Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Cross Media Orchestration For Creative Excellence with Prof. Prasad Naik, University of California Davis

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Cross Media Orchestration For Creative Excellence with Prof. Prasad Naik, University of California Davis · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I told you about this beautiful campaign on MasterCard.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now you go and ask Ajay Banga that you know, did you how much money should you spend now that you did this?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: You created all this synergy.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: Can you quantify the synergy and tell me the impact on budgets and profit?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Guarantee you there is no answer to that.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because the banks won't share the data.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: MasterCard may be themselves willing to analyze and do something because they came up with this beautiful idea.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: So they have vested interest in doing it, showing that look, I can improve profitability, your company's profitability for banks, for merchants, but they think there is something magical about that data.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: And they want to keep it under the cloak.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that lack of realization is what is reducing the diffusion of it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another edition of the Super CMO podcast.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, we have a very distinguished guest, Professor Prasad Nayak.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the futures the marketing professionals of tomorrow would have to prepare themselves for it was a fantastic conversation which I enjoyed very much.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure you will also have a lot of learning from the last experience of Professor Rasad Nayak.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Over to my conversation with him.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: This episode of the Super CMO show was made possible by the great folks at Moving Walls.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Moving Walls provides a global technology platform built by out-of-home advertising experts automating the process of planning, buying, executing, and measuring out-of-home campaigns.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Moving Walls helps leading brands and agencies to move to audience-based planning, improve turnaround times with automated proposals, and implement programmatic digital, out-of-home and verify campaign performances.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Moving Walls helps measure, reach and influence moving audiences across the world.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: For more information, log on to www.movingwalls.com.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hi Prasad, lovely having you in the Contraminds Podcast.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: You've been a friend, you've been working with me on lots of projects around the marketing area, and it's great to have you here in India talking about your experience, talking about marketing as a profession and what you have done in this area.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely to have you here.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Swami.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: It is a pleasure to be here in your podcast.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: I did not even know that you have this capability and this business that you have started.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know you as a marketing mix company, analytics company, which would consult to the clients and which is when we met.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: But this is a terrific pivot that you have done to your career, and hopefully I can contribute.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, Prasad, I wanted to really uh when I look at your background, uh you were a chemical engineer and then you went into marketing and made a name for yourself in the quantitative areas of marketing.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, where did this interest in marketing really come up?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And where was this uh area where you said, hey, it looks like a great area to spend your entire career on?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, where did it happen?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is a terrific question you ask.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, very few people actually know this.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I did chemical engineering from University Department of Chemical Technology, which is what they call formerly now.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh currently it is called Institute of Chemical Technology, it is based out of uh Matunga, uh near Don Bosco School.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Terrific school, hard to get in, easy to get out because they don't want to hold you longer.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a great set of colleagues.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was very good at math, and uh so it helped me learn a lot more applications of math to engineering problems.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was really not good at chemistry and uh many other things.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: But in that four years, which was a formative year for me, I was 18 to 22, uh I got into uh extracurricular activities as it was called then.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I went into general elections, uh general secretary, all stuff other than academics.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: I loved a lot.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's where, and debating, uh elocution, competition, and so I would participate in those four years, and that's where I realized that I have skills, which is all about uh uh interpersonal and social and all that, which is not something emphasized in engineering, but I realized that I have the skills, and at that point I decided that uh I should do something with that uh in my job, and then I looked around all the job options I have, and then it realized that one career path is to be a sales engineer.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Sales engineer is a beautiful term.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: I have to do the selling, meet the client, make a call, create a new client, uh, get the order, and then I don't have to do engineering, which is what was uh something I really did not know well.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: I knew the math, but I did not understand the engineering per se.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I go and give it back to those who do know engineering.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: But my job was just interpersonal uh selling of that thing.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Techno commercial negotiations is what they used to call.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I started my career in Dor Oliver in Andari, East, and uh I started as a sales engineer, and then I knew my job was in sales.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I worked there for a year, and then I realized that you know, if you have to be anybody from my boss, my mentor, Balrahman, my first mentor, he said, you know, you got to be go to IAMS.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's where they will teach you how to manage people and you will rise up.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so he encouraged me, and I did that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: I went to IMCal.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then after IAMCal, I knew sales was my passion.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: I love selling things, meeting people, understanding what is the need and why they are willing to pay, how much they are willing to pay, and not more or not less, and then design a product from with my engineering team to bridge the gap.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that was my technocommercial negotiations I would do.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how I ended up in B2B sales, and then after MBA, I said, well, we need to do B2C sales.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I joined uh Horlicks company, which later on became Glaxo Smith Klein, and uh it was B2C, you sell it to wholesalers, retailers, consumers, advertise, and then I went into brand management in Delhi, which is a staff function.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I did two years in sales and then two years in brand management, where you do advertising, promotion, price discounts, all that stuff.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got B2B, B2C, sales and brand management exposure before I started my uh PhD in marketing.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was always in sales in some sense, but I was not always in sales while I was doing my engineering.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: But the transition was very natural.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I discovered that when I was in debating and elocution and uh general secretary.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's where I realized that you know dealing with people is fun.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So then you went went on to do your PhD in marketing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think in 2023 you won the Don Schulz Award for Innovation and Integrated Marketing Communication.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so tell me a little bit about uh the principles of integrated marketing communications.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh you are an authority uh in that area, and if you can talk to us about why for marketing integrated marketing communications is an extremely important core of what CMOs and brands need to do.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh tell me a little bit about your work around integrated marketing communications.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: What are the principles that form the tenets of integrated marketing communication?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing communications is age-old.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you can go even in prehistoric times and people will announce that this is my product, this is my feature, these are the benefits, and they will use television, radio, print, and it has always been happening all along.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Don Schules, who was a pioneer in integrated marketing communications, he came up with uh the idea that marketing should be a mix and not just marketing.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: That idea prevailed prior to his articulating more forcefully, but he applied it to the context of communications and not just uh pricing and advertising, which is marketing mix.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: But within communication, there's television, radio, print, online, offline, digital, banners, all kinds of things, social media.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so his vision was that these various uh vehicles must reinforce each other.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: So television's effectiveness should improve because I am also doing radio, which you may have heard on the road before watching TV in the evening.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: There would be a billboard which will tell you something, and later on you go at the office and then you talk about the billboard in the hallway.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so each of these uh media reinforces the other medium.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Each will have their own effectiveness regardless, which was there in previous thinking and in mathematical models of multiple media.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: This reinforcement was not there, which is what we call synergy.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: So the first tenet of integrated marketing communication is this joint effect pairwise, TV and online, and online and outdoors, and product placement and events and PR, their pairwise interaction as to how they reinforce each other, and then together, as all of them, what is the communication mix?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you want to synchronize all of these various media, not just based on effectiveness, but because of these inter effects among themselves, and that is the first principle tenet.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh my work was to actually quantify how much is the joint effect.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea that there should be a joint effect is really Don Schules.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Quantification was very hard to combine.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we could talk about IMC, but uh there was no proof that it is there in the data.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we took the model and then we worked out some math and then we quantified.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the paper came out in Journal of Marketing Research, and the very next week, I had not, by the way, met John Don Schules prior to that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Don Schules writes up, he he used to write some column for advertising age.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: He writes up on his own accord, two professors prove the value of media integration title.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then he goes on as to how this history was, how this concept was, but it was never quantified, and these two professors managed to quantify, and now you can do optimal budgets and all that stuff.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: I did not even know that this is so important.