of truth builds on the reputation that the brand builds and the space it occupies in your mind. And that for me at the end of the day is brand love. And it is built over a long period of time. Just before as we were hearing Leslie talk about it, Maggie is a multi-decade old brand and most of us in this call are less than a decade old or maybe a decade and a half old. So it's a very different mindset for us. For us, I think it is more about doing what is right for the customer and being helpful over and over again that when they think about buying fashion, nothing else comes to mind. They are like, yeah, of course I have to buy from Intra. Why would I even think of anything else, right? And that I think for me is a combination of all those moments of truth and how we delight the customer at each touch point. Marketing and communication being one of those touch points. So that's how I would think about brand love. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more on Harish. On that note, Prasanna, you are in a very different, sort of managing a very different category and a very different life stage to what Harish mentioned. All of us here are managing categories and brands that are actually less than a decade old. So, and you work on a very different life stage of a category. Do you feel any differently about how you have built the brand love in your category? Yeah, thanks, Neha. And hi to everybody listening and to my co-panelists. So it's interesting. See, the other panelists in this here are all people from the service industry where there is a touch and feel and people actually provide you feedback to your face. In FMCG, there are two, three differences. One is there is a large base of consumers. Second is you're not touching them or meeting them on face to face. It is an interaction which happens through your communication and stuff. And you're also handling multiple brands. If I have to take on from what the earlier panelists mentioned, I see it as an outcome, which is exactly true. And each brand is at a different stage of this journey towards brand love, right? So if I take in my portfolio, I have some tool which is a well-established brand for 25 years. Then the concept of brand love is absolutely true. It's as good as what we've been hearing about Maggie, right? There are people in some parts of the country where they're swear by the brand, right? And they think that it does everything that a soap has to do. At the same time, if you take a new brand, it's at a completely different space and different time in its journey. So I equate this, it's very similar to quoting a girl and moving on to a relationship and going on to a marriage. So it is different stages in a relationship that you go through. It's a similar thing with brand building. You start off, so if you're a new brand, you can't now suddenly start talking about brand love. You'll have to go through the steps. First, you need to go and introduce yourself. You need to tell the consumer that you are so-and-so. Then move on to the next stage, provide them a functional promise. Then move on. At the same time, provide an emotional promise. Then over a period of time, if you're able to build that kind of emotional connect and people have started behaving from their side, consumers start interacting with you, start buying you, then at that stage, can I provide an emotional payoff which takes the relationship to the next level? Then build in a purpose that it takes it to a completely another level. So each brand, in my opinion, it's a journey where the outcome is what we can hope for is a brand love, but it is a very long journey and each brand needs to approach it from their reality in the business and stage of evolution of the brand and treat it accordingly. So each step in this journey will have a different requirement. That's how I see it. So a new brand needs to focus on the basic awareness, whereas the brand which is at a brand love stage where people are regularly buying it, there is a huge level of loyalty. There you have a lot of other activities of brand engagement, brand activation, purpose, other things that you can get into. So that's how I would define and define a journey which could be different for different brands. I agree. And I think also keeping this sentiment of how you sort of compare human relationships and the journey of that with brand love, I think let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the correlation between brand love and brand loyalty. What is the correlation? Is there any correlation? I think let's discuss that. And Harish, I will come back to you. Your category particularly has really low entry and exit barriers, right? Unfortunately, how do you ensure loyalty? And do you feel that loyalty does play a role or is there any correlation between brand love and brand loyalty? Specifically for categories like yours, which has very low entry and exit barriers. Well, I definitely think there is a strong correlation between customers who love our brand and who are extremely loyal to us. So if you talk to a customer who is, and there are fortunately for us, there is actually a way to describe it in more functional terms, right? We have an insider program, which is a loyalty program. And within the insider program, we have different tiers of loyal users. We have Mintra insider and select and delete an icon customers. And if you look at our top two, three tiers of customers, they would not shop anywhere else. For them, shopping for clothes anywhere else is like walking into a mall and then shopping for clothes from a general store versus walking into a Levi show or a mango show. So the specificity of the joy of shopping, they would