Category: Executive Dossier

Mumbai: Who wouldn’t love to dig their teeth into a crispy burger, the one which makes a crunchy sound each time you bite into it? We all certainly would love to. Hop on to the ride wherein we take you through the story of Good Flippin’ Burgers, which has made quite a ‘sound’ in the QSR (quick service restaurant) market ever since it sprung up in 2019.

Launched in Mumbai, the brand currently has a total of 21 outlets across the city and Delhi, with a headcount of more than 250 employees. With 14 stores across Mumbai, the brand made inroads in Delhi this year with seven new outlets, which include one exclusive mall outlet too.

It all started with the simple aim of creating a haven for foodies that serves fresh, delicious burgers that are priced right. Since then, the burger chain has been flippin’ hearts from one customer to the next every day across all its outlets.

The size of the organised QSR sub-segment is estimated to be Rs 348 billion, and the chain QSR segment is estimated to be Rs 176 billion. The QSR chain segment is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 per cent over FY20–FY25. The QSR market is led by international brands such as Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, and Burger King. International brands dominate this space, as players such as Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and Subway cumulatively account for about 52 per cent of the chain QSR market in India.

In an exclusive tête-à-tête with Indiantelevision.com, Good Flippin’ Burgers founders Sijo Mathew, Sid Marchant, and Viren D’Silva discuss the QSR market, starting up almost at the onset of the pandemic and still making it through, et al.

Good Flippin’ Burgers plans to finish with an annual revenue of Rs 40 crore this year and is on the way to getting to approx. Rs 300 crore in under four years.

In 2022–2023, the brand aims to expand geographically in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Bangalore with multi-formats that include cloud, dine-in, hybrid, malls, and airports. It has been building for scale from day one. The current menu includes 13 burgers, 11 sides and two hotdogs for vegetarians, non-vegetarians, and vegans alike. Dine-in outlets also serve an entire coffee & shake menu as well.

Earlier this year, Good Flippin’ Burgers announced a fresh round of funding amounting to one million dollars. It was led by Kerala Blasters Football Club director Nikhil Bharadwaj, IIFL Wealth & Asset Management founder, managing director, & CEO Karan Bhagat, IIFL Wealth & Asset Management co-founder and joint CEO of wealth management business Yatin Shah, Deen Dayal Investments index trader Manish Hathiramani. Along with these respected names, others from the Mumbai entertainment industry also participated in this round, which included Netflix India general counsel Kiran Desai, Vikram Malhotra, Mamta Anand, and Vedant Bali.

Three passionate foodies, Matthew, Marchant, and D’Silva, moved from their corporate backgrounds to start an entrepreneurial journey in the food and hospitality industries. Each member brought a unique and varied experience to the table that created synergies, building on each other’s strengths. The one aim that bound all of them together was the dream to make Good Flippin’ Burgers India’s most loved burger brand. Their individual experiences all added up to creating goalposts to reach this vision.

Under their leadership, Good Flippin’ Burgers endeavours to ensure burgers are served as they are meant to be: fresh, full of flavour, non-messy, and delicious. As the patrons grew, one delicious burger at a time, investors who loved Good Flippin’ Burgers and wanted to be a part of its growth journey came on board, keeping people, processes, products, and patrons as its key stakeholders.

Marchant is a first-generation entrepreneur, a certified Q grader (coffee), and a Specialty Coffee Association trainer. He started his career in retail real estate and progressed to the food and beverage industry. The former category head (food & beverage) of Tata Starbucks has an overall 17 years of combined experience in the retail real estate and food & beverage industries. Marchant co-founded KC Roasters (formerly Koinonia Coffee Roasters) and successfully ran a Tibbs Frankie franchise. He also conceptualised and introduced Starbucks’ first Diwali blend coffee internationally. Driven by sheer passion and business acumen, he identified the premium burger QSR chain business as a niche with immense growth potential and hence started Good Flippin’ Burgers.

