with creators for their channels, why don't we start investing on an IP? So hence, we started working with this creator BUNIC and worked on an IP called as the Office Canteen.  This is the same theme which we have been using for our TV ads.  So we did a series with BUNIC and it has been a three episode web series, extremely successful. So we've been able to reach more than 8 million views. And we have seen the traffic and the sales go up by disproportionate level. So one of the insights about doing such thing is the fact that we do understand that RTG predominantly is present on the internet. And today, RTG has got so much of content to consume that they consume only very customized personal content, which they think works for them. So you can't really do carpet bombing or mass market advertisement to reach to them. So that's the reason why I started RTG around it. Now coming to TV, the most premium advertising inventory available in this country. The moment you go on TV, there was a time when people in this country thought that, okay, this is a big brand. Now I can trust it. In my view, all those days are gone. TV has become pretty much, I mean, it is definitely a medium which will give you a huge, huge reach, but it may not be really the right medium to get to certain niches of audience. So the approach we have been using for TV is quite simple. We have been focusing on huge properties, properties which doesn't have online equivalent. And hence, we are fairly sure that this will give us reach across the country. So we have been investing on IPL, ICC World Test Championship, Wimbledon, UFA. We know that our audience are interested in it. Follow this and hence we are there where they are looking for us. The next one is OTT, another interesting proposition. So again, as I told you these days, brands have to be part of the stories and that's where the brands get noticed. So this has been one of the things we are focused in. Along with creating our own content on OTT, we have been also associating with large, I mean, high, a property which has potential to reach very, very large number of audience. So we have tied up with Shark Tank India, the version of World Famous Series which is just going to start on December 20th. But the reasoning behind this has been that most of the people or all of the people who come to Shark Tank or the people who will watch Shark Tank will be the aspirational ones who wants to go up in their life. Since Upgrad stands for the same aspiration and lifelong learning, we feel that this is a great fit and that's been the reason why we will be seen on Shark Tank. The strategy has been to create a lot of content with both the brands present in there. And finally PR. Of course, PR comes to you if you are doing a lot of good work. So we have been working extensively to get a lot of organic PR. It helps that we are very active in the market. One of the aspects other than the business stories which we are part of is the marketing story. We feel that we have done quite a good work in marketing our brand and hence we have been very active on PR telling our marketing story. So far we have been quite successful in getting good organic PR and I'm hoping that this way of marketing will continue. Now one aspect or one theme which you can hear or see in all the things I have told you is the data driven or data driven way we do our marketing. Everything we do, every campaign we run, we are obsessed with data. We ensure that we measure everything and we try to understand impact of each campaign has on our traffic leads and eventually conversion. This has helped us optimize and hence change our marketing mix to what we want or what we see is delivering the best. So if you ask me one single thing across different things we do is this data driven marketing model. Now that was more of the heavy things. Now let's talk about bits about what we do in our brand and the campaigns we do. As I told you it is in 2019-2020 that we really started marketing the brand upgrade and started the whole idea of going big talking about the brand and trying to scale our business. So when we started off one question which was clearly there is what does upgrade stands for when it comes to a learner or a customer or in other words what is the positioning we occupy in the minds of our customer. Now this was a problem statement we had to solve for before getting into the marketing part. So we did a lot of discussions a lot of interviews with our learners more in depth less survey doesn't give you the right data it's in depth interviews with your personas which will give you the right information. So we heard them saying consistently that I definitely want to up still but I will only up still if it's giving me some value out of it. And we kept on hearing people using the word degree for everything which is I mean every course or a certification or a diploma which is useful and which will give them a job at the end of it. In other words they kept on saying that degree should be calm key that should be I mean it's a play of word there should be a job at the end of it or it should be of some use. So basis this we decided that if this is what people are looking for for and from an upskilling course maybe that is what we should see ourselves as or that is what the consumer should see ourselves as and hence we moved into this positioning where we started tagging ourselves as if naam ke nahi kaam ki degree that we are offering you something which is of use and which has a job at the end of it. We are talking about making them more specialist so that's the positioning these took which we went on to implement in our first brand campaign post 2020. So another thing which had come out very clearly is because we work in the working professional space we heard that most of the working professional fields that they are not able to go ahead in their career because of office politics. I mean so basically we said that okay then let's pick up a team which is very close to them and give it a humorous touch to it because the moment you do that it's a lighthearted way of telling a story and at the same time there's a great message to it. So that was the idea behind our first campaign which is which became famous as the donkey campaign so maybe I should just show you this video.  Went out quite well, worked well for us because there is a smile to it but also see the message right you're saying basically the protagonist is telling you that don't worry about all these things you will go ahead in your life if you upskill because that's all that matters finally. So this was the first campaign sorry we followed it up with a sub-brand campaign we also realized that if you want to build a big brand we need to be associated with the existing brands in higher education. So we decided that the way we want to go ahead is that we want to work towards bringing all the masters program online in India. Now it's simple right I think about so the working professionals in India start working immediately after their bachelor's every year a successful person start making more and more money he or she wants to do masters and it upskills you in a very different manner it helps you go up in your career but to do that you have to take a break in your career a risk which most of us don't do that and as a result of which people get saturated or people get hit a ceiling after some time because they don't have the upskilling which comes with the masters. So this is a proposition we worked as a subset of our upgrad brand where we said that we want to also develop the brand Upgrad MBA. So Upgrad MBA was the next campaign which we did take a look at it we took a very different stance to it. So as you can see here we are trying to take a stance that you can do an MBA online more a lot of people in working professional today wants to do an MBA but doesn't want to take the risk of leaving their job and taking a break in their career. The fundamental idea is you can do it today online and you don't really need to bother about it. It is the same theme on which we did the full page jacket ad in DOI economic times I'm sure at least some of you would have seen it. We took a direct message alongside CAT a lot of people ask me why you take going against CAT my answer has been only one that we are not going against CAT the fact of the matter is every year when you look at the number of people who starts to prepare for CAT that's in lakhs around two lakh people write CAT but almost every beginning of the year there are almost five lakh people who start preparing for CAT. Finally it is only numbers in thousands maybe a 10,000 people who get into the IAMs of their terms it is not for them or it is not against CAT the ad was it is for that remaining lakhs and lakhs of people who finally don't even go and do the MBA of their choice that this proposition is for. The fact of the matter is that there are so many options today online you don't really need to make big changes in your life and take a risk. So yeah the second campaign which we followed up with the donkey campaign was another take on donkey. We found that the donkey figure in itself has become very famous and hence we did a second campaign following out on the same idea where we spoke about donkey being picturized as someone who is now telling you that hey go and upskill it out and I don't think I have time to show the ads anymore so I'm just skipping out on that we are I mean like a short of time. Post that again the sub-brand strategy we launched a product in the degree space and we did a campaign for upgrade degrees again the same strategy we saw that there is a huge market sitting there for degrees especially after the new education policy allows bachelor's and master's degree to be done online which we wanted to tell to the students who are now stuck because of corona that don't worry about it there are things you can do online and you can take these degrees online and you really don't need to think about going to a city now though you are stuck because of corona coming in there I'm again now I'm going to skip all this yeah so this is the latest campaign where what we realized is that after one and a half years of brand building we saw that the idea of online education and upgrade awareness have been on a high so we thought that it is time to move to the phase two of brand building where we talk more about the upgrade proposition and what is the USP P bring to the table so that's been the idea behind the new ad campaign it's been not one single ad but one main ad followed by three shorties the story is established in the 30 seconder and then it continues in the 15 seconder where each of the 15 seconders talk about one USP of upgrade we ran this during IPL and a lot of digital the reason for doing predominantly digital is because the working professional TG as I mentioned earlier is online not a lot of them are watching TV they are very happy with their OTT except for large market to properties like IPL so this ad the two sets of ad we did this one probably I can show you guys Arjun the voice is not coming for the ads can you please look into is it oh sorry how do I do that is there any so you need to share the sound that's all one second just give me a minute you have to you have the control right no you have the control so for you need to share the sound this one right share computer sound right yes yes but there's some installation I need to make I don't think I can do it so anyway so I'll rather share the deck you won't share the videos so you do want me to play the PPT yeah if you can if you can do that these two last two videos if we can play it I'll be great I think that's all I have these are this is the latest campaign okay so on the deck we are talking about slide number 31 and 33 I think okay so I will play it yeah just do that I'm just stopping to share it is 29 and 31 sorry slide number 29 first and 31 okay sir yeah yeah this one please show any oh hi long time it need busy over key college seminars may mean a yeah I was off is the sad sad upgrade kind of online course online come on time pass yeah show any don't you yeah I'm the bachelors oh very good she's joining us wow nice nice so superb choice yes excellent choice she's got great potential absolutely this is she will be your new boss boss fast forward your career with online courses from Upgrad top universities top faculty top placements upgrad.com yeah so this comes out of the insight when we did a lot of interviews we heard that some of them told us that their highest biggest fear is that people of their age becomes their boss so we thought we can take a funny take on it where we talk about a colleague or a batch mate becoming your manager after doing an upgrade course and then talk about our USP's and I mean can you go to 31 and show the other version of it yeah it's a similar take on it Matthew sir London yes sir no first time first time it's a favorite city yeah fast forward your career with online MBAs from Upgrad top universities