swear by Mintra. And that's something that keeps us differentiated even like you said that exit and entry barriers are very low, but we do occupy that special place in their mind when it comes to fashion and it reflects in their share of wallet that they spend with us. So yes, there is a definite correlation, but again, as I said, we will aim to give the best delight to the customer the loyalty is more planned and more, you know, well-executed, I would say, the love happens to be an outcome. So we make sure that the best customers are treated even disproportionately, they are rewarded disproportionately. And they stay with us and hence brand love happens. I don't think it is the other way around, okay? But definitely strong correlation between somebody who is a loyal customer and somebody who has a strong brand love for us. Yeah, thanks, Arish. Hitesh, coming to you. Do you think you've enjoyed some suitable conditions in the recent times, right? Because of the whole external environment. And if so, do you think that, you know, you've been able to build a loyalty and an emotional connect among an extended TG because of, you know, the external conditions and, you know, I would say some favorable suitable conditions for you. Yeah, I would say we were able to exploit a couple of conditions. Definitely one is lockdown, work from home and the time that you spend on screen, right? So now the antique layer or we call it blue spectacle, it becomes like an essential that everybody needs to wear to protect your eyes from the screen. So yes, it helps our situation to acquire new customers, especially in the kids segment, because, you know, this is one category, which is not directly, you know, influenced by the kids with the parents as well. So when you acquire a kid, you actually acquire two more parents along with the kid, right? So that's the beauty of the business, because generally the spectacle or the average business is a very referral-led business. You know, it is often said that if you're able to invoke one drive in one family, you'll automatically win about nine to 11 customers in the vicinity of that family, either the family itself or the vicinity, right? So referral plays a very strong part in that. And that's the reason most of our loyalty programs are referral-driven, right? Which you call as gold, where people can come and do trials. They can distribute the code amongst the family and then they can get a free pair of glasses. So yes, we were able to utilize a couple of spots, one is that people sitting at home, they need glasses, you know, on screen. So that's something worked in our favor. Also, you know, in the previous edition of IPL, we were able to advertise and pass that messaging like really, really strongly. And we were able to juxtapose it by different idioms that we had. And yes, it helped us gain a lot of new customers, which you were not looking at as primary customers a few years back or maybe, you know, not from the straight, you know, perspective of thinking, we thought that, okay, people with prescription eyewear or, you know, with number of glasses have to be the primary customers. Now that focus is now shifting, right? It is moving more into the zero power customers that, you know, could be a very, very potential later on. Also, there's another thing to be noticed here is that automatically if parents, I have prescription eyewear if they have glasses. So irrespective of the kid has got prescription or not, they still want to go for that category. They want to play it a little safer. So two new acquisition habits in the customer set. One is definitely the younger people, the kids are sitting at home, working on Zoom, you know, working on glasses, basically glasses in the other audience is the progressive customers. The older audience sets living in joint family equals. I'm sorry. Currently, are they, is it something? I think something is fine to say. Okay, so the other set is the progressive customers that typically the grandparents, all the people around the age of 50, 55 are living in a joint setup. We usually don't see the order coming directly from their phone numbers. It usually comes from the existing customers' phone numbers who've been purchasing regular eyeglasses, but yes, as a category, it's an inclusion. So to curtail that or to arrest that, we started creating profiles on the website on Lenscard. That means, you know, it'll actually ask who you're buying it for, just like how you see it on Netflix and who are you watching it for. So typically when you put the profile, we have stored the customer's frame size at the frame that fits his face, because we've got a 3D try-on. And on top of that, we also save the power. So the power and the frame size works like magic in personalization, because you know, we don't have any other levels of personalization like a Mensra does, right? The closest we can get to it, if you know your bridge size, your temple size and the kind of glasses you've purchased in the past. So I think yes, progressive and kids definitely has helped us acquire new customers in this situation. Interesting. Do you also see more stickiness or loyalty around this time? So there's a beauty of it is that if a customer has made more than one purchase and loyalty is not a problem for us, right? Our main game is to go to the second purchase. Our second or third consecutive purchase is after that loyalty is not an issue, right? Then we kind of become like a family business for the customer, right? Because they feel pride in sharing what they purchase and they get more customers from the same family set up with the friend set up itself. The most difficult task is to retain customer after the first