D’Silva started his career as a contributing journalist for mid-day while still in college, which nurtured his interest in brand communication. His work experience spanning 20 years across various managerial roles in the sports industry gave him the opportunity to explore various aspects of running a team. These included the role of CEO Sports for two franchises in the ISL (Indian Super League) for Kerala Blasters and the PKL (Premier Kabaddi League) for Tamil Thalaivas, launching a sports channel – Prime Sports – in the Middle East with Arab Radio and Television, and sales of international media rights for the IPL with World Sport Group.

D’Silva met Marchant when he partnered with him in the Tibbs Frankie franchise and developed a great working relationship. He came on board to scale and grow Good Flippin’ Burgers as a national brand.

Mathew was born and raised in the Middle East. He moved to Afghanistan in 2007 to support his brother’s efforts to support the US military and NATO in their peacekeeping efforts. He later worked for the US department of defence in Kabul as a logistic expert till 2016.

Over the years, he kept working on his passion project: the perfect recipe for the perfect burger. As his recipe and taste buds evolved, he became a burger purist and a firm believer in the fact that burgers are meant to be simple. The flavours of the meat must do the talking instead of all the accompaniments and sauces. Prior to joining hands with Sid and Viren in Good Flippin’ Burgers, Matthew was a part of the Bay City Grill, a popular burger joint in Bandra.

At Good Flippin’ Burgers, Matthew heads product development, a role the self-taught chef is happy to potter around in as he picks up customer conversations and experiments with creating new burgers that will delight foodies. All the lip-smacking and unique recipes of Good Flippin’ Burgers have been created by him. 

Excerpts:

On launching Good Flippin’ Burgers almost at the brink of covid, and the way the pandemic affected your business, especially when you were just starting off

Matthew: A lot of restaurants were affected by the lockdown, forcing people to stay in rather than dine out. The pandemic, however, accelerated our growth as people were ready to experiment and try out new forms of fine cuisine via online delivery. Burgers were one such category that benefited, and it became an acceptable and much sought-after category under online delivery. We started off as a delivery brand, so we were well poised and ready to cater to the needs of our customers during the pandemic.

Hygiene is our topmost priority and is non-negotiable at Good Flippin’. Customers who regularly ordered from us were assured of the quality, taste, and great hygiene standards of our burgers and recommended Good Flippin’ Burgers to their friends and families, which helped our brand gain popularity soon. We serve delicious, juicy, non-messy burgers that have great packaging, on-time marketing, and assured customer support to ensure that, in 30 minutes or less, we are able to deliver the customer as close to a close-in dine-in experience as possible. All of this created a favourable environment for us and accelerated our growth. 

On the USP of Good Flippin’ Burgers and drawing so much popularity for the brand in such little time

Marchant: We believe popularity is a by-product of consistently doing the simple things every day with a focus on the product, people, and process, and on the patrons to whom we listen. Their valuable feedback constantly helps us improve ourselves. The USP of Good Flippin’ Burgers is that it has been built for scale from day one and provides our customers with the best and most consistent experience, crafted with love and joy, be it home delivery or a dine-in experience.

On starting a burger brand like Good Flippin’ Burgers when there are already so many burger brands in the country

Marchant: Yes, there are various burger brands, but there are very few national brands and even international homegrown brands. The market was underpenetrated when we started, and over the years, many new brands have entered the market.

On you three finding a way to each other – whether being friends/acquaintances from before, the common love for food or something else brought you three together to launch Good Flippin’ Burgers  

D’Silva: It is interesting that you put it that way, and God definitely played a part in bringing us together. Sid and I go back 15 years, and food has always been on the periphery of our conversations. We started TIBB’s franchises as a side hustle whilst we had corporate day jobs. But we did not have our own product that was a reflection of our ambitions, and that’s when Marchant met Matthew, the man with the magic hands who made the best burgers we had ever eaten. The lure of creating a home-grown international brand was too much of an opportunity as well as a challenge to let go, so we quit our corporate jobs and became the power of three with the vision to be India’s most loved burger brand.

