Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, hosted Sapience 2017, the marketing conclave, at its campus in Manesar. The conclave was graced by Anirban Chaudhuri, Senior Vice-President and Executive Planning Director, JW Thompson, who was the keynote speaker.
The theme of the conclave was ‘Marketing communications in the digital age’. During the event, industry leaders discussed how the practices of marketing communications have undergone a massive change due to disruption caused by the digital revolution.
Data and AI in marketing
Delivering the keynote address, Chaudhuri, said, “Today, we cannot think of marketing communications without digital intervention. The unprecedented penetration of the internet, the wide reach of social media and data analysis together have facilitated lots of things for a marketer.”
He also spoke about how marketers are using programmatic marketing, motion sensors, augmented reality and artificial intelligence in promotional ads to break the monotony of notifications and pop-ups and to reach out to the right audience effectively. He gave an instance where an AI creative director in Japan created a hugely successful ad that showed a painting being made using artificial intelligence and data. It looked like that it was painted by the artist himself, who died some three hundred years ago.
However, he concluded, “The nature of social media is such that it is impossible to control what people are writing on any platform and the same tool that helped building the image of a company can also be used for tarnishing it by just one wrong move. Hence, we should never be too dependent on data as data can be ambiguous and predictions can be inaccurate.”
Social media engagement
Followed by the address was a panel discussion on ‘Marketing communications in the digital age’. The panel comprised industry pioneers such as Mausumi Kar, Managing Partner, Group M; Rafi Q Khan, Executive Vice President, Weber Shandwick; Vivek Nanda, Business Head, Sharp Business Machines; and Anil Gupta, Head, Clients Engagement, ArthImpact.
Kar said, “The customers control the brand narrative today. Gone are the days where a simple advertisement would reach out to the masses and a marketer’s job was done. Today, the consumer is no more a silent spectator. Today, it is the consumer who makes or breaks the brand. To engage the customer, companies have to create a spectacular brand experience.”
Contributing to the discussion, Rafi said, “The first and foremost challenge in using social media is to create content that is engaging. Today, there is a clutter of content on social media, so, the challenge is to understand your audience correctly. Second, it is important to choose the right platform for communication and create the content as per the platform. The third challenge is rapidly changing technology. We have to be cognizant and have to recognise opportunities.”
Going further, Nanda said that the most challenging and most important factor for a marketer is to understand the customer and that is the crux of marketing. Without understanding the pulse of the customer, even with an excellent product, a marketer can fall flat on his/her face. In addition, Gupta stressed on the power of social media.