flexible learning placements upgrad.com all right folks that's it thank you so much I hope you got something out of this presentation which you can use in your I mean in your brand building or in your learning process thank you so much for the time and opportunity wish you all the best thank you thank you so much Mr Mohan it was truly an interesting conversation thank you once again for giving us your valuable time we'll quickly move on to show you this partner avi that we'd like to get on the screen can we please have the avi on the screen so are you okay with the 80 crore 10% to 50 lakhs so well this is India's biggest reality funding show horses table jojita hoi sikander on good news today every saturday at eight i'm sure you would be very happy with the product itself so make sure that you check it out with that we'll move on to our next session ladies gentlemen it's time we'd like to all right we have a few other avis before we actually move on to the next session can we have the avis please sg can we play the avis please for media a name synonymous with the latest news about the advertising industry in india the exchange for media group set up in 2000 has the most credible media platforms covering the entire advertising media and marketing domain with its highly acclaimed digital print and on-ground assets the group's flagship news portal exchange for media dot com reaches over six lakh subscribers who are the first to receive breaking news in the industry the buzzing website not only covers the news but goes beyond the obvious to bring in a fresh point of view impact the weekly news magazine from the group is the most widely read business magazine in the advertising trade within depth analysis and news based features providing perspective to key happenings in the industry the monthly pitch magazine provides a ringside view of events unfolding in the marketing landscape along with media and advertising another monthly magazine reality plus is a market leader in repertoire on the real estate industry today exchange for media is not only a leading publisher in the domain but owns the IP of more than 50 events spread across Mumbai and making it a powerful house of information and knowledge sharing exchange for media has curated and launched some of the most successful IPs across marketing digital tv print radio mobile ooh and pr the impact person of the year exchange for media conclave indian digital marketing awards tech munch pitch cmo summit india marketing awards prime time awards indian content marketing awards golden mics n bar are some of the group's top-notch events in addition to niche bespoke events and round tables curated especially for discerning clients exchange for media events attract stalwarts as speakers along with the loyal audience comprising of leaders trendsetters and opinion makers they are the perfect networking platform for the entire media and advertising industry no wonder exchange for media group publications and events have high credibility and reach and are the destination of choice for agency brand and media professionals across the industry exchange for media bw business world presents a rich legacy of curated events that enable conversations on policy issues in india because of the state of our state is we have no option but to build smart and resilient cities digital india is more for the poor under privilege and deprived covering a range of topics bw business world events look to create a strong narrative around smart cities digital india healthcare swachhbharat human resource issues education banking and finance among others the world is first changing best practices are available now on the net because development bw business world events provide a speaking platform to the voices that matter you don't have to be a technologist you need to understand how technology influences the world Mahatma Gandhi was a great man he was the leader of the freedom struggle we believe that e governance and iot will play a very very important role bw business world is an excellent exhibition platform that helps you showcase your services to the right audience to be a part of our legacy write into us at partner at the raid business world dot in well if you're just joining in thank you so much once again this is exchange for media conclave by the 21st edition and ladies and gentlemen it's time we introduce our next key speaker Mr. Adam Gerhardt global CEO of Mindshare he'll be shining a spotlight on the topic of good growth in the age of transformation how to grow your business and change the world for the better Mr. Gerhardt's exposition today will draw from his experience of more than two decades in marketing world during which he's helped build and grow several big client portfolios across a range of global brands he will be emphasizing the importance of sustainable business practices making commerce more inclusive and the need to support diversity and inclusion across parameters it's truly an honor to invite Mr. Adam Gerhardt on the screen sir over to you in the meantime Adam connects with us i would request you all to kindly go down to the chat box if you have any questions at the end of the speaker sessions if you'd like to ask them anything we if we have time we'd be very happy for you to join in Mr. Gerhardt i'll hand over the screen to you thank you so much for joining in with us so Adam you have to unmute yourself so that we can hear you there we go can you hear me okay yeah perfect wonderful good evening everyone thank you for having me um truly an honor to be with you today um today i was hoping to share with you a vision for the future of growth and for our industry um it's a vision uh that hopefully gives rise uh to the profound changes that we've seen in the media landscape around us but also the changes that we're seeing for our society and the planet and it's a vision that delivers what we believe as professionals that media and marketing plays a critical role in shaping the world around us um can we can everyone see the slides okay yes it's there we go perfect um if we move on to the next slide excellent okay great um it really begins with understanding the idea that growth used to be about scale and reach and the idea was quite simple we used to focus where our consumers were spending their time we used to reach them with the right media the right message and we did it in spades as an industry we helped brands scale and go global in other words that's how we delivered growth target the right people with the right message at the right time it was incredibly simple if we move on to the next slide though the biggest difference that's shaping the world around us today though is that the biggest and the largest concentrations of consumers are no longer just in geographies more and more consumers are concentrated and defined by global digital platforms and these digital platforms are changing the rules of growth every single day they've collapsed the sales funnel they've changed the infrastructure required for business and they will redefine what it means to grow in a new world economy so geographical geographic expansion is only one means of delivering growth but our ability to deliver growth sustainably in the future is more and more driven by the fact that transformation will be dominated by these platforms and the impact that they have on our consumers lives next slide please brands today interestingly are either being born from this digital transformation or they're having to adapt to it and if we look at the companies out there that are delivering expansive growth they're actually harnessing both and there are many companies out there that have brands that were built for the platform age and brands that are emerging from the platform age or adapting to it take Nestle for example with KitKat and Nespresso Nespresso is incredibly rooted in understanding their consumers in a D to C or a digital economy KitKat on the other hand was built through brick and mortar retail sales but more and more it's starting to flex its digital muscles to understand how it can leverage these platforms for growth but interestingly not all brands are adapting fast enough soon they will start to pay the price if they don't adapt and the latest the latest view is that in the next three years 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies will be replaced completely because of their lack of growth and understanding of the impact that these digital platforms have so in a new world era of transformation you have to become adapt at harnessing the role that these platforms create and understanding consumers and how they're behaving as a result and if we move on to the next slide if you need proof about the urgency at which things are changing around us just look at these three charts they're incredibly telling us to what's happening in the world around us the first is that the time between innovation and adoption is down as everything has been compressed and accelerates in other words speed to market has never been faster the second at the same time margin volatility over the last couple of years is up three fold in the last 50 years and it's because of this disruption and disintermediation that's becoming more and more commonplace and the third one and arguably most importantly the connection between scale and profitability has been broken as businesses start to harness the age of platforms and transformation and their ability to grow at breakneck speeds is now unparalleled versus anything that we had seen in the past if you take those three things and we move on to the next slide we start to understand that there are a new set of rules for growth that's starting to emerge in this era of transformation that's dominated by platforms these new rules are specifically different to the world in which we've lived in historically and they're starting to redefine everything around us and in the future growth has to be able to live beyond a single moment in other words looking at lifetime value over just short-term sales because quite honestly anyone can grow in this new digital economy but they have to be able to grow sustainably and responsibly for the future growth also has to live and deliver beyond a single sale because everyone will be able to optimize faster and better in this new platform age that means that winning with these platforms means building consumer trust and aligning with the values that are most important to them in the future and then the third dynamic that's starting to emerge is that growth in the future must then live beyond the single platform because much to the chagrin of any one of these platform owners that are out there we don't live in a single platform world and yes there are platforms that are dominant in each local market or by geography but the reality is no platform today fulfills every single consumer need that's out there if we move on to the to the next slide what we start to see is that actually there we go thank you what we start to see is that those dynamics are further accelerating what's happening in the world around us and there's new dynamics that are compounding this platform era that we're starting to see COVID infrastructure issues healthcare societal unrest you name it and what it's leading to is even greater time on these platforms people are spending more time than they ever have before if you look on the left hand side today 85% of consumers in India say that they're spending more time on devices than they have ever before more time on devices means more time on platforms and what we're starting to find is that that is explosively growing as a result of COVID itself and on the right hand side what we're starting to see is that it's starting to reshape consumers views and expectations of the world as just one example 77% of consumers in India only buy from brands they trust that's up from 68% just a year ago and in large part it's driven by platforms it's driven by COVID and it's driven by what we're seeing in the world around us and if we continue to move on what we start to realize is that the role of the platform has become even more pronounced it's where people define themselves it's where they find cohorts and people that they can align with it's where they form views shop acts share all in new ways and so brands have to start to understand these new rules of growth and new rules of consumer engagement that's been brought about by the changes that we're seeing today and if we continue moving on all of this the infrastructure changes new consumer behavior platform dominance it means that we you must embrace the fact that there are new notions of growth and conventional notions of growth are completely out the window you move on to the next slide please and what we start to realize is actually not all growth is created equal and that becomes really important in an era dominated by transformation because what we start to see is we have to realize that there needs to become less of a focus on growth and