On the investments made by Good Flippin’ Burgers and fundraising for the company (apart from the funding that you raised earlier this year) – your future plans?

D’Silva: Good Flippin’ Burgers has invested in people and processes. With people, be it the corporate team or people who work at the stores, we have never tried to cut corners as they are the human capital we have invested in. With the process, we have focused on automation, replication, and identification, be it the automated equipment in our stores or product creation in the central kitchen. We invest in understanding our consumers by listening, learning, and reacting in a personalised manner. Technology plays a crucial role in the area of investment.

Fundraising is a continuous process, but we only raise money to grow and expand. The right capital from the right people is important, and by God’s grace, our investors have backed us and supported us a lot. We will have another fundraising round shortly, having delivered on our goals from the fundraiser earlier this year.

On the way, marketing plays an important role for Good Flippin’ Burgers in beating the competition in the QSRs market

D’Silva: The reason investors and franchisees flock to well-established international brands is that creating a brand that resonates with consumers is not easy. But there is greater value in creating a brand, and that is not just valuation-wise; it is also because the four to six per cent royalties that you pay to international brands are saved when you create your own homegrown brand. With investments in marketing, it’s virtually impossible to create a brand, but we do it in a nimble manner using the power of new-age media to tell our story. The more people hear about us, the more they try our products, so we focus on building a great experience for the customer. I believe there is no greater marketing asset than a satisfied customer, so the highest NPS score possible is where we invest the most.

On the challenges faced by the Indian QSRs when international QSR brands are expanding their roots in India and are customising their menus as per demand like – Tim Hortons and Starbucks

Marchant: Indian QSRs have seen more misses than hits historically, so getting people to believe that something homegrown can be as good if not better than any international brand that comes into India is a challenge. Creating SOPs, building teams, and not falling prey to investors who would like 10 stores to open a month are the challenges Indian QSRs face today.

On India witnessing a resurgence in the number of QSRs as many brands are expanding 

D’Silva: It’s fantastic, and we can only grow together. We see competition in many ways as something to learn from and expand the overall market. QSR is poised to grow at 23 per cent CAGR in the next five years.

On the significance of product innovation for brands to beat the competition in the market

Marchant: Keeping a lean and focused menu is probably as important as constant innovation. Matthew leads our product innovation, and everything that comes out of our stable is special. We also test product-market fit with limited-time offers.

On the challenges that you have faced as a newly launched brand amongst a host of large international and national brands, and overcoming those

D’Silva: In the early stages, it was a belief, but as we have grown, numbers speak for themselves, and larger capital has become more readily available to us, something big brands have had from day one. The only way to overcome the obstacles is to hit those goals and the matrix on a consistent basis. We have grown 3x in store count while maintaining a store profitability of 20 per cent. We understand this.

On the trends and innovations that the Indian QSR market will witness

Marchant: New entrants are coming into the market with great products and founders, and they are challenging the status quo. The trend we are noticing is that customers are willing to pay for a better and fuller experience, and their tastes are also maturing with more exposure. QSR has to focus more on the product than the novelty of fast food.

D’Silva:  The use of AI and kitchen automation will leapfrog in the next five years.

Mumbai: Brandie is a Sweden-based word-of-mouth platform that enables brands to drive user-generated content at minimum cost by connecting brands with real customers and genuine reviews, thereby helping brands reach a larger audience and build a community.

Brandie democratises marketing by giving the benefit of the top one per cent of social media users to the other 99 per cent with an average engagement rate of 22 per cent and 6–8x better results than an influencer-led campaign.

For brands, this means they can harness the power of word-of-mouth on social media at scale. For users, this means that they can connect with their favourite brands and be rewarded for the content they share. Brandie has over 80,000 advocates on its platform whom brands can source and mobilise for their campaigns.