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's how I ended up in this area of integrated marketing communications.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so the first tenet is to quantify, and then there are other tenets as to what is the impact of quantification.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: You can't eat the quantified value, the only thing that you can really do is to decide how I will spend my dollars differently.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that is where the next part of the tenet is.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: So there is one principle to quantify joint effects, and there's other principle as to how will you spend differently.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if you are a CMO and I said I quantify it, and let's say it is one feet tall, and now you tell me it is one feet tall, the real question that begs is what should I do differently tomorrow than what I was doing yesterday.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that is where the paper goes on, and I can speak about it if you want now or later.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a beautiful point that you are making, which is so much of fragmented media today, the interplay of these media vehicles, if I were to call it, and the synergistic effect which will create the multiplier impact for the brand, is really what you are talking about.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what are your uh you know key research findings when you say, you know, how do I apply uh you know television with radio and what's the kind of impact that it was creating for brands?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And can you give me some examples of some brands that have actually uh done it uh very well, and that is something that most brands need to follow as probably a framework or a mental model.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, there are too many questions in that question.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the thing that we discovered was surprising, so much so that I was actually afraid that this cannot be published because no one is going to buy it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I was afraid that this can get, which is when I invited uh late uh Kalyan Rahman as a co-author who used to be at Northwestern because he had the more muscle power to carry the date.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: I I was just an assistant professor at that time, and uh I thought maybe my math is wrong, uh, but then Kalyan guaranteed that the math is right, and then I got emboldened to write that paper.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I learned a lot from him.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: So the principle that we discovered is that there is television, let's say, and let's say there is online, and let's say television is twice as effective as online, it could be the other way around.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and let's say I give you hundred dollars.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Then the classical result, which goes back to 1954 by Dorfmann and Steiner, two economists of very high repute, they said you spend two-thirds on television because it is twice as effective, and one-third on online because it is half as effective.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Very simple allocation.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: When we did the same math that Dorfmann-Steiner did and came up saying that what should be the allocation now taking into account that television is going to reinforce online, and online is going to reinforce television, meaning they have interplay.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: What is that interplay going to make a different allocation?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is it the same?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: For if it were the same, there is no whole point in uh quantifying it.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so we went and studied that, and then we got a result that the more effective should get less mean money.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is it?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the less effective online in this example should get more.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought there must be a mistake.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: How can we overturn Dorfmansteiner, who is like God, a result, saying that they say do two is to one, and I'm saying increase both, but increase the more effective less so.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: And increase the less effective more so.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so give more than fair share to the weak medium, give less than the fair share to the more effective one.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is like a completely opposite uh allocation principle that fell into our laps based only on the mathematics of it.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh mathematics is always right uh unless you make a mistake.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so we've got Kaleyan to rule that possibility out, and uh, we published that paper, and that is what the CMOs have to figure out that if you think there is interest, first you should introduce the reinforcement or the interplay.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: That is a creative job of uh uh campaign executors, Ogilvy, J.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Walter Thompson.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: They have to conceive an integrated marketing campaign where the media have interplay.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Once they did that, then uh the brand managers will put some money, but the amount of money you're going to put is going to be slightly different than what Dorfmann Steiner would say do it proportional to effectiveness.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Here it is, support the weak is the strategy.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you're going to put more than fair share for the less effective one, because the less effective one is going to actually lift the more effective little bit.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: But the more effective one is going to lift the less effective, but it is because it is less effective, it gets it gets it improves much more.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why you give more money.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so once you get that intuition, then the math and intuition matches, and companies should follow that allocation.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: So first they should make an integrated campaign conceptually through the creative agencies.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Then they have to measure sales, advertising dollars to see whether it actually affected in the marketplace, and third, they will come up with an allocation which is proper.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so these are the three stages by which an integrated marketing uh campaign should be run.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have a question uh that I want to ask you.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, if I were a CMO, how do I define which media is effective?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's the definition of effective?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that is simple.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: That uh that essentially is defined by saying that if I were to spend ten million dollars, uh let's say I spend a hundred million dollars and I spend uh let's say uh ten million dollars more on TV, how much sales lift will I get?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you do a lift analytics and you say that you know I can increase, it doesn't have to be ten, it could be one million dollars, two million dollars, whatever extra that you pump in.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: What is the impact on the output, which is the sales?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it doesn't have to be sales, it could be awareness, it could be liking, it could be consideration, it could be purchase intent, and this can be viewed as a system, and then maybe doesn't directly lift the sales, but it indirectly lifts the sales because the awareness has gone up, and awareness in turn affects uh sales.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so there could be a broader model where these ideas can be applied.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so the first thing is this whole interplay and the definition of effectiveness, right?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the next question really to ask is if I say that this is the definition of effectiveness, purchase intent can be a uh uh kind of a variable if I were to call it.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh but finally, if I were a CEO and if I am a CFO, the only thing that matters is my next quarter results or my uh you know financial year results for the year.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, which means that I may have built awareness, I might have built purchase intent, but there may be a lag effect of what I would build or a or no effect of the spends that I do.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do I really uh if I were to say that you know convince my CEO and the CFO saying, you know what, you need to continue.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: To invest in this because you will get the benefit of this in the next couple of quarters.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's a terrific question, Swami.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you track awareness, you track purchase intent, whatever the intermediate states are, and they in turn have an effect on sales.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so sales is ultimately the right metric.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Either you go through awareness and liking and preference and conviction and then purchase.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or you directly move the sales.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: But the ultimate business metric is sales.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else is made up.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: It is our imagination that the market is aware.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: It is our imagination that they really wanted to buy on a five-point scale, but it turned out to be three or four.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: These are made-up metrics.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: The only two real metrics is sales.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: How much did you sell?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: And margins in that sales.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: That do you get 30%?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Can advertising lift that 30% to 35%?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Or promotions will definitely bring 30 to 25.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so sales and margins are the only business metrics that goes into profit and loss accounting.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: There is no awareness reported that this year we did great awareness, so our dividend flow is going to be this.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't come onto the desk of the CEO, it doesn't come on the desk of the CFO, doesn't come in an investor call.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: An investor doesn't care whether you built awareness and therefore sales went up, or your purchase intent went up and therefore sales went up.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: All those are made-up metrics to manage a brand, which are required.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying that you shouldn't measure, you should.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: All of that matters to do good marketing.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: But from the CEO, the balance sheet and profit loss account, and then the market, which is really how the company's valuation is going to be, you got to definitely tie all these metrics to sales and margin.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so that is a first order of business, and that is going to give you the profitability of today.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: But advertising is not like you spent today and you got your sales today.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic, correct.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: So advertising, you do advertising today, but then there is a carryover effect in next month.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that carryover effect has further carryover effect in the next quarter.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: It has still further carryover effect in the next year.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: I still remember Life Boy Ad.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I can uh stay out the whole jingle if you want.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: So advertising effect persists over a long time.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then all of that can get you sales next week, next month, next quarter.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: You have to add up all cumulative profit that today's advertising can eventually bring.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: So all those future profits from today's advertising, that also needs to be accounted for when you're saying that, you know, how much should I spend?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that gets into very deep mathematics.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's called Hamilton, Jacobi, Bellman equation, three great scholars from 18th century till today.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: And you solve that partial differential equation which pops out of that, and then decide how much should I spend and how should I allocate.