Mumbai: The 3rd edition of Indian Digital BrandFest 2023 kicked off and had brands, advertisers, and tech platforms discuss all these trends and more. The summit looked at the latest trends driving the change in consumer behaviour and how it has impacted the industry’s growth.
Whether it was a boom in influencer marketing or the popularity of short video platforms, brands did not hesitate to jump onto the digital bandwagon to up their marketing game. So Indian television.com is taking this opportunity to bring a host of industry experts together under one roof to discuss all these new trends shaping the future.
The panellists for this session were HDFC Bank VP- growth marketing & martech Deepak Oram, Pernod Ricard India lead digital communications Shetanshu Dixit, Titan Company Ltd e-commerce channel head-watches category Afzal Hussain, The Sleep Company CMO Ripal Chopda, MiQ global commercial board member Siddharth Dabhade, Pocket Aces senior VP and clout & head of strategy Vinay Pillai. The session chair for this panel was Ernst & Young LLP marketing advisory services & partner Amiya Swarup.
Swarup started the session by saying how marketing practices have evolved over 4-5 years and how digital mix in an overall medium spends has increased from less than 2 per cent to over 20-30 per cent for many other brands. He questions the panellists on how modern marketing has changed over the last few years and the ecosystem over the allocation of marketing budget in terms of skill and re-organisation.
Dabhade said, “Data is playing a very important role as digital channels have increased a lot. The digital footprint has increased in marketing and brands as well. So companies and brands are collecting a lot of data and then trying to make sense of the data they are collecting. The biggest trend we are seeing from a media perspective is that offline TV is going digital as well. All the channels will become digital as we go along with that, more data will go in and from there, AI will start playing a very big role in marketing.”
Dikshit said, “It has more to do with tracking. There’s a separate in-house created tool, to track the entire distribution to the last mile. I think there are a lot of in-house specialist roles created today. Gone are the days when there was one person doing all”
Oram replied by saying, “Software has now become such an important part of our marketeer’s life. It is. You can’t survive without it.”
Pillai commented, “If you avoid content, you might completely miss out on building a brand and building a perception of your brand. This is where content marketing is not just crucial, it is essential.
Chopda added on by saying,”Your cost per reach or your cost of acquisition is dependent on the number of people at the end of the day you want to acquire or at the end of the year. And that’s how your data works with you.”
Hussain said, “E-commerce is seen as a garden of growth and possibilities, which is largely true, but it’s also a graveyard.”
Swarup concluded the session by saying he was positive about how upcoming brands are doing in data and technology and continue to enable it in marketeer’s lives.