Founded by Swedish entrepreneurs Pranav Kosuri and Douglas Andersson, Brandie has activated over 76,287 content creators, reaching 130 million social media users via their campaigns.

The brands onboard Brandie are BookMyShow, Truecaller, Dominos, Nivea, P&G, Swiggy, Puma, Air India, Tata Salt, Fevicol, and Wellbeing Nutrition, among others.

Before commencing his entrepreneurial career, Kosuri studied at Stockholm University and at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and holds an M.Sc. in Molecular Biology. He is a marketing expert and successful entrepreneur who has founded four companies in Silicon Valley, as well as in Europe.

He has taught entrepreneurship at the Royal Institute of Technology and at the Stockholm School of Economics. He holds a board seat at the Sweden-India Business Council and was recently named Sweden’s Top Entrepreneur Under 30 by Sweden’s largest business magazine, Dagens Industri (DI).

For three years since 2017, he has been invited to India to give lectures to 2,000 students from over 40 universities across India, with the vision to help Indian teenagers venture out and start their own businesses.

Five years ago, he created Scandinavia’s most successful crowdfunding campaign for his company, Flic—the world’s smartest button. His venture rapidly rose to success and was named Europe’s hottest hardware startup by Wired Magazine. Since then, Flic buttons have been used more than 30 million (three crore) times in 110 countries, largely through lasting partnerships with major corporations including Google, Volvo, Spotify, and Uber.

Andersson, meanwhile, has extensive experience in B2B sales and brand building. He has been pronounced Sweden’s Top Salesman 2014 (awarded by Hi3G). With an impressive resume in business development for both large corporations and rising tech startups, he brings extensive insight on how to do product development with a focus on design and sales.

Being the head of the business development team at one of Sweden’s fastest-growing media companies, Newstag, he has been pioneering their launch into the Southeast Asian market. Douglas has been awarded multiple scholarships to attend China’s top management and engineering schools, Peking University and Tsinghua University. He holds a degree in industrial engineering and management.

Edited Excerpt:

On the market gap that Brandie saw when it launched and its USP vis-a-vis competition

Prior to Brandie’s launch in India, before micro-influencers and nano-influencers were a thing, influencer marketing was blooming with a hundred per cent growth year on year. We noticed that the number of influencers and celebrities (with massive reach) was minimal and only represented a fraction of the total social media users. With different brands approaching the same set of influencers and them promoting more and more brands, influencers and celebrities would/will eventually lose trust in their network. Even as brands look at new segments of micro and nano influencers, the problem would be less obvious but remains. We predicted that paid opinions would affect the viewers’ trust as time passed.

The gap we saw was to promote word-of-mouth marketing from authentic people and use this opportunity to build trust in the activities done with prominent influencers. The solution was to build a technology that allows brands to work with their community of customers—people who actually use and love their products and already promote brands on social media daily. We never saw influencer or celebrity marketing as bad. However, for them to be trusted, the conversations needed to be balanced with recommendations from regular friends and family. In addition, we wanted the space to be more democratic so that the products that people actually love are the ones that get the spotlight on social media. However, the model for influencer marketing needed to be more scalable, as it’s impossible to work on a one-to-one basis when handling thousands or millions of customers.

On the key verticals that Brandie works in like lifestyle, sports, food and beverages

Brandie works in any vertical with products and services that people use and appreciate. The more people love your product and service, the easier it is for us to generate thousands of UGC (user-generated content) recommendations. We have done campaigns with sports brands like Puma, food brands like Domino’s Pizza, beauty products such as Nivea, and pharmaceutical brands such as Cipla. Other verticals that we have worked with are education, banking, and streaming services. Any brand or company that believes they have a product or service that their customers would recommend to a friend can work with Brandie’s word-of-mouth marketing.