more of a focus on what we call good growth in other words that's to say business growth which is enduring by unlocking new consumer demand growth that is diversified so we aren't just reliant on a single revenue stream or a single product or skew or any sort of one dimensional factor and that's to say we also have to start to balance the long and the short term something that benefits both society and the planet by aligning with our consumers values because it's something that they have come to expect in the future not just the value that we deliver through our goods or services and if we move on to the next slide what we start to see is that in doing so and moving from just growth to what we call good growth we can start to future proof our businesses the first dynamic that we start to realize is that actually we can start to increase human trust and that means going beyond just delivering value but delivering values our consumer expectations that they expect of us in the future the second the second area in doing so we start to create more enduring connections with consumers creating more resilience and more loyalty for our products and services and the third and arguably most important is in doing so and pivoting from just focusing on growth to focusing on good growth we start to realize that simultaneously we can grow business at the same time as benefiting the world around us whether that's society consumers or our planet and more and more that becomes a critical distinction at a point of competitive advantage and if we move on to the next slide it's it's easy to think about growth in in this progressive view of what the future holds but what we're starting to see is hopefully organizations are embracing this more and more sometimes though it can still feel incredibly foreign or really difficult and unattainable for us to balance what we view as good growth or doing good and what's good for business but we wanted to share a couple of examples with you just to give you a sense of actually how tangible this actually can be if you just make the concerted effort so the first example that I wanted to share is is a round dove and rather than just presenting this to you hopefully we'll play a video in in just a second and the video will speak for itself so we'll move on to the next slide and we'll share just a quick view of how dove delivered on good growth India a country where 90 percent of marriages are arranged they say marriages are made in heaven but not till they are approved by families prospective in-laws judge brides bases an unfair expectation of being slim fair tall and perfect failing which they are rejected resulting into life damaging self-esteem and confidence dove believes that beauty should be a source of confidence not anxiety it launched stop the beauty test campaign with real life rejected brides to challenge this unfair tradition due to regressive matrimony ads and social media conditioning 631 million women in India are forced to adhere to just one type of beauty beauty stereotyping on matrimony platforms became a moment of truth partnering the largest matrimony platform shadi.com we created history by making every bride profile nudge every bride seeker with inspiring real beauty messages these rejected brides became the cover of leading fashion publishers for the first time purpose platforms like humans of Bombay feature their inspiring stories popular influencers came forward and encouraged other women to share their real stories on social media dove partnered leading publishers and rewrote the age-old biased matrimony ad without using biased words stop the beauty test was a fully integrated high-scale high-impact and highly engaging campaign dove created history by challenging matrimony and media platforms and killing the beauty biases and stereotypes with its real beauty stands it built confidence and stirred conversations with women posing a question how much beauty is enough great thank you um hopefully something that you can see is challenging societal conventions and aligning to new values that start to emerge but also something that's incredibly good for business in just this example increase in brand consideration was up 25% and the pr value was exponential over what was paid for in the campaign now arguably what what you would say and what I would say sitting in your shoes is dove is an incredibly strong example of good growth something that's good for the brand people and the world but many of you would argue that dove's real beauty platform is born from purpose and those sorts of brands are almost expected to focus on this sort of work exclusively but I just want to show you one other example that illustrates that good growth isn't just about purpose it's about doing what's good for business and advancing the world because good and growth shouldn't be at odds in the future so if we move to the next slide we'll actually this is just a quick overview I think in the interest of time we'll skip this one and go straight to the video that does a much better job of telling the story than I do so a really simple but elegant example of how you can do what's right for the world and advance society around us but also something that benefits business for Pepsi you know you look at the business results there was 100 positive sentiment around the brand but also Pepsi became Swiggy's top soft drink with almost a 50% market share over the last couple of months you look at the intersection between doing good and good for business and more and more we start to see that these two concepts are no longer at odds in the world today and so if we move on to the last slide I just wanted to end with one simple thought and that is that both of those examples are illustrative of the work that we're doing and a responsibility that we believe we have as an industry to help deliver a new form of growth for our clients one which delivers lasting impact for business but also for consumers and the world around us and we believe this is the future of growth this is what we call good growth thank you very much thank you Adam I you know virtual applause I think one of the things that we realize post pandemic is that we all are interconnected and while profits are important the planet and people are more important if not equally important and they really lead to profit so doing business for good and business being a tool to make a positive impact is something that needs to come into communication in the of course it flows from the strategy of the company and really as we've seen multiple times that making a positive impact on the community and the society also results into building businesses building differentiated brands or what we call purpose led brands so thank you for bringing in the cultural context of India through that add on marriages you know clearly is in some way trying to make a social change through communication is also a very important role it's not just about brand and content and sales now let me ask you Adam first of all you know thank you we've done this virtually I hope we can host you in India soon and you can meet and do handshake and we can get you the Indian food you know while UK and your US both have Indian food but what we will have here in India is really authentic now YouTube charges the global CEO must a lot of change uncertainty and flux what made you sure and more optimistic about the future which you then could kind of funnel down to all your colleagues because that when you took over you know immediately after that you know clients went on a pause the budgets at least temporarily got slashed there was so much anxiety there was so much uncertainty so you took over in a very difficult period and studied the ship what are your top lessons and what did you do to make sure that you know it was business as usual but not business as usual great question yeah it was certainly a time of tumultuous you know kind of marketing impact I think that the first thing was to start to try and empathize with with all of the stakeholders in the situation whether that was clients whose budgets were cut by the board the CEO whatever the case may be it's not something that they wanted either so to put ourselves in their shoes to lean into our people and to understand what they were going through on a personal level and I think the fact that you're able to try and try and bond with people over their their personal circumstances their professional circumstances is a great means for understanding how to best address things moving forward and what you start to realize actually is you have to get comfortable with change this is a huge moment of uncertainty a huge moment of instability you can argue given the fluidity and the dynamic nature of the way things are unfolding around us and I think as soon as you start to realize that change is the only constant in particular now more than ever it enables you to start to see some of the light and the positivity through what is arguably an otherwise really dark and challenging time at the moment and for me you know I encourage our teams to see the opportunity in everything and as I start to think about and as we started to redefine our vision for the organization around good growth you quickly start to realize that no other industry arguably has the scale or the potential impact that we do and when you start to realize that you start to embrace the the notion that actually we can make a much more meaningful impact to the world than just thinking about the brands that we serve and that for me is what's incredibly exciting and hopefully that creates a virtuous circle of positivity and optimism for everybody involved Dr. Bhattra you need to unmute yourself we can't hear you Dr. Bhattra can you please unmute yourself yes Adam you know the three words that emerge from your though you didn't use them were compassion change and contactless you talked to the virtual digital economy and if you look at the numbers it's a hybrid economy the Walmart footfalls continue to be very robust in the US that's a market that you know well now the word hybrid and the word D2C are being used in the same breath you know retail is becoming omni channel or digital it is becoming hybrid whereas there are brands that are pure D2C and are really becoming very important for consumers so how do you kind of straddle both these words the hybrid world and the purely D2C world I think that the one commonality that they that they both have is that in trying to support and serve those those types of brands and businesses we the industry as a whole has moved from scale to precision now to permission and and what we what we realize as as a result of that is that we have to shift our focus as marketers and advertisers from being less oriented towards aggregation of data and actually much more focused on the application of data in other words can understanding consumers what they will allow the type of information they will share with us how we can best serve them and so we start to see things like user experience or user journeys coming much more to the forefront of our consideration factors but equally one of the areas that we're leaning into very aggressively is data ethics and I think whether you're D2C whether you're omni it doesn't matter the the next frontier that our industry is is going to grapple with is what are the ethical applications of data just because we can collect information on consumers doesn't necessarily mean that we should and so I think we will start to see much more data by design or data that we are collecting only if it is in service of consumers and only if it is permission based and that becomes true whether you're in the US whether you're in India whether you're in Australia anywhere in the world because the scrutiny that consumers have placed within the industry now is calling everything into question and it's part of what's contributed to the massive erosion in trust that we're seeing around the world between consumers and brands even consumers and governments for example the the the way in which their data and information has been handled hasn't always been transparent but more so the value exchange hasn't been there for them and so start to think about data ethics far more readily and how we can best serve consumers in the future regardless of D2C omni whatever type of retailer you happen to be you know we started exchange for media 21 years back and about 10 years back I wrote a piece that every media planner needs to be a digital planner okay I wrote that piece maybe 10 11 12 years back well ahead of your time yeah I mean I had here then Adam but I can only I only remember that now as I said in the morning in India 20% of the spends are already digital and over the next three years they will be between 40 to 50% that's what we can estimate by being where we are and out of that 40% 70% is programmatic right programmatic is growing hugely now that also brings issues of you talked about ethical data access democratization security is