IAMAI 8th India Digital Meet 2014 Roundup : Part 3/4

[Editor’s note: This article is 3rd in a 4-part series of IAMAI 8th India Digital Meet 2014 Roundup]

In the first and second roundup, we saw the highlights of Entrepreneur Stage and discussion around Social Data or Market Research.

For the next Fire Chat, Deepika Warrier from Pepsi was joined by Anant Rangaswami from FirstPost. Some of the major highlights from this discussion:

• What has actually changed in marketing, compared to the past? On this topic, Deepika shared reaching out to new customers hasn’t changed at all, it still the same in every industry. But the manner in which a customer is being reached has changed a lot.

• Before, a marketing manager used to be like a coach, but now, she has to manage an orchestra!

• Deepika shared that Pepsi Labs regularly looks out for new startups and new ideas, which can help them to connect with the youth and infuse new ideas in their marketing campaigns.

• The hiring pattern has overly changed within most MNC today. Now, the management is looking for a person who has a combination of both left and right brain, that is, she should be creative and should be able to execute that creativeness.

• The opportunity today lies in exploring regional languages, and content generation in this area. Deepika surprised everyone present there by stating that she is still looking for regional content providers, who can provide high quality, fast regional content to fuel their marketing activities.

• Ecommerce is no doubt the growing market, but in the FMCG sector, it will still take some time to get maximum impact of eCommerce.

• Pepsi is still trying to crack the code for social conversations and real time analysis of that.

The last chat was pretty interesting as well, as Debabrata Mukherjee from Coca Cola was joined by Kirthiga Reddy from Facebook. Some of the major highlights:

• The chat started with Kirthiga offering Debabrata a can of coke. Lets talk about branding now!

• Earlier, Digital Marketing was considered a filler, but now, it has become the core marketing strategy. Debabrate shared that in the year 2013, when Coca Cola initiated a campaign to make their company India’s biggest beverage brand, they had super success with online marketing as over 200,000 downloads of their app was witnessed in the month of December alone.

• His earlier experience in South Korea taught his several important lessons in eCommerce and the use of web. As a movie is downloaded in 2 minutes there, there are immense eCommerce activities going on there, which is still missing in India due to low bandwidth and speed.

• When asked what do you imagine when you hear the term Coca Cola, then some very interesting answers popped in like “Aamir Khan”; “Coke Studio”; “Thanda Matlab.. “ etc. This highlighted the branding efforts done by Coca Cola over the years

• Highlighting the importance of social media, one example was shared: Say an event is happening in Greater Noida, and the people present there starts sharing the updates on social networks. Soon, that offline event will become part of the online world, and the brand is exposed to millions of people in a single shot.

• Coke has started it’s eCommerce journey in Ahmedabad, where they are accepting online orders and delivering them.

• When Kirthiga asked Debabrata about one challenge which Facebook is encountering, then he replied with Facebook Video Sharing, which need some more refining and ease of usage.

• On challenges on Youtube, Debabrata replied with Hangouts, which needs more creative ideas to crack the success code.

• With Twitter, he was confused: is it a news centric or engagement centric?

• When asked what will happen 10 years down the line, Debabrata replied that marketing campaigns will become more integrated and focused. Just like T20 exists now along with Test Matches and One Day Internationals, different campaign types will co-exist, giving an even wider framework to enchant and delight the customer.

• Debabrata gave some brilliant advise to Content Creators, as he asked them to create more and more content. Don’t be afraid, he said, you all will come out stronger. The only struggle as of now for any marketing company is to create better and better content.

• On Digital Media, he shared that Content is meant to be shared, not retained. And this is the only mantra of Digital Marketing!

Wait for the last and 4th post, where we discuss about the highlights of Narendra Modi’s talk and drums that surprised everyone at the event. Stay Tuned!

About the Author

Mohul is a Senior Online Marketer from Noida, India. You can follow him on Facebook to know his views on Online Marketing, Entrepreneurship & Life!