On how covid has impacted the word-of-mouth marketing medium

In the short term, it took a lot of work to develop a new product and market segment to fill a gap in the market. Then, as lockdowns went down and companies started slimming down their marketing budgets, we needed more time to pitch them on trying a new innovative marketing medium in these uncertain times. However, the feedback we got on the product was always very positive; it’s just that the timing to test it out wasn’t optimal.

Now that the worst part of covid is over, we see considerable interest in Brandie. The pandemic has led more and more people to spend time on social media and adapt to online shopping. This means that trusted word-of-mouth recommendations on social media are more important than ever. We also see a trend that, globally, the trust for influencer marketing is going down, which is something we see as benefiting us as we allow brands to have the same presence and impact on social media. Still, instead of using paid opinions, they can rely on trusted recommendations from peers on a much larger scale.

On the challenges that brands face in using word-of-mouth marketing

It’s challenging to make brands understand that UGC from trusted friends and family is more diverse and subjective than traditional marketing or advertising.

The best recommendations are made by each individual uniquely because each person knows what their followers like to consume best. Therefore, as long as the recommendation is positive, the customer should own the creative part to maximise engagement in their network. However, this can be hard since many brands still need to feel comfortable letting go of control. To counter this, we have built a technology that guides brands and screens content to guarantee brands’ safety without compromising the users’ unique opportunity to influence their network of followers.

Another challenge is to convince the brands that word-of-mouth marketing is not a ‘one-time solution’; instead, it should be a long-term strategy to ensure that brands always have positive conversations on social media throughout the year. So new prospecting customers can easily see that the brand is liked, active, and trusted.

On what Brandie’s clients expect and how their ROI is defined

Clients often expect similar KPI and ROI as traditional advertisement or influencer marketing, which sometimes works very well, but for some brands, that’s not always the case. It’s important to understand that the conversation may not always happen at the moment the content is displayed. For example, when looking to buy a new phone, surveying reviews, articles, and trends is crucial, but on the day of purchase, a recommendation from a trusted friend has a greater influence.

We try to keep the expectations right depending on the brand and activity planned for awareness marketing and building trust. As far as traditional metrics such as reach, impressions, and engagement are concerned, Brandie has been over-delivering on every single campaign. However, we try to avoid those metrics and instead focus on the story itself, as consumer recommendation has the most value in the content. We want the brand to not mistake Brandie for another tool to deliver huge numbers but instead value all the valuable word-of-mouth recommendations coming their way.

On the importance of word-of-mouth marketing for early-stage startups

Brandie was initially created to counter the unfair advantage of large companies’ marketing budgets. The big brands can always pay to get their products displayed through paid ads, but what startups have is not money but rather loyal fans. So instead of spending valuable resources on expensive ads, we created Brandie so that startups can work with their community of customers to drive meaningful marketing and grow the company without having to waste money on paid ads that no one likes anyway.

On the role that word-of-mouth marketing plays in the overall marketing mix

All marketing channels serve their purpose, and we don’t try to replace any other channel per se; instead, we see Brandie as the tool to create more conversions and boost the value of the brand’s other marketing activities. Furthermore, Brandi is the tool for increasing trust and conversion in all other channels. The likelihood of someone clicking on, buying, or engaging with an ad they don’t trust is small. However, the likelihood of conversion increases drastically when a close family member or friend recommends a product or service. In addition, adding Brandie to the marketing mix ensures that the brand’s other expensive investments (such as a celebrity influencer) are well-spent.

On recent work that Brandie has done with clients that stands out

There are so many that we would like to highlight, but to mention a few: Cartoon Network, Domino’s Pizza, Nivea, Fastrack, Prasuma, Redrail, and Truecaller. However, if we are forced to highlight something, it is working with causes, as we did with Truecaller, where we engaged their customers to shed light on harassment against women in their #itsnotok campaign.