a big issue bots is a big issue of course technology is also coming to help in terms of minimizing ad fraud as the growth of digital growth there is also a parallel universe for a lack of better world let me call it the meta universe you know your identity on digital the rising importance of NFTs you know I mean if you look at NFT and meta the point towards a different direction now what are clients you work with some of the most venerable businesses and brands across the world you talk to their CEOs you talk to founders of businesses what are the top two three trends that you see which will accelerate this balance of digital growth with ethics you know we know that digital is going to grow and grow it but how do you I mean there is debate about data privacy there's a debate about benefiting from data there's a debate about how much is digital is good because young millennials are spending too much screen time and they're not spending enough time in football fields they're not spending enough time you're having real conversations so give me a sense of what are your top three predictions or what are the big trends which will balance these out so I think certainly you know the push towards ensuring that we're we're putting consumers first along with actually the balance of digitization of everything that we're seeing it becomes critical component to every discussion that we're having at the moment but actually goes kind of back to what I had said earlier where if we start to really understand consumers and their expectations and ambitions from brands we can start to better serve them and and so it doesn't mean that we have to walk away from from understanding consumers or their digital footprint but it does mean that we have to do so in a more responsible way so we're talking to consumers about things like a data ethics compass that we've created which looks at the application of data and how you might how you might apply some of the data that consumers are even willingly offering up and what the value exchange is between them so I would say understanding risk tolerances and understanding true consumer journeys becomes becomes the first thing the second thing though is is actually understanding what consumers want in the way of values so that your brand can be more more relevant and one of my favorite stats right now is 71% of global 18 to 24 year olds in other words most companies future audiences they think that supporting a cause or a purpose is imperative for a brand and here's here's the irony for me they believe that it's important or imperative even if it's financially motivated or to avoid public scrutiny so in other words it's just an expectation that they have these days so when you start to understand what consumers actually want you can start to adapt your brands and you can start to define purpose better in doing so you can better serve them with more relevant more meaningful experiences you can start to think about the application of data and how you best leverage that to to unlock more meaningful dialogue with them and then I would say that the third as a consequence of that is actually how do you create a more meaningful feedback loop so that you understand what's working not only for your business but also for consumers and I think there's going to be a facet of listening moving forward understanding consumer sentiment understanding brand trajectory which comes much more to the forefront of conversations as we move forward in exploring some of the trends that as you say are going to be unlocked through the aggressive shift towards programmatic and digital acceleration as a whole. My last question one is you know Adam you talk to these founders business owners CEOs you know CMOs now how does Adam keep himself equipped or in some way understand what's happening in the future beyond meeting these people what do you do as a leader as an individual to be able to understand consumer behavior to understand trends you know that would be interesting to know. I think for me on a personal level the biggest thing is seek inspiration everywhere it doesn't doesn't matter who you're talking to it doesn't matter you know what your agenda is find people from outside the industry even to bring internal stimulus to what we do and application to what we do. Just over the weekend I was going for a walk with my daughter and she mentioned something that just triggered a moment for me and I said we have to run back to the house I need to write something down and she said dad why are we moving so quickly and I said I don't want to lose this thought and it was just something that a four-year-old said to me that triggered an idea about what good growth in the future might actually look like for a particular client that we're working with. So you know I would say I wish there was this sort of silver bullet so to speak as to where to find inspiration but I think it's really just being receptive and open to to the types of conversations that we have in particular those that are outside of the industry because all too often we find that we are we are too introspective and too consumed by our own agendas to actually look at what consumers or the world around us are expecting of us. I said thank you Adam for talking to Exchange for Media and various audience over the last 21 years we've been the homepage of CMOs, brand managers and media planners and we've tried to decipher what's happening in the business of media advertising communication. So thank you for talking to us and we look forward to hosting you sometime in India and you know kind of shooting a few beers. At this point I must tell you that Exchange for Media we believe that we need to bring in a new identity brand identity and we would request you at some stage to help us unveil our new identity. While we are Exchange for Media and this is the 18th year of the Exchange for Media conclave we are mostly called by people as E4M I mean that's easy so at some stage today we'll unveil a new brand identity and our ambition is to be in at least three markets over the next 24 years 24 months 18 to 24 months because as you know in Southeast Asia we are red a lot so we want to get into markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and take our product offering our editorial platforms are face-to-face initiatives our community initiatives we don't call them awards conferences we call them community initiatives so at some stage Ravin will keep us all to launch the new identity our editor Ms Nazia Rahman and my co-founder Mr Naval Hoja are also on the broadcast and so are our audiences so I'll hand it over back to Ravin for taking it to the next conversation and we'll bring you in for launching our new identity so I'm grateful to you for your time for insights and no wonder your clients swear by you there's some of the marky names and I can tell you that one thing Adam looking at your profile the age of the global CEO of Mindshade keeps getting lesser and lesser you know you're possibly the youngest CEO I have I can say I've interacted with every past CEO in the last 20 years and I clearly you're the youngest so that is in tune with what's happening in the marketplace I have I do have the gray hairs to show thank you very much for for having me truly an honor as I say congratulations on 21 years and and I look forward to helping you as you as you expand and hopefully doing so in person at some point in the not so distant thank you so much Adam really appreciate thank you for that anecdote from what your daughter said you know I have an 18 year old and a 14 year old and sometimes they say things and it makes you think Mr. Shashi Sanna who's the chairman of IPG brands in India has also joined thank you Mr. Sinha and I'll hand it back to Ravin thank you Ravin bye Adam cheers thank you thank you so much Dr. Bhattra and of course we'd like to express our gratitude to Mr. Gerhard for being here thank you so much sir it was truly an honor to have you join in the conference thank you so I'm sure there's a lot to ponder on with the conversation that you just heard from these two amazing gentlemen and on that note we'd like to take things forward we are all set for the big reveal as Dr. Bhattra just said which we have been waiting for some quite time now it is the moment that we launch our new logo a labor of hard work of all the team members at E4M and of course it has been a long time due and right now is the time that we all are about to unveil the strong vision to bring the community insightful journalism and platforms for the industries to mingle and learn from each other. Launching this new logo will be our special guest for the evening Mr. Darrell Lee who is the global CEO of IPG Media Brands he will be joined by Mr. Sashi Sinha CEO IPG Media Brands India Dr. Anrat Bhattra chairman and founder of exchange for media group of course Mr. Naval Ahuja the co-founder and director of exchange for media group and Ms. Nazia Alvi editor exchange for media group as well along with this of course we'd like to request the person behind this amazing amazing opportunity to tell us a little bit more about the logo itself. Ashwini has designed the logo I'll request Ashwini to kindly say a few words can you know it's not just about the design of a logo it's a brand identity and who could better than Ashwini Deshpande of Elevent Design she and her team have taken a lot of effort work with Naval to do this and it has passed through all kinds of checks including astrological checks Mr. Sinha it's been shown to astrological and numerologists and people like that so we'd like to get Ms. Ashwini Deshpande to be on screen and share her vision and how she and her team were able to come up with this Ms. Ashwini Deshpande. Thank you so much Anurag I think it's been a long journey and I hope that we've reached a really good point today and seems like the great day to unveil. So when we began this whole discussion with you and Naval and Sunil and of course my team members we were kind of you know where do you begin because you have been pioneers leaders in the industry you've been sort of an epicenter of sorts for the ad media and marketing industry so what should your branding be what should it convey what should it do and how does it stand the test of time because you've had your visual identity I think for more than 18-20 years and you have been a very very progressive group with very very amazing progressive initiatives but somewhere along the branding didn't move forward so many a times when a brand looks at itself you know every four or five years and keeps refreshing it's much easier to do the next step but for this brand which in its mindset and actions had moved way forward and had not really reflected that in the visual identity seemed like a big challenge so we said what does e4m stand for and to simply put I think you you just said it yourself as well you are the enablers of connections of communication among ad media marketing communities so basically it's an enabler brand so how do we make it really look like an enabler brand feel like one create a tone of voice and so on of course you're the focal point of starting so many discoveries insights and connections a progressive tech platform of course we are digitally native today and every brand that starts will have its first interaction with its users on some screen or the other so we are a digitally native brand so how do we look like that the difference here is that you're not just a tech platform you are a platform where people and culture matter you know where connections are not just email IDs or designations or company names and you know all of you know people personally and you have actually tracked people's progress personally so how do we bring that alive into the identity and and well there were many such challenges and of course we are in a different age now so digitally native minimalist easy to extend with properties co-branding easy to go with sponsor logos you know all kinds of things had to be considered easy as a long and short form whether you call it exchange for media or like people lovingly call it e4m so all of that put together I think we've tried to do something which is vibrant connecting friendly reliable and of course gives a sense of being global because as you just mentioned you're expanding your horizons and the logo has to stand the test of geographies as well so what we have of course is something that you know it looks simple enough and friendly enough and yet global enough and I believe it should stand the test of time for years to come and you know let's let's just hope we get a good positive response moving ahead because you also checked the astrology and vastu and whatever else so here is to the entire team thank you so much for giving us this opportunity and all the best to e4m in the years to come thank you Anubhav thank you Ashwini for that insights into who we are it was a very accurate description of what me Nawal Sunil our teams Nazia is there she's put together