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody needs to know the mechanics, but you cannot answer how much you should spend today if you want to take the future into account.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is the crucial thing.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: You want to see today's sales and profit, margins, and their impact of advertising on future sales and future margins.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that needs to be modeled analytically and then estimated with real data, and then you decide how much to spend.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us some examples of some great integrated marketing communication that you've seen.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Apply these principles.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I were a CMO, it appeals to me.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So how do I look at an integrated marketing campaign?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you saw that as probably the best in class practice.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, best in class practice.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: So you're surely aware of MasterCard, right?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: So MasterCard has very high 99% awareness.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: So MasterCard in India.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think Ajay Bhangha was the CEO then.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: Came up.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: They already had this beautiful campaign running since 1997 onwards.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: It is called what uh priceless.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that priceless.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: What was the line?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: The line was like uh uh you can buy this for so much dollars, you can buy that for so much dollars, etc.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh life is priceless kind of.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then for everything else, there is MasterCard.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was a beautiful campaign.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: But it was a single medium campaign called television or whatever.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: It can be run in print and also, so it was there is nothing it was generalizable to multiple media, but it was not uh interplay of media was not built in, and it was only for one segment called consumers.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: The campaign that I'm going to talk about is the next generation, which they call it priceless possibilities.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Superb campaign, best in class.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: What they did was they realized that MasterCard business doesn't have one thing called consumers, like Procter and Gamble.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: It is a platform.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: MasterCard has two other players.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: The banks, which allows you to issuing bank and acquiring bank, two types of banks, but banks.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have a third group called merchants.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Merchants should accept the card.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so it is a platform.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Consumers, banks, and um merchants.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: More merchants carry, more consumers use, more consumers use, even more uh merchants carry.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like a virtuous circle that business grows.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: They started way back in the 1960s.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is 2020s, 2019, 17, something around that.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a very recent campaign.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what they did was they wanted to connect all three players.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: So not just all three media, or whatever, five, seven media, but also three.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: So they came up with uh priceless possibilities, and then they split that into four or five different kinds: priceless cities, priceless surprises, priceless uh causes, uh, priceless uh something, something.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: So a good example would be priceless causes.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: They say you spend some money, one cent on ten dollars, uh, I will give it to the charity of your kind.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so consumers would feel good, and uh they ran this in Germany, and uh they the the appeal was that we will uh uh take that one cent uh collection of whatever you give, so you don't have to pay anything more, the merchant doesn't have to pay anything more.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: They will just take one cent off from their own uh banks uh profits and they will feed uh Ethiopian kids.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and this was a campaign run in Germany.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, now because they said they would do this, and of course you trust MasterCard, once you say it will be there in the balance sheets, all the accounting of that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's a public limited company.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: German consumers started spending more because now they feel oh, yeah, through this, we can now do something which uh so this is called priceless causes, and actual sales would go up for merchants, for banks, because the transactions would increase, and consumers themselves would spend more.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so they connected the interplay between the three different players in the platform, unlike the previous uh priceless campaign, which was only targeted to consumers.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: And now when they did this, they use social media to promote this cause.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: They did digital uh advertising banners and uh uh so they did social feed, uh social media feed on uh Twitter and uh Facebook and all.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: They did all the digital advertising banners online and to generate the awareness.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that is one way they did that.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: They also did priceless surprises, uh priceless cities where you know they can curate a certain experience.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: So you take the elite uh spenders uh of cars and they can create uh a tour.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they say, well, you can go to Singapore for New Year's, and if you do go Singapore through New Year's under this uh scheme, uh then you will get to see XYZ, there will be a special bar, you will get to go into this museum, the museum will be after hours, somebody will give you a tour, you can buy certain things, and they would connect MasterCard.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: All the merchants to serve this, saying that this is a special group of people who will come only for and stay in this special hotel, and so all the merchants will get connected and they would contribute to this campaign, MasterCard would contribute, banks would contribute, and so they will have the funding, and so that is a fantastic multimedia interplay between players and across media that they ran.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so if you want a classic example, there is none more classic than this.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the questions that I have, uh Prasad is when you actually look at the three stakeholders, uh there are three media that they consume.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and each of these campaigns that you talk about also may include different media mix elements.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore, you know, causes I might need to put it in maybe digital, maybe uh you know, promotions or surprises could be in radio or television, whatever the media is.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: So now if I were to then say that I have you know a million dollars to spend, yeah, then if I were to come up with these ideas, yeah, and then say in which of these media mixed channels should I be putting, how do I decide that?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there is a beautiful question, and they track many metrics: awareness, this engagement, and all kinds of metrics.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: But as I said, those are made-up metrics.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Real metrics is how much was the sales lift and how much was the margin in each of that uh extra unit that you sold.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: And now each of the extra unit and amount is for from consumers, for banks, because their transaction increased.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh uh the third one, merchants, their transaction increased, and so these three sales and margins, so all these three, and the spending across whatever uh media that you use, that has to be uh set up as a model in a system that if you change one lever, is going to affect other media as well as other three segments.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful model, but unfortunately uh they don't share data among themselves.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Forget uh sharing it with me.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we can sign NDA, sell it up, and I'm happy to do it uh uh for them.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: We can can even get a PhD student to do it, he gets PhD.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: In uh it's a very complicated problem.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: It is doable, but you need the data to be able to quantify was there synergies, was there spillovers that because you went for this trip now in the future you use MasterCard rather than Visa.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, have did you get a competitive advantage?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: All these questions are quantifiable, answers can be made, and uh planning can be executed, but there is not much agreement on sharing sales data.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: MasterCard doesn't own the data.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: They are simply passing the data through their system, and it is the banks who own the data.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so they actually don't have visibility to these transactions.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: They simply say what was the volume and what is it was done.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: They will check whether there is a fraud going on, whether the merchant actually delivered or not, and they will resolve all these things, but they do not actually own the data.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so that question of quantifying this is beautiful.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: It is a publishable paper.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you actually get the data, uh call me uh and we can uh do something.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: It is a fantastic idea, but and they haven't done it.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so it's not like oh, we've been there, done that, we already have systems in place.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: They may say it, but they have not done it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were a CMO, one constant theme that I'm seeing in your uh conversation is what is the most important for business is sales and margins.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sales and margins.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm a CMO, I'm not responsible for sales and margins.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a sales team that's doing it.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is a distribution team that's doing it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: There is probably uh, you know, say a trade promotions team that is doing it.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if that KPI is not what I'm carrying, yeah, how do I uh then become responsible for sales and margins?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have no control about how they execute it, how they implement it.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: So as a CMO, how should I look at that?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: As a CEO, how should I set up my company to ensure that these objectives are met?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and so it is CEO has to get the the sales director or whoever is the sales guys with regional sales uh as in the branch to share the data.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the CMO doesn't have to make the plan on who which salesperson is going to sell, how much how much stocks will be made available in all the depots and how the distribution actually takes place.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have to do that.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: Let the sales organization run the way sales organization runs.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Over the years, they have figured out what is an efficient selling engine, uh, and they're doing that great.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: But the data can be put on a cloud.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing guys can put the data on the cloud, and that cloud data can be then, you do not even have to share the data with modern technologies.