purchase, right? As I said, the distractions are big, right? There is, it's a scattered industry. It's distributed over every region. So people have pretty good examples or reasons to take our product and compare it to a nearest optician and then get misinformed and buy something else, perceiving it to be as good as our product. But the moment we clear the hurdle of second, we are usually good to go. And that's the reason on most of our ages we do buy one, get one, right? So we are creating that need because luckily we have the gift of margin. We are back when integrated and we control the entire supply chain. So we run it on buy one, get one because we said it even if the pretext is that the customer makes two purchases, even the second one is free, zero rupees. In the first instance itself, the chances of the customer will stick longer is very high. Okay, great. Lucky, Hiday spoke about the power of word of mouth and reference. I'm sure that in your category, this plays a very important role in sort of one of course acquisition and then continuing with the brand love So what do you have to say about building loyalty and specifically coming by the route of the reference? Yeah, I think you put it very right, Neha, for us. I think education is one category where time is far bigger than money, right? The amount of time you spend with a brand and the more you are invested into a brand, it's like saying you don't move your, you don't shift your power and your teacher and your doctor very, very easily, right? So, and I think it's very true because some of these categories and some of these professions are such where you really get into, all tick boxes check, right? When you really know that you're in the right place, you're getting treated well, you are very relevant, you know, someone's taking care of you. So I think for us, it is actually a very, very big agenda that we need to be able to kind of really focus on, you know, retention and repeat in a very big way, right? And for that, like I came back to my previous point that it's very important to keep focusing on how the journey is unfolding. It's not just about acquiring new customers, right? For us, it's really about retaining them and really giving them value that goes beyond because for us, the acquisition cost dramatically reduces once you look at second year, third year. I think and then the cost of acquisition obviously is very, very high for a category like us. But at the same time, if you do it well, you know, we are in very aptly placed for us to not really kind of really bother about, you know, again, reacquisitions and next year onwards, right? At the same time, it's very important to know that, you know, when the disconnect is high, you won't get that person back. See, I believe that, you know, people would still, some point of the other, you know, for my friend, Harish here, I think one mistake here and there probably, you know, you'll probably would back sometime later with some other program. But I think for us, opportunity cost is quite high. And I think if there's a bad experience or if you don't see the first year going well or the first three months going well, I think you kind of lost the person for good, right? Because you don't go to the guy who cut your hair bad for the first time, right? You just don't go to him again, right? So I think for us... The correction, like, if we miss the first time, we are done. I think it's important for all of us, for sure, like through the categories here. Yeah, and I think it's also because Harish, because we kind of live in the age of abundance now, right? I think Chris spoiled for choices between brands and between the same guys giving two options and many brands fighting for the same mind space and love, so-called love, right? So I think you don't get that too many options. And for us, like, obviously stakes are quite high. It's a very high involvement category. So we really truly believe that for the first one month, we call it seven day, 15 day, and then obviously the first quarter kind of a play. And we really need to ensure that the NPS, for example, is kind of constantly maintained. We want to be very sure that the relationship metric is evolving and strengthening for our own customers, paid customers as we go forward in the journey. And word-of-mouth reference is a very, very big deal for us. In fact, it comes second after ATL in terms of both awareness creation and also getting us to customers. So I think we can't emphasize more on how important it is. But I think, like Prasanna put it here, it's a very young brand. And we've just started on the journey. It's too early to call out people who have started falling in love with the model or the brand. But I think what we can hope for is that we are able to deliver value in every experience. And I think with that in place, we hope that we really see our business kicking in from early learning. We have three verticals, early learning which starts from first standard. And we have an option of students getting trained for IITJ, right? So it's a full spectrum business, right? So I think hopefully someday there will come a student where someone's gonna be enrolled in a coding class with Vedantu and gonna go on to clear IITJ from Vedantu. So, yeah, fingers crossed. And I think that's the aim to kind of achieve. You should start flashing. I don't wanna be next Steve Jobs, right? So I don't know in today's era, these kind of things work. I think the formal world of education is kind of taken over but I think we wanna stick to sincerity. I think there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of sanctity to education, Hitesh. I think somewhere you gotta maintain that. And I think