the exchange for media conclave Michelle who's our conference producer she's helped Nazia in this a lot of other colleagues who may or may not be on the broadcast some most of them who work with us now but a lot of them have worked over the years so our stakeholders the industry and the community has really supported us believed in us continue to patronize us continue to give us their time input suggestion so we don't think of it as a business I always say the advertising marketing media fraternity is my community it is my samudai it is a family and that's how you know we have personal relationships and you know it's not we put our heart into everything we do it's not just another conference it's just not just another jury it's not just another award we try and put in that extra because really it is our community so thank you so much for bringing that word of the enabler brand the tech brand the connector the knowledge platform and most importantly you know the word community so yes we're called E4M so thank you for doing what you've done for for us at exchange for media and being the leader in this space for the community so thank you so much Ashwini elephant design has really all the clients that you worked with and all the brand identities that you've created have gone on to build businesses I hope this signals are leaping to a next league and our next phase of growth so thank you so much Ashwini. Really Naval is the one who got this done so Naval it'll be nice if you said few words. I actually want to thank Ashwini for being patient with us I'm sure you have clients who have you know faster turnaround time companies that you you know work with who are far more nimble who are far more you know sort of responsive having said that I think Covid played a big part in the delay the the branding the identity has been sort of you know in pipeline for more than a year one of the things I want to add to what Anurag said and Ashwini and her team have brought it out very beautifully in the new identity is the fact that you know we stand for binding the community together and you know you can you can sort of overestimate the role of a you know brand or identity or underestimated the fact is that you know that is the first thing that your sort of audience people you are interacting with people in the community interact with and what Ashwini and her team have beautifully done is that they brought out that facet that aspect about exchange for media e4m being a sort of community platform which binds everything everybody together it is contemporary it is new age it is you know we we really love the identity and it kind of you know completes the trioka for us a few years back we rebranded and relaunched impact subsequently subsequent to that you know bridge our marketing magazine was the identity was redone and now we are kind of in some ways finishing that project with e4m the idea also is to moving forward make it simpler and crisp and also have the url as e4m and not keep it at exchangeformedia.com because the community now knows e4m so thank you Ashwini for putting the hard work and you know really putting up with our tantrums and the delays i i do hope that you know this kind of signals a sort of fresh post-covid relaunch for all of us thank you so much thank you so much it was a great pleasure wonderful to see you back to you yes i think with that we are ready for the unveil can i please request nazia to take over daryl can you switch on your camera and then we can have the ab Ashwini i want to thank you for that bold red colour the signifies that our journalism is also going to get bolder and braver in the coming years yeah definitely and you've also kept it very rooted and so it carries both i mean the the traditional thing that we have been doing for all these years and then going forward we'll be doing much i mean the first thing that i look at it comes across as a very bold logo and that's what that's the message we want to give out to people that our journalism is also going to get bolder and braver so if if daryl can you join in i'll just check it in the meantime we get daryl connected i would be very happy to request you all to kindly use the hashtag that's e4m conclave and spread the word around you can tweet it on your social networks on instagram on facebook and let the world know that this conversation was happening today and i'm absolutely sure you've got a lot of value from the conversations that we've had the discussions that we've had so use the hashtag and let the world know that you were a part of this amazing amazing virtual event revenue may take one minute you want to run partner aves we still have any left or should be done in the meantime we're waiting for Mr. Lee to join in sg can we have some movies please uh the partner series are you okay with 80 crore 10 per cent to 50 lakhs so hello hello daryl good to see you it's to see you guys thank you daryl for joining oh you're taking out time thank you so much you're welcome whenever shashi asks me to do something i say yes thanks for that thank you very much thank you so we can unveil the now that daryl is here just before the conversation if you can unveil the new logo thanks again ashwini this looks uh you know vibrant colorful and brightens up uh our evening and uh with that let me uh let me uh welcome daryl on board daryl thank you for joining us as we were me and nazia were explaining to you the other day this is our new identity the new exchange for media logo uh that has been curated by india's uh one of india's premier design agencies called elephant design the founder is here ashwini dhishpande she's helped us do this uh let me uh hand it over to nazia if you want to say something nazia and then we i think we can uh continue with that before before i start the conversation mr sinai is here i'd like him to say something uh uh you know i'm going to do a conversation with daryl any cues for me what should i be asking him you're on your own novel you're on your own sir leave it to you oh thanks daryl thanks for coming into india you know you're the big fan of yours and the fact that you agreed to do this do this audience they run a very fine show exchange for media and they do this cosplay every year religiously so the fact that you were need to be the keynote speaker at the end the leadership thank you very much thank you thank you mr sinai thank you ashwini thank you nazia thank you for joining us uh i don't have to introduce uh you know today's uh keynote speaker our valedictory session uh but some of you who might not know what this accomplished gentleman uh has been doing past few years daryl Lee is currently the CEO of ipg media brands as you know ipg media brands is one of the largest uh media investment conglomerates across the world it's part of the interpublic group uh daryl has a very interesting sort of background he's worked across creative agencies for many years he was part of uh mccann erickson he was the global CEO of universal mccann from 2013 to 2019 he's been part of you know universal mccann for a good part of as i see 13 years before that daryl also worked with ogilvy and now as part of the ipg media brands he looks after significant investments in the media investment space thank you and welcome to the show daryl thank you no i'm very excited to be thank you so much for joining us it must be early morning in new york uh let me uh before we get into the conversation let me just you know contextualize it uh last 18 months the pandemic has been uh uh you know multi-faceted in in its impact on what's happening on consumers what's happening on the brand side what's happening in the agency ecosystem and what is subsequently happening on the media side of the ecosystem and all four of these ecosystems are kind of joined directly and indirectly what we'll do through this conversation over the next 30 minutes or so try to cover each bucket and see what is the impact of the pandemic pandemic on each of these uh uh you know ecosystems and then what is the collective impact and where uh the future is headed so to say especially uh where agencies stand today how can they compete better with uh agencies within their own ecosystem and companies outside consultancies at tech companies and so on so forth uh the other part of the conversation i'd like to do is about you know consumer behavior and the impact of that uh moving forward post pandemic and where it is headed and the third part which is also important for brands as well as agencies is what is happening on the media ecosystem side on one hand there is a lot of consolidation in legacy media and on the other hand there is fragmentation as well as consolidation in the digital media space and what will be the impact of that back on brands and agency ecosystem let me start by asking you Darryl you've been part of the advertising agency ecosystems for the last you know 20 odd years you've seen many waves of growth and degrowth in these last two uh two decades and a bit more how do you see this pandemic being different from the earlier boom and bust cycles what do you think this pandemic will leave behind which will fundamentally change the advertising and the brand ecosystem uh well thank you first of all i want to congratulate you on your amazing new logo and visual design i think it is very modern and very contemporary um and i think apple has got to run for its money now so just watch out i think the i think if i am is going to be a iconic logo and i end but i think it's also you know this is i suppose the sign of the pandemic which is very progressive marketers are using the opportunity to refresh and energize themselves so congratulations secondly before i answer your question i also want to correct you i do not run a conglomerate there are other of my peers who run conglomerates that i run a very agile marketing solutions company uh so uh as shashi will will attest uh we we you know we're never we're not the biggest we don't aspire to be the biggest but we aspire to be the best uh as a as a media and marketing solutions company and uh and i you've already said that i'm old i don't want to be part of a conglomerate i'm not uh but but i am i am a person and we are a company that works with our clients and their brands to understand how consumer behavior is going to change is driving marketing and and driving growth i think um i mean the pandemic has been quite an unprecedented experience in our lifetime so it's it's not like um a typical boom and bust cycle in the sense that it's not financially driven it has not been because of some economic crisis that we um that we've faced this extreme behavior shift it is a health crisis and the global health crisis happening at the same time that has all led people to um change their work patterns and change their life patterns and so when i think when you change your life patterns uh that's a change that doesn't go away right so sometimes in economic hardship you spend less uh you might lose your home you might lose a car you might lose your you might you may have to scale back your expenses but this is a fundamental shift in life patterns where we have begun to understand what we can do in traditional work environments and what we can do outside of traditional work environments and technology has been the key differentiator in allowing us to do that so so in that sense you know the pandemic is obviously a disruption as opposed to just a flip um but the question is what is it disrupting uh or rather what is it accelerating and i know that uh i know that i know that the india marketplace is very exciting from a digital perspective um we just released our magna ad spend forecast and we're showing a 15 growth in the india marketplace but a 19 growth in digital spend in in in the media marketplace and that is a reaction to consumer behavior where i'm where smartphone adoption smartphone use all online channels um have obviously become more important as people spend time at home but still crave the connection right the thing we the thing we we now understand again about human beings is we crave connection even when we are in our own bedroom for a year and a half well you know i think i've seen shashi in that room in that one little office that he has for the last 18 months so but i know he's a very social and gregarious and connected man so how do you maintain this deep desire for human beings to be connected and at the same time we've got this you know this lockdown these lockdowns or at least you know a much much more constrained activity in terms of our behavior so digital acceleration is the obvious it is not a trend it is now i think um the way in which human beings will behave which doesn't mean that everything we do will be digital it means that everything we do will be digitally mediated we will have a digital component to absolutely everything in our lives because in the pandemic we saw that there was not just possible that it was preferable and that we were able to use digital to make a whole