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm working with companies where I actually do not get any data on my laptop.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: I log in, and R and Python and other software is available.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: I analyze everything, nothing leaves the cloud.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: It the results are also on the cloud, and you simply look at the results like a Dropbox.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so previously we used to write NDA, don't share, don't send, don't file, etc.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not even you can do whatever PowerPoint you do, the PowerPoint is on the cloud.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and you can of course download the PowerPoint, but you cannot download the actual raw data.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so it can be done.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: You do not need to create a new organizational structure to get the CMO and the sales director to uh uh agree with a handshake that we will do this, they simply post it.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: And all the data is uh available and it is available to accountants.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: So if you can share it with uh price waterhouse coopers or how many units were sold in each uh district, they don't go so micro, but we they have it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: So if you said that you know I sold so many tons in some town, and uh you feel that, oh, that's a ten times more than what you ever did, they will go and see whether it's a typo or not.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: So they do have access.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that setup is only data access, needs to be provided and shared with scholar, and the scholar cannot run away with the data because you can't just download.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm working with General Motors in the US, and we only get the access.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: We don't get to download the actual data.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: So which means that what you're really saying is if I were the senior management team of a company, and if I really want to look at studying the impact of an integrated marketing campaign, which is really the framework that marketing has to be practicing, then the kind of marketing platform that needs to get built for data to come in and to be measured and to be reported and to be reviewed is something that needs to be agreed on, and that is the fundamental platform around which the organization then starts to work.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so all the sales report files daily sales report uh and then they go to the regional office.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: There is nothing in that regional office who gets the report to have a backup on the server.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, they should have such a backup, otherwise, you know what happens if uh that computer of the salesperson gets lost?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so there should be such a backup, and you know, there are so much uh uh data that can be manipulated on the cloud.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: So do you believe that marketing is increasingly becoming automated and is it becoming more and more data-centric?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: That of course is the trend.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: Meaning it is becoming data-centric, and uh, because there is voluminous data to make any insights, you need some models.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so models allows you to extract some insights.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: Data simply says this is it.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you can't so even if you graph something, that is a model.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: So when you say a graph, that was a model, and the graph was invented by a mathematician called it a carte.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we call it Cartesian coordinates.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Cartesian.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: So D E S C A R T E S.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Cartis uh was the one who and so to put Y and X and then put a graph is a mathematical object.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so we just think we don't consider that as a model, but it is a model.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it allows you an insight.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: If I just give you two columns of data of X and Y and say, you know, this is what our sales was and this is how uh advertising was, it would not make any sense whether it's going up or down.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if you particularly if you were to put a little circle and then you say values of x and values of y, and you have a perfect circle, x squared plus y squared equals 1, centered on zero, you wouldn't even know from the table that this is a circle.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's only when you put Descartes, Cartesian coordinates, that a map pattern emerges that, oh, what a beautiful circle.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so you must need a model to get extract inside.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Data doesn't give you insight, data gives you the raw materials to come up with an insight.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like a dish.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: You cut onions, you put your tomatoes, but that itself is not a tasty dish.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: A tasty dish is what the cook, which is a mathematician, who mixes properly, and now you say, oh, this is uh dumbbiryani.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so so somebody has to do that piece of work to transform the raw materials into dumb biryani.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so you may think it is quantitative, but quantitative is creative.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying quantitative is creative?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: Quantitative is creative.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because that dumbbiryani doesn't have to be dumb biryani.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: I could have made uh some other dish.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I can't imagine some other dish right now because my pulao, you could have made pulao, you could have made uh any other thing, right?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: Millions of dishes out there from the same.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, what do you really need?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: You need onion, tomatoes, michi, yewo, everything gets the same ingredients.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: But the proliferation of the taste is huge.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is a creative process of transformation from raw material to insights, or data to insights, or raw material to a dish.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is a very creative process.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: In the examples that I'm giving, it's a very creative process that you give me sales and advertising data, and I'm going to tell you how much budget you should spend in each town, in each medium, in each uh segment, whether it's merchant or a bank or a customer.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's a creative transformation of the data to come up with an insight on what action you should take.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: So quantitative doesn't mean not creative.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And creative, as commonly used in this business, is the ad agency's job, which is absolutely important.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: None of the quantitative metrics will move if the ad was stupid.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so you need intelligence of an ad.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then somebody has to think that what is the positioning that we are going, what is the demographics we are doing, what is the proper media to relate that thing.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: What is the big idea in the campaign that has legs?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Campaigns remain for 20, 30 years.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: So one idea, Horlik Jada Shakti.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Now that has to go with the big nourisher or great nourisher to last for 20, 20, 30 years, is a brilliant creative mind of somebody in Jay Walder Thompson.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is what is required.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: You need that great creativity.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: You can use AI and say, oh, I analyze all hundred thousand firms.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, I'm working with a company called Metrics Lab.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: They have the data, machine extracted, 500 different attributes.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a dog or not, whether there's a cat or not, there is a human face or not, man, woman, age, all of those.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: And they could mix it and come up with a creative.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's not there yet.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can do a creative, but it's not the same creative that uh David Ogil would have made or approved.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so there is some human uh intelligence required to transform that information that the brand gives the brief to the ad agency, saying that this is what I want.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: This is the creative strategy, this is the brand strategy.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: And from brand strategy, the agency is going to translate the creative strategy, and then the creative director and the artist and the other guys, uh, the the guy who writes the words.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Copyright, copyright, copyright, copywriter.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: They are going to come, they're going to jam, walk in the park, come up with something brilliant, and magic happens.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: They will in themselves think about 20 different ideas before saying that let's make a storyboard.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then the storyboard becomes the footage and then footage becomes the 30 seconds commercial.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's a long process by which some human thought called a brand strategy that the brand management team gives it to the agency and then pops up.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: That is another process of data getting transformed to a creative output, like the one I mentioned about the real numbers and numbers giving you budget.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: This itself is a well-defined art.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: That is absolutely required.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: And now you have to bring these two together.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you want to use the great creative copywriters and uh strategists and the positioning brief and the creative strategy, come up with a proper campaign.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody pumps in the money, now you get your sales, and then now you take this sales to say what action.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that is going to feed back saying that look, we moved the needle.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Agency is not responsible for your sales because there are so many other things you're doing.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: Sales is a clunky thing.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: You may not have stocks available in the store.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's not agencies' fault the dad's not working and sales are not going up.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so somebody has to ensure the stocks are there, sales force is required, uh, distribution is required, all not beyond the control of agencies.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you need other elements like the sales regional sales office, that everything was there, the sales force covered the area, all those things are, all those are all together is going to come up with a so you need a platform where everybody's inputs, including agencies work and the distribution work and the pricing work and the promotion work, all gets positive of all this information.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then there is some analytics guy who is going to make the transformation into saying what does the CEO want?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: The CEO really wants to know the budget and the profit impact, that how much profit would change after I did this.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Does it go up by 1%?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Does it go up by 5%?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so that information goes to the CFO and the CEO.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: The brand manager needs to know did awareness go up?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so everybody will get pieces of information as they need from a system model.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: And building that model itself is a creative act.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: So this distinction that this is creative and this is uh quantitative is not as simple as it looks.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's more like a yin and yang, that there is a creative and there is uh quantitative, but creative leads to quantitative and quantitative leads to creative.