"There is need for marketing to perform"
GroupM’s Vikram Sakhuja, Samsonite’s Subrata Dutta, Visa’s Uttam Nayak & Zee’s Rajesh Jejurikar in conversation
While globally companies consider it crucial for marketers to focus on ROI, whether marketers in India truly understand, and embrace, marketing ROI is a subject of debate.
Commenting on the importance of ROI for marketers, Uttam Nayak, Group Country Chair, India and South Asia, Visa, is of the belief that one needs to test and learn on ground to understand consumer insights. Educating consumers is an integral part of the marketing process. It is also essential to cut back on cross border marketing in difficult times. He further said, “We needed to create acceptance of our products via marketing.”
Subrata Dutta, MD, Samsonite India, noted that marketing is science that needs to be looked beyond numbers. “Marketing always gets stuck with the basic principle of 4Ps, which creates problems in the long run,” he felt, adding that retail looks like a great era of opportunities for marketing.
Vikram Sakhuja, CEO-designate, Maxus Global, raised the question on how the dynamics work within an organisation and in what form is accountability demanded in marketing. Commenting on the same, Dutta stated, “There is a difference between handling manufacturing and marketing. Whereas manufacturing is accountable and can be predicted exactly, marketing is marred by uncertainties. It is important for people to find out ways to remove this uncertainty and make it more prediction-friendly, since this is the primary problem being faced as of today.”
Meanwhile, Rajesh Jejurikar, President, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, stressed on the importance of spending a lot of time on analytics. “Marketing needs to be seen as a holistic concept and not be advertising focussed,” he maintained. Jejurikar also clarified that marketing ROI and ad spends aren’t same. He believed that people generally want to look at what they are going to get out it, but it is essential to measure each element and thereafter determine which elements work. The toughest part again is to judge which element works, such as awareness, interest and so on. “There is need for marketing to perform,” he added.
Elaborating further, Dutta said that CEOs should bring to the table views of both CMOs and CFOs for better understanding of communication investments. Though marketing is much talked about, one of the missing links between marketing and finance is that the views of CFO and CMO are not tabled at the same time.
Also, 4Ps have been a challenge since managing all the elements together is a bit complex, Dutta maintained, adding, “We are not close to getting these four to work together and hence, we need to get them together and determine what combination works.”
Vikram Sakhuja, Rajesh Jejurikar, Subrata Dutta and Uttam Nayak were sharing their views at the Mumbai leg of the e4m Conclave on October 23, 2012. They were speaking on the topic ‘The missing link between Marketing and Finance’. The Conclave was presented by Jagran.
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About 60% Instagram influencers in India have fake followers: Report
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Share15% consumers enhance their user experience through virtual assistants: Kantar report
According to Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director & Chief Client Officer- South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar, less than 1% of ads get tested due to lack of time
Marketing data and analytics firm Kantar has unveiled a report that studies the burgeoning AI market to dish out actionable insights for marketers. Within AI, virtual assistants are the fastest growing segment. The report noted that 15% consumers enhanced their ‘user experience through virtual assistants’. This segment is the fastest growing at 27% YoY.
According to the study, while ‘fitness’ and ‘social media’ apps are amongst the leading categories, driving AI adoption (with an average of 2.3 AI led features embedded in these applications), segments like ‘BFSI’, ‘job search’ and ‘short video’ apps are relatively slow in AI adoption, with an average of 1.2 features each. Entertainment apps, digital commerce and pharmacy apps stand somewhere in the middle with 2.0 & 1.8 AI features being adopted, respectively.
Additionally, the report said that while 90% of marketing and sales leaders think their organisations should be using AI “often”, 60% said their organisations “rarely or never” do. Speaking to exchange4media, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director & Chief Client Officer- South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar highlighted that currently there are a lot of organisations who know that there is something called AI, but haven’t yet figured out how it could help them holistically.
“A lot of the AI just gets used for efficiency purposes, so repetitive tasks get automated,” Mohanty pointed out. Data also plays a big role in why certain organisations are struggling with how to use AI.
For instance, Mohanty explained that in segments like D2C, telecom etc. there is a lot of primary or first-party data. So being able to leverage AI also gets easier. “It's the traditional large sort of FMCG type companies where data sits in silos. You don't really have one single source of data where it's a little difficult to use the full power of AI, because the full power of AI also needs a lot of data sitting in a structure that you can use,” she added.
So, can AI help marketers have a unified view of data? No, says Mohanty. “AI does not help marketers get a unified view of data. Once you have data in a unified way, AI can help you do a lot more with that data.”
According to her, organisations today need to have good, strong data warehousing. “It needs to make sense because a lot of the silos are also because everybody owns one part of it. A lot of people have their own analytics teams internally, so there are a lot of agendas and stakeholders. And then we say data is in silos because fundamentally, when you're doing something internally, different people have different stakes in it,” Mohanty added.
Puneet Avasthi, Senior Executive Director, South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar shared that most organisations are now heavily investing in creating first-party data sets. “Companies that have first party data about their consumers and transactions or interactions that they have with the brand are going to be able to leverage that more effectively to create sharper profiles for the brand as such for the consumer and build relevant recommendations at the right moments.
Panning out she also highlighted how AI can be leveraged to enhance market research and make it more accessible, a part of which Kantar is itself involved in. “A lot of times people say that we can't test an ad because we don't have time. So less than 1% of advertising gets tested and just gets put out. Does it work when it gets put out? It is the question the audience should answer, because so many times, it backfires,” Mohanty shared. Apparently, digital particularly doesn't get tested because organisations just do a/b testing and leave it at that.
Speaking of preferred use cases of AI, Avasthi added that various businesses and brands are looking at creating an experience for the brand that is in line with the brand's architecture and progress across all touch points. “That is something that the AI engines that are working behind can ensure, that all such interactions are consistently delivered across different virtual assistants or chatbots that are available to the consumer,” he said.
The other use case, according to Avasthi, is ensuring that there is greater visibility for the brand in the digital sphere as such, through various recommendation engines, when a certain need is being looked for and to throw up the right kind of information about the brand so that the brand message is amplified in the mind of the consumers.
Among other insights from the Kantar AI report is that 88% consumers used AI based algorithms which analysed their preferences, behaviours, and interests to create personalised recommendations for tailored experiences. This segment grew at 6 % YoY. At 21%, ‘smart home automation’ is a smaller segment but growing at 25% YoY.