range of areas in our lives better whether it is ordering groceries and food which i think we had a sense that this was possible but now we see it's absolutely possible and convenient to healthcare to online education to and i think to that being widespread right so in the past digital was for early adopters for either the elite or for the avon god of a culture the millennials gen z people who you know teenagers who were early adopters now i think all of that digital convenience has now become apparent to widespread consumer base regardless of income regardless of geography and regardless of age and i think that's a really really exciting trend and then of course the big trend underneath all the digital acceleration is connected commerce which is you know not e-commerce is obviously the big boom you know we have amazon as a client so i'm not just saying that because we have amazon as a client um the the e-commerce boom is now is now a loud shout it's no longer a boom um but the thing that's interesting is the connection around e-commerce right so what i we talk about connected commerce at ipg media brands which is all the all the uh shopping behaviors the personalization that comes from those behaviors and the physical distribution and delivery system how that all connects together to create experiences for brands and the brands that can connect all of those experiences are the ones that are winning today in the pandemic and will win even more as we come out yes very uh rightly described uh uh if i may add uh you know one of the uh dictionary meanings of conglomerate that i just looked up as things a thing consisting of a number of different and distinct parts or items that are grouped together in many ways agencies are doing that even more so having to do that with you know so much explosion of digital now so it is not just about size and you know being around gorilla but also being nimble and connecting various parts together uh let me ask you a follow-up question on you know all the digital boom that you described that uh agencies uh you know both media and creative and 20 years back it all used to be part of a single group before it split uh separate went separate ways into media services and creative do agencies have it in them uh to kind of uh you know take advantage of this opportunity what are the challenges that agencies are facing in terms of you know uh revamping and sort of you know uh refocusing their efforts and energies and where are the areas that agencies need to focus on to be future ready for their brands for their clients to kind of be uh be in step with time uh with you know the consumer habit changes that are happening well that's a good that's a good big question um it's a good big question i i you know that the deal the deal breaker for all agencies will be do you have strategic intelligence about consumers um which is not just data data is the fuel for that but do you use that data to create intelligence about audience segments growth segments and then real people within them and then are you able to use that intelligence strategically i i've always believed that there that the two kinds of agencies in the world are not creative and media they're strategic agencies and execution agencies and some agencies are strategic and look across look at a consumer build integrated strategies around that consumer and then look to partner either within your system or outside of your system to execute then there's some agencies creative or media that just do the one thing that they're supposed to do and do that well from an execution perspective and i think the strategic agencies are going to be the ones that win because as you say you you you know that there aren't channels anymore they're just opportunities to connect with people right and there are we know we look at media in terms of channel types but really that is an unlimited amount of opportunity to connect with people so agencies that can put within themselves one they have to be based on data which makes which makes it which is challenging for creative agencies because creative agencies are usually based on uh intuition but you've got to read all agencies have to rebuild themselves around data use that data to create intelligence and use that intelligence to create strategy and ideas and uh and then partner you know the thing that we're learning to do as agencies as you said there's a big ecosystem now with consultants production companies experiential companies um creators influences the ability for an agency to have a clear strategic insight built on intelligence and then to partner with tech companies and influences and that's the key um and i think that's the thing that clients are looking for somebody who can orchestrate for them versus just execute yeah interesting you say that you know i do think the media agencies are in a better position there i mean i know i don't i want to be more provocative here which is to tell you what i i think media agencies are five years ahead of creative agencies not just in the access to data and understanding how to turn data into intelligence but in ability to partner i think creative agencies look inside for all the ideas and execution whereas i think media agencies are used to working with snap and instagram and tiktok and google to build creative ideas to come up with them and to build them um and i think and you know with tv and with tv properties and out of home and i think that partnership power is what's going to be the difference it's interesting you say that darryl uh you know uh creative agencies uh uh have always been uh the sort of company at the forefront when it uh when it came to creating brand communication in fact 20 years back before the businesses were split uh you know media agency slides used to be towards the end mostly about five minutes at the end how much how much money will be spent before it came back to uh the forefront and it got equal prominence but now as we see a lot of media agencies are leading innovation with the clients because you're more connected to what's happening in the media ecosystem so whether you know a 32nd ad is now supposed to be a five-seconder uh whether a you know newspaper full page ad is supposed to become a social media post i think media agencies are significantly very deeply connected with what's happening on the media side side of the space nothing to take away from creative agencies but i think more innovation a lot more innovation is these days happening in media agency offices and you know shashi is here mr sena is here he can vouch for you know a lot of the work that ipg companies are doing in india do you see you know having worked uh on uh you know across both sides of the aisle you see uh the media and the creative ecosystem now kind of reemerging uh going back to its pre uh you know uh 2000 avatar or coming back together in some other shape and form and there's a reason i asked this question also is that if you look at you know how uh legacy media transactions used to happen you know there were three players or four players in the entire ecosystem there is a media company there's a creative and a media agency and then there is a brand so primarily four players today before uh the brand money hits the uh you know bank account of a media platform let's say a facebook or a google there are at least eight to ten players involved in middle there is a digital agency which is doing creatives there is a creative agencies which is curating perhaps content there's a media agency which is buying there could be an influencer marketing agency somewhere there is a data analytics company there is another company which is doing programmatic advertising so there are eight ten players in the entire ecosystem and media agencies creative agencies which have sort of grown in the legacy media world how do they equip themselves to kind of compete with these new age startups you know we had this news last year of Accenture buying Broga file a very interesting development where you have a primarily a consultant turned analytics company now buying the creative agencies do creative agencies or media agencies also need to do the same thing which is go and buy nimble startups or create some of these companies ground up well i mean i do think you know to my earlier point we need to partner we need to have partner structures so we have we we have a couple of things at ipg we do have venture funds that we do look at taking stakes in very small add add tech or more tech or add execution companies just to see where you know where where innovation is being driven but mostly what we do is from a partnership perspective i don't think i mean we don't want to go back right no looking back no looking back the 21st century is not about looking back unless it is to learn a lesson and the lesson in the past was when when you had a media department that was the last three minutes of your creative presentation you were doing advertising i don't think we're living in the age of advertising we're living in the age of brand experiences and so in the world of brand experiences what what we used to do in that old advertising model is no longer interesting or even powerful so how do we build a model where one you deliver brand experiences for a client but two you have this ability to use audience intelligence and audience information to design it so much of what we used to do in the past to say here's what the brand wants to say and here's how we broadcast it versus today where it's here's what we're listening to in terms of audiences here's what they're saying their interests are and here's how our brand can can participate in that conversation so all we know i don't want to talk too much about democracy but it is a democratic marketing people people are we start as a media agency as media agencies both initiative and um we start with what are people what are audiences what are real people saying in the category and therefore what do our brands of our of our clients need to say to participate in that conversation and so yeah we're not going to we're not going to recombine media and creative uh agencies that's the old model what we are going to do is partner closely with everybody in that ecosystem and that includes brand you know the big brand communications agencies and i think we have a very you know we have an open architecture system at ipg we partner really well with our creative agency partners but as you say we partner with rga as well as with mccant you know we we partner with a digital shop just as well as we partner with a branch up because the entirety of that experience is something that we need to bring together now the question is who is the conductor of the orchestra and um typically that is the that has been the mccans and the oglebies of the world but i don't think that is anymore it's certainly an ipg with you know with our new ceo with philly krikowski who used to be the ceo of media brands we have a truly agnostic approach to that so whoever is the best placed to be the orchestra orchestrator the best experienced that's what we do that's the person who does it so i think that is the big shift which is you know the the old aristocracy of the advertising agency is over and now we're in the democracy of marketing um and i don't you know to your point about acquisitions um i think that i think that you know there's a lot of money in the in the venture capital marketplace i think most of our most of the startups that we work with wants too much money and will get too much money but they should get that money from the marketplace i mean we you know we have this thing where we have to make profit every quarter so that's the thing but um but it doesn't stop us from working with them and uh we have a very very uh you know we have an ipg media lab within uh media brands we have a kind of a relationship with rga ventures we are constantly in the marketplace looking to to test not to partner but to test with different startups um how how we can bring new experiences to our two clients and their brands yes and uh democracy this this democracy in the advertising ecosystem is you know good for media agencies there i say uh let me ask you about the you know other side of the sort of ecosystem which is media companies and we've all grown up in a legacy media world you know where television and print ruled and there have been uh fundamental shifts in that space in the last five seven years india is a very interesting market in that sense globally especially in the western markets also in countries large economies like china digital advertising is now more than 50 percent of the spend india is a sort of outlier in that sense where uh television is continuing to hold its you know share of pie newspaper readership is certainly not falling if you look at language newspapers at least that was the trend until you know covid hit the shores digital as it is happening across the globe is growing very fast uh how do you see this entire ecosystem of legacy