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so it's you should see it more as a yin and yang uh mashed up rather than this is one left-hand side called creative and one right-hand side called quantitative.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Both has both.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's really how the future marketing departments will be made of.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, should be made of.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Should be made of.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a journey.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a journey, and that's the way it will move.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Contraminds is a podcast dedicated to decoding people, minds, strategy, and culture.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: We interview and learn from high performers so that you can apply these lessons on your journey to becoming the knowledge worker athlete you were meant to be.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Contraminds Podcast is available on all leading podcast players, and if you are interested in revisiting past episodes or taking a look at our show notes from this episode, please visit us at www.contraminds.com.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to the show.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: So the interplay between media or between customers bank and merchants, all kinds of interplay is not there.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Not there, meaning it is there, but it's sparse.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons it is sparse is that the benefit that the sales would increase, the budgets would, total budgets would increase if the interplay was there versus if it was not there.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: That realization has not happened.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: That I will actually get more money if I were to do create the interplay or reinforcement between media, and that will make advertising even more effective, which would mean I need to spend even more.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that realization has not happened.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: And part of the reason it has not happened is because everybody thinks that there is something so magical about sales and advertising dollars as data that they want to keep it close to the chest.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: They themselves do not know what is the impact.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: But they do not want to even let you have the data to tell me what is the impact.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: And they will use the word challenging.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: Data, oh, access, challenging.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I do not have past data challenging.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: I do not have across county data challenging.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: And all these challenges will be brought.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: And they themselves will not know the benefits they stand to reap if the data were analyzed.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so they do not analyze.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, there are hundreds of Martec companies who would go and claim that they have already done this.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: And they will share the data, they will do it, but they have legacy models and legacy systems which will learn simply Kalman filter, not Kalman filter, uh linear regression, or AI, or artificial neural network, and all of that.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if they use the latter, they wouldn't know how to interpret.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: And if they use the regression, they will interpret, but they will miss out on synergy.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you know that is a story I should share.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe I'll share it later.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: But they would miss out that uh synergies and quantification and the budget implication on how much the CMO should actually spend now that you did all this analysis.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: Once that realization happens, then it is in the self-interest to do it again and again and again.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I told you about this beautiful campaign on MasterCard.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now you go and ask Ajay Bhanga that you know, did you how much money should you spend now that you did this?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you created all this synergy.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Can you quantify the synergy and tell me the impact on budgets and profit?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: Guarantee you there's no answer to that.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because the banks won't share the data.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: MasterCard may be themselves willing to analyze and do something because they came up with this beautiful idea.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: So they have vested interest in doing it, showing that look, I can improve profitability, your company's profitability for banks, for merchants.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: But they think there is something magical about that data.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: And they want to keep it under the cloak.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that realization is what is that lack of realization is what is uh reducing the diffusion of it.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do you also think the silos in organizations are also creating the Yes.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: So silos, of course, because if it is sales and marketing, clearly sales department do not want, because then they think, oh, what if the they offer less promotions?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so similarly, marketing guys, they would think that, hey, we should actually not do promotions because promotions is going to dilute my brand equity.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: It is going against that, and so let us reduce.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the sales guy saying that, no, no, it is the promotions that work.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: I give 20% of, and boom, I get a spike next week.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: And they all want it, but the best, uh, the brand manager or the CMO in head office thinks that, yeah, yeah, you will get 20% more, and you keep doing that every week after week after week, what happens to the brand next year?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so both have legitimate concerns, and therefore you need a cloud where somebody can analyze that is that concern real or is it just uh mythical or academic in your head?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if uh I were a CMO setting up, say, uh marketing department of the future, what are the skills do you think uh my teams should have?
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Say there's a brand manager, there's a promotion manager, there is a digital marketing manager, there's a you know uh social media executive.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were to really look at core skills you believe, given your experience of having looked at global brands, looked at the quantitative models that you have worked on, what kind of skill sets should the marketing departments of the future be in companies?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a very tough question, you know.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: I have myself transformed and reinvented over 25 years.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: So if you say whatever I say today, if you were to go and apply to my past self, he would not make the cut.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so whatever I say now, my future self will say that what the hell did you say?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so it's very difficult.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: But what do you think that what the future self would consider the proper skills?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if I were to say that these are par for the course, what probably did not exist 25 years back, but at least uh you know you would expect a brand manager uh to have these kinds of skills.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: You would expect uh so what are those kinds of things a CMO should have and his team should have.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: So if you ask at a very broad level, then there is an answer.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the answer is that uh the person should be widely read.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: So he needs to understand the culture of the place in which you are doing the marketing.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: He must have read the history of the place that you are doing marketing in.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he definitely must appreciate nuances in the language, and so a lot of cultural knowledge, language, poetry, everything, and not have aversion to technical things.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: Normally, when you get somebody excellent in this area, usually the guy says that, oh, these are numbers.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh numbers means headache.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh now you are saying they are not just numbers, but now you want to even plot them.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now you are going to do something called regression.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: And regression is going to throw even more numbers.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: And these more numbers, then you're going to say budgets.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: Budgets can then cut down my budgets because you say they are they are overspending already.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so there is a fear.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so you do not want someone with aversion to uh models or numbers.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so you want the same person probably cannot exist in both the camps.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: But whatever people you bring, there should be sufficient overlap so that there is a common ground.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: A culturally well-aware who understands the music, who understands the current affairs of the land, uh, is the right person for a marketing job, but it should have overlap with people who are in uh sales, who talk different languages, people in analytics who talk yet another language.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to know that there are different languages, there is an appreciation for commonality so that we can work together.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so you may have experts in each separately, because it's very hard to find expert in everything, because then he's a generalist, too much of a generalist.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so, but there should be a common ground.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: If there is no intersection and it's a null set of these three things, then it's going to fall down.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so you probably need to create a cohesive team with common ground, with respect for each other in each of these departments, who knows that okay, fine, your expertise is this, but this is my expertise, and people have mutual respect.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: That is uh common uh skills that you need to create, future organization.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were a CMO or if I were a CFO or a CEO listening to this conversation on marketing, the normal challenge that I say is uh, you know, why are you overspending?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: If I were a CMO, I my argument to the board would be actually you're not spending enough.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, how do you really look at the balance between not spending and overspending?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you have done a lot of work around that area, and what have been your learnings out of it?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a terrific question, it's uh whom you ask is the question.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and that's why you should not ask people with vested interest.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the CEO wants to cut the budget to improve profitability.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that is his motivation, his or hers.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh may not do it, but ideally a penny saved is more valued than penny spent.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: If you talk about the CMO, he says it's not my money, it's not my company, I'm not a shareholder.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so, what does it mean, penny saved?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I get my salary anyway, uh, whether I save the penny or uh spend a penny, right?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so investor is not on the table who cares about uh this, but CEO is the representative of the investor, and so the CEO cares.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: The CMO does not have that responsibility that you should improve the profit.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: He may have dotted line responsibility, but he doesn't have to go and answer uh the investor or the board that you know why is my dividend deal going to drop this month or this year?