On the importance of getting customers to be advocates for brands

We usually give the example of the saying, “The crying baby gets the milk.” That means that brands today have routines and protocols for how they should interact if a consumer talks negatively about them on social media: they apologise and compensate the person. However, the same is not the case if regular but happy customers write about them on social media—then brands do nothing. By doing this, brands positively reinforce the behaviour you don’t want to see and do not encourage positive word-of-mouth, which will increase negative word-of-mouth. This is an enormous missed opportunity since even people who don’t have a marketing degree understand the power of word-of-mouth in our daily purchasing decisions or personal lives.

On Brandie’s business model

We currently offer two models. The first is that the brands pay per unit for how many consumers we activate. The second is a B2B SaaS solution where brands can leverage the power of Brandie’s word-of-mouth technology to drive their consumer advocacy campaigns with their community. The first model is preferred by brands who want to work with our Brandie community, while the second model targets brands who already have a community or want to build their own community to drive word-of-mouth marketing on social media at scale.

On whether word-of-mouth marketing complements influencer marketing effectively

Marketers will soon realise that an influencer marketing activity without word-of-mouth marketing to complement it is like using your money for gambling. The modern customer is not easily fooled (less than four per cent trust influencers today) and will look for second opinions after seeing an influencer promote a product or service. If the brand already has plans to complement its marketing message with word-of-mouth, they don’t have to worry that its marketing message feels one-sided. Imagine a celebrity promoting a new drink flavour, saying it’s the best they have had, and at the same time, you see thousands of regular customers also giving their view on how they like it—that’s how you build hype from the top down while building trust from the bottom up.

On Brandie’s plan to grow into 60 markets in 2023 and the game plan to get there

Brandie will go live globally much faster now that we have started to offer the Brandie software as a B2B SaaS solution. This means that any brand in any market can use our technology to create meaningful relationships with customers while driving effective social media marketing. We have a lot of global brands that we are currently working with and are well on track to hit our goals.

Mumbai: Shamsuddin Jasani, fondly known as Shams amongst his advertising mates, took over the reins as CEO of Wunderman Thompson’s South Asia operations a year ago. And he seems to be nothing less than modest about joining the agency network, which has had a strong foothold in India for the last nine decades.

Shams is a veteran of the media and advertising industries, with more than two decades of experience, of which 15 years have been in leadership roles. In his current role, he leads the Wunderman Thompson (WT) South Asia group, which comprises Wunderman Thompson, Mirum, Contract, and Wunderman Thompson Commerce in India.

As part of his South Asian role, which includes India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, Shams’ major focus is on scaling up the business in India, because 95 per cent of the revenues come from there. Considering the kinds of headwinds that exist, he is of the opinion that India is not going to be as impacted as other parts of the world. So his focus is on driving and working with clients in India to give them a very loyal, integrated offering across all the services that the agency network has.

Shams is one of the leading voices on digital, commerce, and martech, in addition to advertising and marketing, in the industry.

Prior to joining Wunderman Thompson, he fulfilled his role well as dentsu Isobar’s CEO and was responsible for managing over 600 people across Isobar, Fractal, and Taproot Dentsu.

Under the leadership of Shams, WT India has won more than 20 new businesses in a year which includes accounts like Skoda, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Edelweiss, Barbeque Nation, Cavin Kare (HTAM), Kyndryl, Mahindra One, Abbott Gutfit, Dr.Reddy’s Labs, Zydus Wellness, CERA, Nestle OOS, Unilever – Novology, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, Manyawar and many more.

Some of the successful campaigns that have been churned out by the agency during this year include those for brands such as The Times of India (the Trust campaign), Nestle Munch, Hero Xtreme, Apollo Trampler, SF Sonic Battery, and Tata Pravesh.

One of the growing areas of focus for the agency is the WT Health vertical, which Shams has brought together; the new biz wins under this vertical are Abbott – Troponin, Dr. Reddy’s – Alfoo & Dutas T, GSK – Physiogel, Zovirax, Zimig & Zoderm, Sun Pharma – Revital, Volini, Pepfizz & Abzorb and HUL – Novology.