some things are short-lived than others. If you are true to your DNA, if you kind of stick to your roots, I think people will come back, yeah. Cool, okay. Ashish coming to you, I think both Lucky and Hitesh did mention that second purchase is the sweet spot somehow, right? In your category, I'm not sure how many times you were actually even able to take your consumer to sort of experience the product, right? Experience the service even once. I'm sure that the lesser, the better for you guys but what do you feel about it? I mean, what do you feel about the insurance category? How do you build loyalty where 80% of your users don't even get to experience really the product to the end? I think what's very interesting and I've been listening to everyone is like, I really find five or six different marketers agreeing to one standard definition. It has been really good to see. Everyone here believes that brand life is an outcome and it is, and as Hitesh also said, sometimes brand love can actually come from the designers or who design your product design or who design how the way the product flows. So that is not a marketing driven function. I also believe one of the thing is that if love is a loaded word and like he said, the so-called brand love. If love is a loaded word, I think loyalty is also pretty loaded. I believe that we expect customers to say, if I am loyal to this brand, I will never ever buy any other brand. Now that's done, that really doesn't happen. For example, if you slap on fresh sport and mint on a deodorant, I'll buy it. Those three things are enough. So for us, I think what I'm trying to bring to the point is customer satisfaction at every stage, whether it is at a purchase day, whether you actually get to see the brand in action. And for us, brand in action will be the time that our customer actually claims. So customer satisfaction at every stage is what we import. If you have a great, fantastic experience the first time you actually land on the app or on the website, because what has happened is there is a big misunderstanding that insurance category is complicated and you'd need help. And customers actually go on and try for the first time, they enter the card details and as they go through the journey, that delight is what we focus on. The fact that I can provide great customer satisfaction during the buying phase, during the discovery phase and then when you, and again, a great bank or a great insurance company is the one that stays in the background. You really don't feel the need of having to utilize that. I mean, if I have to turn up to my bank for something, I will really be angry. That's what I did. So, and you're right, sometimes we miss out on the fact that 80% of our customers don't claim. So how do I actually show you what great brand promise I can deliver when you actually claim? But that's the part. So instead of focusing on that, just only on the 20% you also focus on the 80, saying, hey, if you had a great year, you didn't have any issues. So enjoy this great buying process, the easiest renewal process. And in case, just in case you had a bad luck and you had a claim, let me give you something that will just delight you. So we have something called, one of the first in the industries, three day claim settlement or on account settlement. There are customers who will file a claim in the morning and I've got money in the account by evening. One of the other things that we did recently on health insurance was that for the first time ever, we credited money into a patient's account who was getting admitted into the hospital. Even before they claim it because the other hospital refused to do cashless claims. It has never been done in the industry. We are breaking this. So you deposited money into the customer's account even before they claim it. And because we knew the customer was serious, he was in the hospital. So those are the things. And it shows three out of four customers come back to our company. That's crazy. And I would take that percentage any day. And we've got NPS scores in the high eighties when it comes to people who have claimed from Apple. So this is, I think our obsession with customer satisfaction, trying to make it easy, simpler, even eventually leading to the outcome of brand loss. But that's the, as I said, that's all, we all understand the fact that it's a derived metric. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yes, Nia, a quick point to what I was just saying is that I think there are far more light users to a brand than heavy users, right? Eventually the number of users to a brand which are light users are far higher, right? So I think it's obviously a little more emphasis today on loyalty, but I think let's remember that, like Ashish said, to be really crafting mass programs to the light users, to delight them, is as important as to be able to craft something very, very intense for the high intensity or high frequency users. So I think it's an important point that we should not miss out on the fact that all of our focus of love is only going on creating those 20% guys who come to us because we all know, you know, loyalty is an expensive metric to maintain. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, such a small 10% of your customers are probably loyal as well. And when we say loyal as in the ones who I will never go to another brand, you know, that kind of loyalty we're talking about. Yeah. Okay, so quickly moving on guys, Prasanna, you manage, you know, iconic brands and tools. Does satisfaction or loyalty look any different for you? I mean, honestly, I have worked on FNCG for, you know, many, many years. In fact, I've grown up in the FNCG environment and I know that how two brands can coexist in the same bathroom. So, you know, how do you ensure some loyalty and, you know, what does satisfaction look like for a brand like simple? Yeah, it's interesting. They have, you know, with the diverse panel here, I was just thinking about it. If you take Vedanto and the hackbook where the cost of each purchase is higher compared to a Linskart and a Minthra. And when you come to me, I will do the cheapest. So, the kind of repeat purchase that everybody has in their mind is at a different level to define loyalty. For a Vedanto or insurance, it could be two, three purchases would be considered as great loyalty. But if you come to FNCG, if a person continuously buys 50 times, even then I would doubt to call them as a loyal consumer. That's the first thing. So, the question of how many repeat purchase is going to define and how are you going to define loyalty is going to be different. But having said that, the first purchase for anybody to any of this industry, the first purchase becomes extremely important. You have to get the person for the first purchase which will have different tactics of its own. So, that's the most important. But after that, get them repeat over a period of time will be different point of time and it will depend upon how. So, in our case in FMCG, for example, we have data which I can track saying, what is the kind of loyalty and what is the kind of breakup of a customer that I'm getting up getting. So, for example, in certain markets of us like in Andhra for Santu, which is the largest brand there, almost 50% of the consumers there in that market who buy Santu, almost 80% of their annual requirement of soap is satisfied by Santu. So, that's the kind of loyalty that we're talking about. So, there are certain markets for certain brands where loyalty is a huge base of consumers unlike what we were talking earlier. Lucky was talking about it's a small base but there are different brands at different stages. But if I go to another market where the loyalty is lesser, it will be lesser. So, I need to adapt my approach to each of these markets differently. So, loyalty is a great measure to define brand love. Having said that in FMCG, there is also a possibility because over a period of time, what happens in FMCG is also inertia buying. Every time you go to the market by habit, you're buying. So, it's also important to track some of the imagery metrics which you want to position your brand on. So, apart from loyalty, that parameter also becomes important. What is key or she as a consumer said, thinking about the brand? Is there a key imagery that we are tracking? Is that going lower in spite of loyalty being high? Is an extremely important thing because if the imagery drops, you can lose your loyal customers at any point of time. They might not show it today. They might continue to buy because of inertia, but if their mind measures about your brand and the imagery goes down, they can drop you at any time. So, I would say loyalty, in addition to the way the brand images and how people see your brand or position your brand in their mind is also something very important to ensure that you have brand love. Sure, sure. Thanks, thank you Sana, very helpful. And I love to discuss the SMCG environment. It's my DNA, so I love it. Guys, moving on to the next part of the discussion, let's talk a little bit about measurement. We are most often faced by very stiff questions by our CFOs and our leadership teams, that how will this impact? How will this initiative ultimately have an impact on the P&L? I'm sure we've all faced those questions. So, let's talk a little bit about how we measure or do we measure it at all. Lucky to start with you, there is a lot of buzz in your category, right? I think it's a very fierce category right now, especially during the lockdown. How do you firstly, how do you differentiate between buzz and love, right? And then moving on to the second part is that how do you think that you've measured the impact of brand love? Yeah, so I think a couple of ways, Neha. So, first of all, I think, I don't think there are easy answers to this. We've all gone into rooms where questions on brand love and what is even brand spends driving. Forget about brand love, I'm asking a bigger question and it's difficult to today attribute to a T in terms of what exactly is brand spends doing. But having said that, there are a couple of ways to look at it, right? And couple of lead metric, couple of black metric kind of a philosophy. So, obviously, if you are a brand trying to drive brand love or at least affinity and passion towards your brand, if I break it up into a slightly more comprehensible pieces. So, I think what we do is what we are trying to kind of craft now. And I think I picked up from Nike and Nike used to do it many years back and they still do it. Is that in many parlances, we have all known of brand equity studies. But I think those are very strategically used for either to prove a point in larger boardroom meetings or more on M&A opportunities kind of a places, right? But having said that, what I am firstly trying to drive it with Anto is that we're trying to craft something like a mini equity kind of a conversation happening every once in two months. So, what we do is actually if you really break up brand love, right? It's actually comes from interpersonal theory of love, right? So, essentially, what are the components of it, right? It's affinity, right? Which is connectedness and bondedness, which in many ways, you know, brand C and Milwood Brown fundamentals have proven. It's intimacy, right? Which is how passionate you are about the whole thing and trust, naturally kind of breaking