legacy media shaping up you know if you look at some of the advertising reports you know tv continues to constitute 35 40 percent of the ad spend if you look at large uh properties in india for example you know large format tv shows you look at big sporting properties like the ipl tv continues to attract uh big bucks brand building you have interesting cases where you know a lot of digital companies actually launch on tv what's your view on how you know the media ecosystem will shape up in india say three years out that's funny i i said i sometimes have to represent ipg on investor calls with wall street and i always get a question you know why why is tv advertising even in the us why is it so strong um and who's who's going to be the brand that buys the last tv ad i get that question and i say the brand that'll buy the last tv ad is a brand called facebook because they are spending they're the fastest growing spender on television in the united states um you know there's there's i'm a i'm a big believe first of all i think the india marketplace is incredibly healthy i i do love that there's a newspaper there's a newspaper uh industry and that is so competitive um and it's so vibrant and so punchy um and i think that's a very that's a that's a good sign for a country frankly um and we're seeing growth right we see growth uh in india 15 percent which is above uh above the region fact it's above global above the global average so we see a lot of vibrancy in in the media marketplace i mean i think there are two big trends the growth in digital such an it's such an obvious point that i hate making it of course digital is growing you know across all formats social search video display commerce so yes that is but but what is but what is also happening is two other things one is um the digitization of all media right so what what we in the u.s what we're having to do and i know in india you will need to do this is to look at news brands and go what portion of the new news of that news brand inventory is print versus digital look at radio brands what portion of them is linear radio versus digital audio um the same with out of home and the digitization of out of home so many many all media is getting digitized which means you can do uh real-time customization around content around location around targeting across all media which is super exciting do i think that india will get to a 50-50 marketplace in terms of digital and traditional yes um i think i think the market that's the right equilibrium i think in the u.s we're over 50 percent now and we we can all feel that the equilibrium is not right um and there is a lot of a lot of demand for tv in the u.s because of that and live events i mean this goes back to my connection point there is still nothing more exciting than than a shared experience and a live event now i would have preferred if the cricket world cup had ended with a final between india and south africa who were of course the best teams in that world cup and for a bunch of osseys not to win it again because they're disastrous awful people but uh no i have many australian friends but um but uh but there is nothing like that there's a shared experience we're all having at the same time we will you know much of much of our culture is so personal and intimate i can be watching a show on amazon prime or netflix that's from 20 years ago you're watching you know money high store something so there's there isn't that same on the same moments for shared connection as they were in media and what live events give us is that shared moment um and obviously festivals and media so i i think that there is going to be the same digitization in india um but i think the that does that doesn't just mean that digital is going to become 100 of the market there will be still a 50 50 split we still want to feel some of our media and experience it in the traditional way the thing that is interesting in in india um as is the ot explosion so i think that i think the streaming wars in any category are giving marketer something new to think about right because there are two kinds of streaming platforms there's advertising supported streaming platforms and then there's a subscription supported like the netflix and the and the and the amazon prime video and i think in the ad supported uh streaming properties obviously there's an opportunity for advertising but the the subscription driven models i think give brands also an opportunity which is to start building brand films to produce films you know we are doing this for for several clients including big clients like j and j where we make a long-form film you make a documentary or we make a scripted film an hour and a half film that is sponsored by the brand but isn't about the product is about the brand that's right and then we and then we sell them to streaming platforms um so it's never been my experience ever as long as i've been in this industry that you could sell a piece of advertising and get money for it but now we're doing that instead of paying people to run advertising they're paying us to run long-form advertising on netflix or on hulu in the u.s so i think there's there's having brands embrace the opportunity around content is and not just content for advertising but content for telling your brand story is incredibly powerful and incredibly exciting because you can tell a real story uh in these long-form films yes and uh you know one of the interesting parts of this digital explosion is now you know in a way everybody's trying to do everything right there are no chinese laws there are i mean media agencies are doing uh content creative agencies are trying to figure out you know digital agencies are buying media uh brands are curating you know uh you know multiple multifaceted teams in house let me ask you about you know the other facet of this growth of digital media and uh you've described the consumer journey you've described you know what is the impact of all of that on the media and the agency ecosystem what is the other side of uh you know the impact of digital in our lives you know digital has become ubiquitous in terms of usage there are now digital behemoths who sort of control the narrative in many ways you know digital is uh like you described earlier in one of the conversations to me tv and you know other media will continue to grow or be at least significantly relevant is because it is publicly it is public media it is shared media yes digital is very private in nature having said that digital will continue to grow what are the challenges that you know this growth will bring upon us for consumers and brands for agencies i mean i think for consumers it's going to be uh um mostly good that you know we're seeing in the us some of the some of the facebook whistleblower leaks where um their concerns around instagram and the effect of instagram on teenage girls and their body image and suicide and some very alarming research obviously there's you know a lot of a lot of talk around media um responsibility and content um that is offensive or inflammatory or gets or gives or via or creates violence so we do need to take um we need to take stock of the good and the the good and the bad and digital you know i go back to i do believe that digital you know is this private experience and is mostly a good experience but our approach to it as marketers needs to be sensible so when we think of digital as a two-horse race between facebook and google we're we're we're we're doing ourselves and our clients and our brands of the service it is not a two-horse race it's nobody's interest for to think of it as a two-horse race but it is just not true you know and i'd say that the digital universe is wide and varied and constantly expanding and if you're a client and your agency is coming back to you with a social plan that includes facebook and instagram and nothing else you should call them lazy kick them out of your office and tell them to come back with a new plan because um and if you're an agency and you think facebook and instagram are the only two options for social you should get it you know you you should look better and look look look more clearly at the marketplace maybe you need some new glasses maybe you need some snap snapchat glasses because because there is you know there is there are we we need to create diversity of experience brands need to deliver diversity of experience for consumers and for audiences and we as marketers need to help facilitate that and that means looking at all the innovation that is happening in digital whether it's ar lenses with snap or uh audio spaces with twitter i know tiktok is not formally yet allowed back into india although i'm hopeful um i saw something that they're going to change their name to tiktik talk to you know 11 other companies which are doing what tiktok does in india so yeah exactly there you go significant proliferation and the entire market don't significant so that's so that's good and all of them i think will be chasing the social commerce opportunity which tiktok is is perfecting uh and i you know i know that we chat and and there's all kinds of super apps being promised promised in the marketplace so i think all of that is to say we have an obligation to not be lazy and digital i don't know how it is possible you know we were we were so active and agile in all other media we're looking for the best tv source the best radio source the best print publication we choose at the program level sometimes at the you know in the us we do targeting where we choose the spot level the spot level i remember when cricket matches used to be you know even bigger people used to sit and choose what spot to play and mr sinai is here he will tell us in world cup there used to be a demand that my ad has to be the first one to play in the break or the last one to play before the break gets over because that's where when audience is the highest and we haven't in innovation in one of the ipel matches or the early seasons of ipel when there used to be ads between you know two balls being bold so that was like you know different level no and we did all that and now and at the same time we go oh and then google and facebook you know we we suddenly all that precision all that careful thinking just it's too easy and i think um and when something's too easy you know it's not right because it should be hard to get people to be excited by brands so i think i and i think it's interesting you know we talk a lot about media responsibility at ipg media brands and holding facebook in particular accountable for the content that's on that's on their platform that is causing a lot of harm particularly around the pandemic with vaccine hesitancy misinformation disinformation blatant lies crazy talk about about how vaccines are putting microchips in your blood and changing your dna which a large proportion of the u.s population believes because of social media and particularly because of facebook and and and its controls and then you know when you talk to consumers you go what will will you stop using facebook of course not do you want brands to do something about it yes so that you know consumers are consumers want and get a lot of value and connection from facebook they don't want to be sitting there fighting these fights but they expect brands to be taking steps because they know it's ad funded so they expect brands to be doing something about the bad that is happening on social media that is obscuring and negating the good which there's a lot of so we you know we as as a media agency and as a holding company are taking a very strong stand against this because holding facebook accountable forcing them to deliver some advertiser control so you can stop your brands from running against content that you find objectionable or offensive and all of the facebook still hasn't created those advertising controls but they are creating them and we're putting the pressure on them because that's our response yes let me take you back to one of the interesting points you mentioned about you know how we are not investing enough in kind of being innovative on digital media do you think somewhere it is connected to sort of the dearth of talent in the advertising ecosystem and I say that because if you look at the growth of advertising in the last 20 years and I'm saying this from Indian experience advertising agencies have lost a lot of talent to brands a lot of talent to the media side of the business you know digital companies you know you have a situation today where you know youngsters in digital agencies want to kind of become instagram influencers instead of working on media plans so how do you kind of deal with the issue of talent in the industry and do you think that's also partly responsible for the fact that you know there is enough there isn't enough innovation happening because you know there is growth clients are spending money so you sit back and kind of you know let it flow that's a great question we are very focused on we call