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he doesn't get fired because of that.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so they, the CEO, CMO would want more money to be spent because increased money always gives you increased sales or at least as much.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: So if I double, I may not double if I double the advertising budget, it will only increase my sales or stay the same.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: If I further double, it will only increase my sales.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: So his axe grinds in one way.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: More is better.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_02: The CEO doesn't have that issue.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_02: CEO has to balance.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: He understands that more is better up to a point.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: Then more is not any better because there is more drain on the cash because of spending, and there is no corresponding increase in sales that you're giving it, and that's because of the diminishing returns law.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: So if you keep spending, sales will increase, but at a slower rate.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so at some point it's going to saturate.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a sweet spot, which is what the model can discover.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: The CEO cannot discover, uh, the CMO cannot discover, a third-party modeler can discover, always exist, can be found, but if you don't have access to the data, it cannot be quantified and tailored for you beautifully.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so the idea is to tailor it for the company in the context in which this advertising sales is happening.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to be a different number for every different company and every different province or state or every different time period, every year.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so a software needs to be designed with a dashboard that's in your overspending.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you do not have such a dashboard telling you your overspending, how would you know?
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: It is like the speed limit.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_02: You are driving the car and it doesn't tell you speedometer.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_02: That you're doing 80 miles or you're doing 40 miles.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so, how will you know that you are crossing the 65 miles per hour zone, which is considered to be the right speed?
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so there must be some board that says 65 miles and you're going up.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: So you only know your speedometer, whether you're going fast or slow.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_02: You do not know that you are crossing the speed limit.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the speed limit is the model.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so, some third party, not the driver, driver always thinks I'm going sufficiently slow.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: It is the passenger who is like, okay.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly, therefore, in the marketing organization, uh in the finance organization or in the uh CEO's office or in the corporate strategy office, the need for uh actually uh uh I would say uh marketing auditor if you were to call it is really what I think that you are talking about where you're really looking at looking at the data dispassionately and saying, you know what, I think here is a 0.5x that you guys need to spend because it has a short-term impact, but it has got a long-term value.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, that kind of a marketing auditor is really what is critical in organizations who can sit out of the marketing department, who could sit out of the finance department, but the idea is to kind of look at it dispassionately and say this is really what is critical, and organizations with marketing capability and intent need to create that.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you need some uh ombudsman who can balance both the views because both views of CMO and CEO are valid and justified by business practices, yeah.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like uh the CMO is acting against the company's interest.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everyone is acting in the company's interest, the question is the proper weight.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the that brings me to the next question that uh whole idea that you spoke about on cross-media consumption, right?
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were actually a consumer, what have your been your learnings around how consumers consume media across channels?
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if I were a brand, uh what are the key things that I need to keep in mind when I'm building a uh you know a multimedia campaign?
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what are the things that you are saying?
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know what you actually said that the most effective medium may not be uh where your investments need to be done.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's one way of do looking at it.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: The other one is to say, are there uh you know, I would call it accretive effects of uh cross-media consumption, and therefore, how should I really build some kind of a uh capability in the marketing department for it?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, so that's a very good question.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, in fact, one of the results we show, and we call it catalytic effect, that shows my chemical engineering background.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so in chemistry, a catalyst is that uh item which facilitates the reaction but doesn't react itself.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it just hangs in there and makes the energy barrier low, and A plus B gives you your C, uh, but it much lower energy.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that catalyst itself is neither A nor B nor C.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: Multimedia is exactly that.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: There are many effects which do not directly would give you sales.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you say, is this effective?
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: I promise you you will not find it effective.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_02: But you go and tell managers it is not effective, so why don't you stop advertising and they will not stop advertising.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: A case in point is a billboard.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: So billboards are all around you.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: There are many Martech companies out there.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: You can give your sales data and billboard spendings and ask them to run a regression and say how effective is the billboard?
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: Zero.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, just because there is one more billboard that you keep, your sales don't go up.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: You don't go and buy just because there is a billboard.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: You saw today, billboard.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it has no effect.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: But that doesn't mean you don't spend on it.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because the only role of a non-effective medium is to actually interact with other effective media.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: So television, print, online, offline.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_02: When you are dealing with those media, you're consuming, let's say, online ad, we are booking your uh expedia ticket, but then suddenly pops up uh L'Oreal.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you saw the billboard, and now that ad is more salient in your mind because it says, Oh, that's Oreal.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, maybe I should check.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that gives you a rehearsal of that little thing.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so the billboard is going to enhance your effectiveness of other online ads or TV ads, or when you see the TV or anything like that.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so there are many such media, okay, many such media, which by themselves are not effective.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_02: But when in combination of others, they shine.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, which means that as a CMO, my objective is to look at uh you know, look at all these uh media and then go back and then say, how should I really play with them?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and ensure that I get the maximum multiplier effect or the catalytic effect as you call it is really I think the key thing that I should be concerned about and constantly building a design of experiments.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if you want an example, Apple is a fantastic marketeer on that front.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they don't really use too much of television, radio, print.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: They do, but very minor.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: But they will have billboards everywhere.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: Shot on the iPhone.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_02: There will be one big billboard with a fantastic feature called camera, and the benefit is this in front of you.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_02: They will not say a word more that this is a feature benefit link that we are seeing.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: But it is, it is exactly what it is, which people in business know that what they are doing.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: And they will just put that up.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: While you are driving to the airport or wherever, you will see one such thing, or your work or home, or wherever.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: Then when you are at your uh hotel or you are at home watching some movie of your choice, you will find a character picking up an iPhone with a prominent logo, or some character taking a picture, or some character actually mouthing the words.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, give me my iPhone, man.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: That is called branded entertainment.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: In good old world, it was called product placement.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's call it product placement for what it is, because it is exactly that.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: That out-of-home media, the billboard, by itself is not people are going to go and say, oh, let me buy iPhone 16 just because you have this three-dimensional uh iPhone 16 popping out of this whole billboard.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_02: That is just to grab attention that how can a billboard, a flat billboard, has a third dimension coming up?
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so they have a huge cutout which will come out, and that's just to grab attention.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_02: But later on, when you are actually watching a movie, you will see somebody using it.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that is where this link gets established of multimedia and the interplay.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, billboard by itself is not effective.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_02: Who buys a thousand dollar phone by looking at the billboard?
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe somebody does, but not many.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so this creation of this brand that this is in fashion, or is it somebody using this in this context?