down brand love into pieces, right? So, what we are trying to craft something called, let's say a brand passion score or a brand relationship equity score, which is essentially a combination metric, which is a brand that is made for me. It's a statement that we could craft out of the brand health track, is a brand that I trust and is a brand that I passionately or purposely talk to others for or with. So, I think a kind of a composite score gives us a strength of the relationship of the brand with the core users and I'm emphasizing here core users because you can't be everything to everyone and you've got to be very specific that where are you driving this equity from, correct? And if you're, and every brand has these three set of, you know, circles, right? The insiders, rightly said, Harish is called the Winther insiders, right? Like, there's an insiders, there is the followers and then there is the feeders, right? So, with the insiders and the followers, we quickly test, you know, these three composite scores of, is a brand I trust, is a brand that I recommend or passionately or fondly talk about and is a brand that I, is made for me. It's extremely relevant for me. I think these three metric combined gives us a view of what the strength is and if you see competitively going up and down, we know the relationship is moving because of certain interventions and maybe because of category play. Like you said, it's a very hectic category and the other thing which we measure and I think it's an important thing to do is social equity. I think the share of voice, the positive share of sentiment, which is by the way a weekly metric and not a monthly by monthly kind of a thing because I think everyday conversations are happening on choosing a brand online before anything else is happening today. So I think if you are creating, giving and measuring your social equity through a combination metric of share of voice, positivity or the passion share of voice within the social sentiment and are you seeing some leading and lagging measure in terms of your brands getting called out for a particular type of attributes versus others and versus competition. So I think in between these combinations, we are able to kind of assign some weightages and create, hey, this is the strength of a brand and for users who are core, who are insiders, this is the strength of the brand versus let's say outside circle of followers or feeders. But I think I still believe the correlation of all of this to hardcore business metric of share of wallet or share of revenue or share of market is still a modeling exercise. The more data you sit on, the more the heritage of your brand, the more you are able to prove this in boardrooms and CFRs. I think everywhere else, what the task for me, for example, is to forward-looking kind of build this models and help people track those to those models that he looks like there is a correlation getting established. The more we do this, the more this is happening and the forward-looking thing is working out better that we don't have too much heritage and backward-looking data right now. So I think that's how we look at the play of measuring brand love, but I'm telling you, there is no easy answer to this. It's easier said than done. And hopefully people buy into our arguments and people kind of take a shot at this and say, okay, fine, let's look at some of the leading metrics and let's look at some forecasting on these things versus trying to prove a point here and now. And if we shut down, by the way, initiatives like this in a quarter because of these things not happening. And I think then it's like the worst situation ever. Sorry, Harish. Minthra is a very data-rich organization, right? And Lucky mentioned that the more data you have, the better measurements you can do of any kind of brand love or loyalty. So do you have any magic tools and magic wands that you sort of used to measure brand love? Don't be all wishy-washy. Actually, Lucky covered quite a few things. So I do agree with him on, so one, imaginary metrics on leadership and fashion, that matters a lot. So if somebody thinks of expertise in fashion, knowledge in fashion, choice, selection, price, offers, we measure a lot of these things in terms of mind metrics. I think this combines to an equity score and we choose the ones that matter to us the most in a particular given segment. So in a segment, if you want to be known as fashion forward and the trend leader, then we track that. If somewhere else, selection is what matters, then we track that. So we have bi-segment, we understand the imaginary metrics. Second, we do definitely social. So share of voice, positive share of voice and social. So that sounds another metric. I think the one that he didn't cover that I would add is given it's a very, very cooperative category and like you said, the cost of exiting and entering the category is so low. The common spot, very basic, you know, whether it's metrics also matters. When somebody thinks of online fashion, are they thinking of me first? And as long as that scores keep going, it means that at the moment of impulse purchase, they think of me before anyone else. So while it's a very basic type of metric, common and total spawn, that also helps us identify the impact that are above the line and brand conversations are having. While a lot of below or rather performance-led kind of pushes reflect in other things, right? So it may be consideration, maybe purchase intent and so on. So imaginary metrics, social and very, very top-level mind metrics, these are the three combination of these three is what I look at. Thank you. Thanks, Adish. It is coming to you. I think some of the points, the