it the fight for talent because it is a fight and you're right it's not a fight between different holding companies or agencies it's a fight for why would you want to career in the media agency that's that's the fight what's the what's the excitement for there and that's you know that's our opportunity I mean I think the you know the the reason why people come to our agencies are still the brands that we work with the power that those brands have to shape culture and to drive economies and the people that they get to work with so those are always the those are the reasons and so it's our job and Shashi will agree with me that you know we want to work with the worlds and the markets best brands the brands that are taking risks the best brands that are driving innovation because that's why people join people join because they want to work with amazon they want to work with spotify they want to work with clients that are doing something interesting and shifting categories and culture do we are we are very good at marketing ourselves no because we spend a lot of time marketing our clients brands yes and we and we for the first time and I was just this just today I'm looking at we are doing recruitment marketing for the first time we are starting to do as an agency and as a media holding company thinking about how we position ourselves in the ecosystem and how do we attract people right because we're not actually recruiting them we're attracting them it's like they're going into this department store and they can go to any part of that department store why would they come to your section right why would they come to a mall why would they come to your store so we're doing a lot more thinking we're doing a lot of thinking around diversity and inclusion because there it is it is the case that we are more progressive as as agencies have to be progressive there's nobody we don't have enough people for there to be a hierarchy for there to be oh you just go and do your tactical job and I'll do the strategic one we need everybody to be strategic and all in we don't have enough people we never get paid enough by clients we always have to do with more with less and so we need women we need people who are in any way different or other to all feel empowered to be people in our cultures and I know this is a passion of Shashi and myself a woman you know we've got significant amount of women leaders at IPG media brands and at IPG but particularly at media brands so all of that I think begins to make us more attractive we're not going to we're not going to offer people equity and you know shares that quadruple but we're also going to not offer the offer them the opportunity of being a company that fails and then they have to look for a job tomorrow we're going to give them the stability of a of a company that is growing we have double digit growth year over year even in the pandemic we were flat you know in the worst year of 2022 2020 we were flat as a company so we have stability and innovation and it's our job to keep that innovation high and frankly to change the way we think you know Shashi and I are from a different generation people are not looking for careers they're looking for impact and we spend a lot of time at at media brands going where can we stream people into projects that give that help them get impact whether it's in sustainability initiatives diversity initiatives media responsibility organizing global exchange programs all of that is how we deliver on and being a more attractive place to work but it's and we watch our you know our internal scores around two people recommend us to their friends and we keep that as a as a key driver of our executive performance it's a big it is the thing that keeps me up at night we do have people moving to tiktok and snap and um facebook but we also have people coming back this because you're a big you know you're you can be that the impact you can have in agencies is really powerful you can influence what amazon does in india you can influence what spotify does in india through working for initiative or um whereas i think in many times in these particularly these big digital platforms your influence is small so if anybody that's right i think i think very very very well put darryl let me come to your india business now and you have fantastic leadership very stable leadership for many years your india business has grown multi-fold both in the legacy media part as well as the digital part and you have many clients who work with you globally as well as you know who work with you in india what are the specific opportunities you see in india you know india is a large growing market it always has been and you know one of the famous indians ruchi sharma who worked with goldman sacks for many years famously said india is a market that disappoints both the pessimists and the optimists very regularly right what's your take on the india market how how do you see the opportunity here what are the learnings which are important for the indian market which are very different from uh some of the you know evolved markets or the western markets you work working globally well i mean i think the thing that makes india different is um you know the depths of the the depths of cities the layers and layers of cities you have in the in the india market and how they're how rich the regional differences are and how much opportunity there is um to do really vibrant what we call hyper local marketing around the world but in in in india i think it just be called marketing like like how do you really speak i mean i know we were talking earlier about how all this you know there's streaming platforms that are in all the in all the regional languages in india uh there's newspapers in all the regional languages india i think digital allow us to do even more depth of that so i think the hyper local experience in india is going to be uh radio or it's going to be uh extraordinary and be a rich richer opportunity um than in other markets where where there's much more of a national footprint and much less local less local nuance um anything about india which uh which is similar to other markets but richer in india is the live event you know there's there there is still the these cultural moments moments i know that there's the festival season i know there's also a wedding season which i love i love a country that has wedding season um so there's still these moments in culture where the whole culture looks at the same things and those are very powerful moments i know they're very competitive moments for brands but they're also very powerful moments for brands to be about something more than just the products they sell and then i think finally this is my big play i know you're going to smile and say this is obviously the media agency would say this but i'm going to say i'm going to say it anyway creativity is everyone's business creativity is everyone's business the opportunity in 2022 will be to to create content that people want to listen to and and that means not just being part of social conversations and responding and also not being afraid of somebody says something bad about your brand and social media just taking it on the nose being authentic answering them if you think it's wrong just being normal and human in social it also means creating stories about your brand that are big i think there is a and look at the bollywood i look at how the power of bollywood the power of content and culture music poetry india is this rich you know cultural content producer and i think it should also be a bigger player in terms of brand content and it isn't it's it compared compared to how rich that cultural context is indian brands i think have been quiet on the content space and so i think that that is going to be a big play for us you're going to see the media brands content studio really stepping out more in india we have very strong assets ready and very amazing creative thinker creative thinkers and interactive avenues and other parts of media brands ecosystem but we will also be creating a content studio that the sole focus is to help brands create content that people want to watch fantastic i think very well put about you know india being culturally strong and a lot of cultural relevant content being created and how that can sort of you know show itself in terms of the kind of work agencies are doing before we go darryl i'm told we are we're out of time let me ask you as an individual where do you draw your motivation where do you draw inspiration from what are the what are your sources of learning where does kind of the you know drive to run this business keep it relevant on a daily basis in this sort of hyper competitive environment comes from well uh two things one is i'm a very competitive person very competitive i'm compulsively competitive i cannot lose one card game i cannot i get physically ill when i'm south african i grew up south i get physically ill in well south africa in south africa loses anything although i you get an opportunity to see that india's family you will you will have an opportunity to experience that soon that is well we'll see we'll see as long as we beat the australians up and fine um and the other thing is you know there's a picture of nelson mandela behind me on the new yorker um when he was released i i come from south africa and i was a student during the partate era and then while i was a student the partate was dismantled and mandela was released and the whole world changed and everything i'd ever dreamed happened came true and so i'm an idealist i wake up every morning thinking the world is going to get better uh i'm optimistic i even in a pandemic people think i'm a little crazy but i'm like no no it's amazing we found these vaccines so quickly and people have adopted the vaccines and we've we've yes we had tragedy and we you know i'm in new york city we had tragedy for you for months and months of ambulances and and refrigerated morgues trucks next to but still we came through it and we're stronger and i know you had your own suffering in india and i you know shashi and i my heart broke for some of the pain we all felt but i know i know we get better as a as a as a as a group of people and as an industry and i'm amazed at what we do how weak brands are these incredibly powerful positive experiences people's lives it gives them access to things they need and also give them spiritual and nourishment when they're really good and brands are really good so that's what gets it gets me up in the morning is the idea that i'm doing good fantastic that's great to hear darryl and such a positive note for us to end the day this session before we go i mr sinai is here i'd like him to say something he's worked with you you know eight years now uh he will have first hand you know stories to tell us about how it has been part of i mean like to be part of ipg media brands under your leadership and uh what's in store for us when it comes to ipg media brands in india i don't know more than i mean i think darryl is and i'm not saying it because it's a workshop but darryl is a fabulous leader the rare person who's strategically very inclined as you know he started in the consultancy company before he came in but never you know one day you must catch him over a beer and get the story out of the parathan movement he talks about you know changes it is a remarkable story i was privileged to hear it uh and you know from there he went to oxford so i was privileged to hear the story with him and he revisited oxford with us so i think but that's not for this forum really thrilled i mean as darryl says and he goes with all our teams it's all about strategies it's all about quality scale comes scale you know in just a few markets where we're largely number two but as it always reminds me it's not about scale it's always about quality and that's why i tell our team it's finally getting the act together so thank you so a lot darryl for taking time out for india i'm sure with html media and us would love this interaction which has happened thank you very much it is about being the new age conglomerate and not being the old age conglomerate let me let me thank you again darryl for joining us have a good day raven back to you thank you now mr hoja uh what a wonderful conversation uh mr lee thank you so much once again we could we could not have thanked you enough for your valuable time we truly appreciate you being here with us and it was an experience that is going to stay with us for a very long time some thought-provoking answers this and a lot more to look for the future thank you so much once again mr lee thank you you're welcome thank you shashi sir thank you darryl absolutely welcome so fun great great questions thank you thank you very much and i mean we'll see south african india who knows one of us will be happy there you have it once again thank you so much mr lee mr ahuja of course as always it was a pleasure to 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