In his interview with Indiantelevision.com, Shams speaks about doubling the agency’s growth in the next three years, acquisitions, focusing on areas such as health, and even discussing the technology side of the advertising business at length.

Edited Excerpts: 

On revenues and growth chart for the WT group

We are back to 2019 levels of business, to pre-pandemic levels of business, which is a substantial growth over 2020 – 21. The year 2022 was very good, both, in terms of revenue as well as overshooting our targets, as far as profits are concerned. We’ve done better than what we had thought we would do for 2022. And we are back to our 2019 numbers as far as our growth is concerned.

We have a very ambitious growth goal of doubling our size over the next three years. So that’s a stated goal that we have set. If you just add it up, it’s about 33 per cent growth a year that we’re looking at. And it’s a very high growth rate that we are targeting for our company, especially given the size and scale of what Wunderman Thompson is, but we are quite confident that we will be able to deliver that growth based on the new mix of services that we’re offering—not just the advertising side of the business, but martech, commerce, and health. I think these things combined will give us the growth that we’re looking for. 

On the formation of and focus on WT Health

It’s that these skill sets have been with us all along; we just brought them under one roof.

Over the past two to three years, Wunderman Thompson has been winning a lot of business in the healthcare sector. And that just happened. There is Sun Pharma; there is GSK. And you know, there are a few health clients on the consumer side of the business, which means that how do we take what we are talking to them about and do a brand experience with them for consumers? But on the Mirum side of the business, too, there was organic growth among what we call healthcare professionals. So creating communication towards healthcare professionals—again, this was completely organic; this had nothing to do with, you know, timing the market or anything like that.

Both of these existed in silos; they were talking differently. But what we did was combine the strengths of our brand business, which talks to consumers, and our healthcare professional business, which Mirum does beautifully. And they have an entire army of people who are actually working on that side of the business and have brought it all together under one roof, which is Wunderman Thompson Health.

The idea was that we are able to deliver across the spectrum of services that any healthcare client and the category require—both talking to consumers as well as talking to healthcare professionals. So it was just a logical integration of already existing healthcare services and getting them to work together. I think that was something that happened organically.

And I think it’s just a market need as well, because, especially on the healthcare professional side, there is a very particular skill set required because, to write and create that kind of content, you need to have a certain understanding of that category. And the language that you will use has to be a doctor’s language, for example. So it’s a very different skill set from what you would do on the brand side of things that we’re doing.

So I think, as far as the growth is concerned, it was small when we started just six months ago, but the growth has been phenomenal, but the base is small. So I think that 2023 will be the real scale for growth for Wunderman Thompson Health. 

On new-age acquisitions

They’re all under process and will take time. These things take time. Around the middle or end of 2023, we should be able to announce something. But it’s a very exciting chapter. The way that we’re looking at it is this: there are complementary skills that we’re looking at acquiring, and additionally, there are a lot of things that we’re doing organically.

On the usage of adtech and martech by brands to its optimal potential

I’m very wary about the words “martech” and “adtech,” because I think a lot of people still haven’t understood that the integration is slightly difficult when you’re talking about adtech and martech. But yeah, so I’ll give it a shot.

So I think, increasingly, I’ll just put everything under marketing automation, whether it’s martech or adtech. By that, I mean that adtech is more about media automation, and media buying is part of marketing automation, while martech is more about marketing automation. So I would just say that adtech is technically a subset of martech because, at the end of the day, marketing is the overall mothership. And media is part of marketing.

So increasingly, clients are looking at automating a lot of their marketing capabilities. And how do they work with agencies like us to be able to help them do that? That could be on the pure advertising and marketing side of the business, or it could be on the media side of the business, where ad tech plays a major role. So it really depends on the scale and scope of how you’re using this to transform your business. And it’s a part of the overall digital transformation project that a company takes forward. So, marketing automation, adtech as a part of marketing automation—all that is part of having an entire digital transformation journey. And that is, I think, an end goal for us as well, which is also to talk to clients about how we can help them on their digital transformation journey, where martech is a part of it, of course.