tools, the modeling has been covered. I think for your category, like you mentioned, sometimes the buyer is not the user himself. So that is how do you kind of measure the brand love? So honestly, Neha, I think brand love is quite perceptive and at the same time, measurable to an extent, every good CMO worth a salt would know what is the brand love of his organization. Adish's choice, whether he chooses to tell his CEO or not or whether he makes it public or not, but he knows it, right? Every CMO would know at the back of his hand what is the level of brand love his company is operating at. And I think there are two, three main factors that in a place like ours where the primary customer may not be the user at the same time, we still depend on a lot of traditional metrics. For example, for us, the comment space and social media is very important. Comment and the saves and the shares, right? We feel that Instagram today is a world of wonders for marketers. I take that stats very personally, right from a previous assignment to current one because I go very deep into it in terms of every story, every post, every reel, what is the kind of shares? What is the kind of saves that are happening on that? Because it gives me a little bit of an idea that what direction the content is heading, right? And content, it's a very, very critical part in brand love. That is one. Second is the absolute hard metrics could be things like, for example, your repeat gap, right? So your cost of purchase, if it's 100 rupees, in an ideal situation where your repeat customers are an indicator of brand love, which are not coming more than 10 or 11 rupees, right? The one-tenth of cash, that's a scenario that most of the people would want to maintain at. And I truly believe that marketing follows the rule of state, right? So as we say that a perfect state is recognized by how it takes care of its weakest. A perfect marketing is recognized by how it enchants the person who's typically not your audience as well, right? That's a very one-strong analogy which I find with marketing and a state. Secondly, you have developing state, develop state in marketing also you're developing marketing teams and develop marketing teams, right? So it's always there's a team which is following a process and getting there and but a whole lot of confusion and chaos is existing and the other teams sit comfortably where they exactly know what they need to look at and what are the levers they need to press. So one is as a soft metrics, I would say Instagram, I take very seriously and the hard metrics is a repeat cat. Somewhere in the middle of all this, you know, we do have a panel, wherever I work, I always believe in having a consumer panel. My consumer panel is a very strong indicator of whatever things we are doing as marketers is correct or not, right? The panel is not responsible to inform us about the product quality or, you know, their customer service experience to some extent, but largely we are keeping a panel to see the efficacy of what are they pursuing about the brand with every piece of communication that kind of goes out. As a marketer, we can just control communication and media, right? We don't have enough controls over the product or the supply. We can always have meetings in the boardrooms and bring these points out, but we are not direct controllers of it, right? We anticipate we pray for the best but the real control is basically communication and media. So I think having a panel, the soft metrics and social media and the hard metrics on the repeat cat versus new cat, if these three things are well maintained, you will be a developed marketing team, right? For sure, you'll be like a developed nation or developed marketing team. And basically your job becomes easy and you're getting paid for like four hours of duty every day then. Yeah, thanks, thanks Pesh. Thank you guys. I think super, super enriching conversation. I will be careful of the fact that we are on a Friday evening and we are approaching the closing time. So I think what we can do is that very quickly, let's go around the table and maybe have just one brief closing remark from all of you as what is the takeaway that you want the young marketers to sort of believe in when it comes to brand love? Hitesh, we can start with you since you're on the screen right now. Be very honest with where your brand stands today, right? There is no shame. If your brand is not at the top pedestal and there's still a journey to cover, be at least honest with yourself and the stakeholders in the company, right? There is no point sugar polishing when you really know that when you're getting a million views boosted and you get one comment that, hey, Neha, how are you doing, right? So you clearly see the signal where it stands. Just be very honest with it because that's the first step. If that is not there, then you'll pretty end up in a very messy state. And I see a lot of youngsters who want to operate a SMCG kind of scenario in a startup. It's not possible, right? Today what you see with the Britannia or Wipro or Taj Mahal or any liver company is the hard work of late 60, 70 years put together a lot of different individuals across the world. Now we are trying to fast track all of it with company like Lenscard, Mentra, Naika, so many others, Zako. So when you're fast tracking it, right? Not necessarily that the same principles will apply. Everything has to be a little bit on a fast mode and honesty. And I think that is really, really important because this is something which is missing, right? People don't stand up and say that, look, I know we are in deep shit right now. We've got to crawl out of it, right? Everybody kind of