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the image, I mean, is really expensive phones.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_02: Compared to what uh Huawei would cost or Xiaomi.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing, and that to maintain that brand uh image to charge that premium, that is terrific marketing.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, which means that the ability for me to build this design of experiments and continuously keep uh tweaking it is something that marketers should really look at given the research that you have done saying that okay, there are uh interplay effects and keep measuring these interplay effects to make your marketing more and more optimized.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is really what you are saying.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: The CMO CMO should be continuously working on.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and they have to conceive and imagine, and they should have that part of the goal when the creative guys start thinking about this, the brand guys give a brief.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: There should be a feedback loop that we are going to measure the effectiveness based on awareness, diking, all that soft metrics and hard metrics like sales and margin.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then as a system model this, and then you are going to provide a feedback loop saying that, hey, this is what we did last year.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: This worked and this did not work.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then you tell that a creative guy that this is what is happening, this thing didn't work, that thing worked.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: They have tremendous insight on how to tweak the campaign to make something that was not working to work, and something that was uh working to keep it undamaged.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so they are brilliant people, yeah, and they just need the proper direction, and that proper direction is not your opinion.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because they would then counter that opinion saying, What do you know?
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, if it is from the data and the model, it is neutral.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's when the creative guys will get uh feedback which they will buy.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so we need to build such a loop.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which therefore brings me to one important question where you co-founded the MSBA program in your university, and you actually teach people about analytical thinking.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's amazing given the fact that you know I am in marketing where largely you are saying that you know I am in marketing and I am looking at creative and design thinking, but you are actually saying, hey, here is uh uh analytical thinking course that I've uh you know I've launched.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what are the things that if I have to become an analytical marketer, uh how should I, what are my prep to start you know doing the hypothesis and preparing my skills for it?
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh if you were talking about this Master of Science in Business Analytics degree program that we co-founded.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh me and my co-author uh Heman Bargawa, yeah, and not co-author, uh colleague.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we started that in 2017 and it's now whatever.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, the most successful program.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is successful, it has gone from 40-40 to 100-100, and we are now thinking even bigger.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a great program.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so the skills you should have first is creativity.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: So for an analytical program, you're saying creativity is the most important.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, creativity, curiosity, uh, ability to view something differently.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, the profile we look for ideally is uh investigative journalist.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_02: That is the pitch internally when we do the ADCOM admissions committee.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_02: We would like to look at can someone tell a story based on numbers and build a certain working theory on why am I seeing this pattern of numbers.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: That requires so it's like almost like a detective work.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I'm calling investigative journalists, not typical journalists saying that you know tomorrow's rains are going to be this or whatever.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got it.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is this is the arc of a story where it's like a lawyer.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're building a case.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_02: You do not have to be the smartest mathematician.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's a different skill.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there are different programs.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_02: There is a data science program which will give you data science skills and you can learn statistics.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_02: You can go in computer science, which they already have, by the way, uh a master's in computer science, which will tell you how to run a neural network model or how to do AI, uh generative AI.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_02: They will teach you all that.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: So the UC Davis campus has hundred departments.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_02: It has nine colleges.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_02: We have uh veterinary medicine, we have uh uh human medicine, uh, standard medicine, engineering, all kinds.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a big university.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_02: This department is about business.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_02: It will use methods of computer science, it will use methods of statistics, but it will also use methods of uh thinking which is creative.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you are going to get a case and you're gonna say, you know, what is the problem in this case?
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_02: What is it that I need to do to reach the final solution?
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_02: The dotted line is not going to come.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_02: You are going to create the dots and connect it and come up with some answer.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so it is designed to be analytical.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_02: And analytical doesn't mean numbers.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Analytical simply means logical.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_02: That whatever you did, did you think through, and whatever you think through, is it supported by the data?
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Modeling and all is a more sophisticated art.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: But is there proof of concept that this is what is actually going to get you from A to B?
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very, very interesting and the most important definition of analytical thinking that you have spoken about.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm coming to my last set of questions for you, and these are pretty much like rapid fire questions.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_05: Oh.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh my first question is what does uh success mean to you?
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: This can't be a rapid fire question.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I I don't have a pre-prepared uh uh I think you have to answer it instinctively, saying what is it?
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Instinctively, well, success essentially means that it helps somebody else.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I did something XYZ that benefited the society or the student or the journal.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_02: I advanced the knowledge, it is of value to somebody.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_02: So if it helps others, then I did something successful.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard this definition from many of my guests saying the success, my success is predominantly about my yeah, whoever is the consumer of the product that I create.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so therefore, that's really a very good definition of success.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to give a piece of advice to a say a 22-year-old pursuing marketing in an university, what would be the advice you would give them?
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: So the advice I would give them is that come with an open mind, read the history, the way ad campaigns came up, the how the ad ideas in advertising progressed since the 1950s, 40s, actually, even more.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_02: So if you go to Jay Walder Thompson, we are talking Thompson, we are talking 1890s.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so there were big ideas that came every generation.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_02: And history teaches us to see what is really new.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Novelty and creativity, innovation, those things come up only in the background of the history, otherwise, everything is new.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so you need to know what has happened in the past.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so, great campaigns, great creative directors, great marketeers, uh, what made them great?
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_02: And knowing that, you know whom you resonate with, and then try to take up at a higher level.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_02: The principles of marketing, by the way, are fairly simple.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you would say that, well, what is the value proposition?
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, there are only two, and that idea also came from an advertising man called Ross Reeves, and he said, unique selling proposition.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_02: That is the idea.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now you can split that into two parts, and you say value proposition.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Selling proposition is a value proposition.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: What are you offering?
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_02: And unique essentially means how are you different from competition?
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_02: You answer these two questions, all business problems then start from there.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_02: So, meaning you can then go to the next level, next level, next level, margin, sales, profitability.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't have a value proposition, you don't have this.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_02: So marketing principles are very simple.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and they are perennial.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_02: They are not going to go away.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Just because there is technology, there is new science, new models.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_02: These business principles are permanent.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you understand, Roger Reeves came up with this idea.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_02: You get a sense of history and a more refined understanding of where things are today, and you realize that you know it's not too far away from Roger Reeves.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it is about unique selling proposition.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_02: You just don't call it anymore USB.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what's uh I'm sure in your own life you would have got a lot of advice from many people.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what's one piece of advice that's remained with you, which you go back to every time?
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and what what would that piece of advice be that you remember and really keep thinking about it over and over again?
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that goes back to my first job.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_02: First job is like imprinting, it's there in your head for the rest of your life.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_02: So Balrahman was my boss.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I was in uh chemical engineering as a sales engineer, and I went and sold certain things uh to I think the company was Cynamide India.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think somewhere near Walsad Surat area, South Gujarat.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I went there and uh sold, and then the engineering guys came and they installed, and I went to close the deal, saying that you know you satisfied and all that.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the the the user, the engineer on the on the field, uh he was mad.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_02: He says, you know, you should take this shit back and all that stuff.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know, what happened?
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, no, no, I this and this is not that way.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_02: And this was my first job, first time.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Man, this is a tough customer, what do I do?