So I think, finally, it’s about how we can have discussions beyond just marketing and how digital plays a role in transforming the entire business that a client wants, and adtech and martech are subsets of that. 

On data analytics and consumer privacy

So I think we still are a little way away from cookies and third party data completely being done away with – it’s going to happen eventually. But I think in that kind of a context also, I think us as WT, as WPP, globally – GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has always been taken care of. So it doesn’t matter if those are in India or not; we are governed by global laws. So, data privacy is extremely important to us, irrespective of which country we’re working in, and we are working with clients to be able to make sure that the data of the consumers are protected, and we don’t have understanding and reading of that micro level data. 

But I think that we are able to make a sufficient leap of understanding and faith. And that’s where I think creativity comes in: being able to use a spark. I always say that if you have 100 per cent of the data correct, you don’t need to make decisions. Because, as you know, pretty much all the data is giving you everything.

So I think it works very well for creative agencies, because we’re always the teams that take that leap of faith; we create those moments of inspiration out of just that little spark that happens. So, as creative agencies, we need that spark; that’s it. So I don’t feel that there’ll be a big challenge for creative agencies to really understand or be challenged by this whole thing, because we only need to work with clients to understand how consumers behave with them in their own ecosystem. That’s about it. We don’t need to know the exact details about the consumers. So I think that spark is enough for us to create great campaigns and great advertising. 

On whether data analytics is the appropriate tool to measure the performance of campaigns

What I would say is that the success of my campaign really depends on the KPIs I set at the beginning. The KPI could be a brand metric, a sales metric, or it could be in terms of the word-of-mouth that has happened.

There is too much data out there. What you need to understand is what your final objective is, and you need to be very clear about what your objective is as a brand and as a business that you’re achieving. And you and the agency are together responsible for driving those objectives. One suggestion is not to get daunted by the amount of data that’s available, but rather to just focus on what it is that you want your final objective to be.

If you set the right kind of objectives? Yes, you need to measure them properly. There is a measurement metric. Now the measurement system varies depending on what the objective is. If it’s an ecommerce only in play – then you’re looking at metrics, which says how many conversions or how many people bought, what is the ticket size that is there. If it’s a brand-only play, then I need to understand what the demand metrics are and how that got kicked off? So it really depends on what you are using it for. 

On how metaverse, NFTs, web3 and blockchain are going to change the way advertising is being portrayed and utilised by brands

With regard to creativity being used in newer technologies, you need to understand how to creatively use a new technology that comes along. So, NFT again, I would say is kind of still far away. But take the metaverse for example – within the metaverse, you will use NFT. And this whole thing but for example, when we talk about mixed reality, or metaverse, or any kind of immersive virtual reality, of course, you can have your regular advertising. For example, if you’re in a gaming environment where you’re using metaverse, or you’re in Meta when Meta actually comes up with their metaverse program, there will be advertising out there wherein the formats will depend upon what is the kind of reality that you’re in – either in virtual reality or augmented reality. And hence, the formats will change in terms of pure advertising. 

But I think the focus should be in terms of delivering a great experience for your brands to the consumer. So it should not just be about saying, Let me just put up an ad within that universe and just say, Can someone see my ad? That’s one part of it. More importantly, if a particular consumer is within an ecosystem, or whether it’s inside the metaverse, how are you making yourself relevant, and at what stage are you giving him/her a great experience to then become relevant to him/her and have recall? This is something that I think is very critical.

The simple answer that I’m saying is, how do you build relevancy for your brand within the confines of that universe of technology? That is going to be more critical than just being there. And that’s fair; I mean, right now, we’re just scratching the surface. So, everyone is just kind of figuring out what to do with it. So your first step is just to be there; let’s just do something. But eventually, I think it’s more important to be relevant by doing something that creates a brand experience for your consumers within that space. That is, in the end, what we must strive for.