starts believing that we are in a sweet space and then there is no scope for improvement from that point. So I think that is the most important thing I believe. Thanks for being brutally honest there, loved it. Lucky, anything from you? No, I just had to summarize with when I was looking at that topic of discussion also, the song that came to my mind was Beatles, All the Money Kind by Me Love, right? So I think to all the marketers, budding, non-budding, whatever, young old, I think you need to have your own formulas. I don't think there's a state cut metric to all of this. Just pick the foundation, simple, keep track of, and I think there are enough foundational frameworks available out there in terms of, how to measure all of these things, how to build it. But I think you just need to keep a pulse on the consumer. I think if you keep the panel like it was saying, very baby, very, very close to your consumer. I think the more closer you are, the more frequent you talk to them, the more you understand. And trust me, like understanding human beings and therefore relationships are complicated, it's not easy to get them, it's not easy to maintain them. It's not easy to even kind of build it. I think you gotta be, keep reinventing, inventing. And I think state root to the fundamentals of who the brand is. I think knowing thyself is very, very important before you go out and start whoing your consumers with all the love. So I think, yeah, to the state answer, keep your horizons slightly broader, go beyond advertising, start to look at smaller wins. I think someone said it right in gloves, even the small things matter. In fact, small things matter than the bigger gestures, right? So keep at it, find your small gestures, big gestures and know thyself and know your customers well, that's it. Thank you, Lucky, for the life lessons, much more than brand love lessons. Harish, anything from you? I agree with what Hitesh and Lucky said and I'll take a slightly different route so that I add to the conversation, right? In categories where you have a very vocal customer, let your customer build your brand with you. We tend to like, oh, my brand, I will say, I will control, I will say exactly what is supposed to be said. There's a 200 page brand guideline book that you should not cross and all that will happen, right? That age is past. The best brands are built when the customer speaks on your behalf and they are able to fight for you, they are able to speak your language, they go out and make things possible which you never thought was possible. So I think letting go of a bit of control and letting them build a brand with you and your Spotify is a prime example of it, I would say. Yes, I- That would be my tip for, especially in new age companies, let the customer build a brand with you. I completely agree, Harish. And I think this is something that, honestly, I have learned after coming to Spotify, I haven't done it in FMCG brands, even brands like Vodafone, which are very iconic brands. And a young brand like Spotify and just a matter of a year, year and a half, two years, we actually leveraged, the consumer love to build the brand further. So completely agree with you on that one. Ashish, anything from you? I think you're on mute, can't hear you. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So I would just say that every consumer has an expectation without any category. I have an expectation that when I go to a particular show or a particular category, how I will, what is my interaction going to be? So I think if I had to summarize, I would just say that, if you consistently exceed your customer's expectations when they deal with you or what they expect to do with you, and you do it consistently and you obsess over customer satisfaction, eventually you will have brand love. You'll have the love, you'll have the loyalty, and you'll have all the flowers and et cetera being thrown at you. But these are the three things. You constantly exceed your customer's expectations, whether it is, I mean, whether it's an aqua, whether it's Spotify, whether it's Nets, Carpentra, now the way my expect, I have a particular sense of what will happen if I go to one of these players. You constantly exceed it, you do it consistently and you obsess over customer satisfaction, eventually you will have all the love. Yeah, thanks, thanks, Ashish. Anything from you, Prasanna? I was closing the mic. For me, I think most of the people have covered most of the points. The one point is slightly radically kind of going away from the main topic of putting brand love as an important thing. I actually feel it's not a very important thing. I feel that it's not a discussion that I would like to have with the CFO or a business head or in the boardroom because it's an idea which has its relevance in the marketing fraternity. Why? Because if I have to get a team to engage with the consumer in different ways, then brand love is a good way to tell him or her that you need to have a different kind of engagement to the consumer, there the brand love plays a role. Otherwise, if I have to evaluate my business, then loyalty is a good alternate, look at your repeat purchases, look at your loyal consumers, how they are growing, that's a better and more grounded way of measuring brand love. And brand love, I think, should be kept to the marketing council and the marketing room. Absolutely. I never want to have these conversations with my CFO and the leadership team trust me. Okay, thank you guys. Thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed discussing this topic with this diverse team and I hope you enjoyed this time spent with us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.