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know, I'll take care of it, and this and that.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_02: And came back to Bombay and I told Balrahman that this is how it went.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_02: All the purchase guys were happy, they signed off.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, the person on the field, when I went and talked to him as to I thought he would be late, he got a new machine, and he was just mad.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then we said, Okay, fine, let's set up a meeting, I will come with you.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then Balrahman and I went, we drove.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_02: It used to be an ambassador car at that time.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we went to his uh plant.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And Balrahman met him, talked to him, explained to him, uh, and they became friends, and then uh the whole problem dissolved, and he was happy.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sitting there, seeing that last week when I came to do that, you were mad at me.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now I bring Balrahman, and it is not because he was uh higher titled than I was or something, and you are now okay.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_02: So on the way back, I asked, what was the magic?
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the lesson I learned.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the magic was Balrahman said, you should listen.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_02: You should listen.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you buy something so high-ticket item, irreversible, there is dissonance.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_02: When you were about to buy, there were three vendors.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now there is only one vendor, and you already installed the machine, you are not going back to those other two vendors.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_02: But the guy feels a tremendous loss.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_02: He has no degrees of freedom, he has to live with this.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_02: So he is going through psychologically cognitive dissonance.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_02: And you should give him a break.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Let him vent out.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, do not intervene and stop his flow.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_02: He is mad at you, let him be mad at you.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so this idea that listening, only listening can resolve problems without doing anything, was absolutely novel to me.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that has come great handy thing.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_02: As a professor, I give a grade, A plus A, A minus B.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Anybody who gets B and lower, they come knocking to my door.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_02: He got this, I didn't get that.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I ask him, Are you asking here for a grade change?
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or are you what do you want out of this conversation?
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_02: He says, No, no, this is happening, this is happening.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't do this, he didn't do that.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I just listen.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_02: I apply Balrahman without telling him.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is a Balrahman routine now.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I just listen.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_02: And after a while, the poor student himself or herself tells me that you know, I just wanted to let you know this is what is going on in my mind, and uh, I don't want any great change, I just wanted to point out why you think he's wrong.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I explaining why I think he's wrong, and then it's solved.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so it applies to me every single year.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_02: There are at least three, four students who come back to me.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Generally, you got less than what they thought they should get.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if there is a dream dinner that you want to have with, you know, uh where you would like to invite people and whom you are who you look up to, who would be in the dream dinner on the table and why would they be there on the table?
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is what uh living people.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, it can be anybody in the past.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody in the past who you consider as heroes, and maybe you say, hey, just imagine if I had them and if I could have a chat with them on the table, and it was a dream dinner, who could they be and why?
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Honey.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_02: So throughout the century, no, okay.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_02: So then throughout the centuries, I will first start with Buddha, uh no particular order, but just uh chronological, then Changes Khan, uh then Shivaji, then uh Dalai Lama, the modern day, and uh before that, a little bit before Dalai Lama, would be Srödinger.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that would be a nice dinner for I don't know, maybe five, six people.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_02: And why why why all these people?
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, so we can uh start with Dalai Lama and Buddha, first and the last.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_02: He is the replication, the modern version.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I wanted to see how the views evolved and what would Buddha think of Dalai, and what would Dalai think or tells about Buddha, but Buddha may or may not agree.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would like to see that uh conflict.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_02: Not need not be conflict, even if it is convergent.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Different points of view.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, different points of view, perspectives.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_02: Then I would like Schrdinger, because Schrdinger has this uh perspective, it's a differential equation, which I love by the way.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um but his is uh profound.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so the simple example is the cat in the box, right?
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially what it says is that until you make an observation, the object remains in all possibilities.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's not zero and it's not one, and it is everything in between.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_02: It is only when you make an observation it is either zero or one, and all the possibilities disappear.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_02: That is Schrdinger's principle.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that principle is so profound, it is just like Buddha, who tells you that this whole universe is an illusion.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_02: It is only when I make an observation I see Swami.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_02: Swami is not sitting in front of me if I do not make an observation.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_02: You are an electron cloud.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_02: You are right now on Jupiter and Mars and everywhere in the universe.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_02: It is only when I make an observation that swami appears as one.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that principle that the whole world is an illusion, and multiverse is included, of Buddhas and uh all the Hindu sages as well, and Schrödinger is the same.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I want them to have a conversation and have a perspective that how come Buddha realized that without the differential equation?
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that amazing that without math, that differential, partial differential equation with imaginary value, i square root of minus one, did not exist.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Square root of minus one came in 1824.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so Buddha could not have imagined such an easy.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_01: But why Changish Khan?
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Ah! So Changish Khan and Shivaji, they are exactly the same uh reincarnations of each other.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so they were they wanted to change the world, they did not like what they saw.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_02: And to bring that change, they may have chosen a path of violence or whatever.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_02: But without any value judgment, they changed the world.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_02: They changed the world, and they changed the world from one end of the Mongolia to all the way to Turkey, including everything in between France and Iran and everything, to create this hundred thousand people army going across such vast distances.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_02: They need to be fed, and so the food needs to be carried, therefore, the good needs to be carried, therefore, every inch they move, the whole supply chain needs to be moved.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Even JD.com with all this advanced uh uh last mile delivery problem does not do an advancing army's job so well, which was done way back in 1200.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Very nice.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_02: So when we say logistics problem, this problem, that's no problem.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's no problem.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: So my last question to you is what is one thing that you believe in that others don't tend to agree with you?
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I believe that mathematical ideas will transform business.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And businesses unknowingly will adopt all of that over time and become more efficient.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Most people disagree that models will run business.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_02: They believe that it is human, inherently will run business.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a human activity to do business.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_02: And 1996, when I started my career, Google was not formed yet.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_02: And this is why I love Google as well.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_02: When I used to present sales advertising data and show this is how you should uh estimate effectiveness and decide how much budget, MBAs, okay, in 96, 97, their question was who else you who uses this in the marketplace?
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted social proof.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_02: Then came Google in 1998, and they said, We are going to just do it.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_02: We are going to set it up, we are going to have the advertising platform, we are going to match this context, right or wrong, whatever they did.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing they changed is the culture of business.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Analytics is embraced.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Liking or not liking, you cannot not have Google.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so things are going to change.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_02: AI, AI is baby.
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_02: There are going to be a super intelligent beings through computers, which is going to enhance us.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Just like we cannot run more than maybe three ten miles an hour or three miles walk in an hour.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_02: But we run cars.
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we have glasses.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_02: We can't see 20 by 20.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_02: But we always already have augmented ourselves by technology.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so all that is going to happen.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_02: People believe that no, no, it may not happen.
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going too far.
• 1:30:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is probably one thing that models and math in particular is going to transform human life.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Prasad, for the conversation.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_01: The way you fused creativity and the mathematical models, the way you think marketing will transform in the way brand management, the various media forms need to have this interplay, and using quantitative techniques is something that I think is a great learning for our audience, and it was your experience came in full force in this conversation.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks a lot.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was a fantastic, I would say it was a fantastic session and a fantastic conversation, lots to learn.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking your time and talking to us.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for inviting me, Swami, and thank you for all the research you did about my past work and set up these questions.
• 1:31:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was very uh exciting to revisit and it was very nostalgic in many ways to see my last 25 years flashing by as you ask questions.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you very much for inviting me.
• 1:31:30
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