FMS Delhi hosted The Annual Marketing Conclave 2009 on 'Downturn and The Emergence of New Age Marketing'
MarkSoc, the Marketing Society of Faculty of Management Studies,Delhi presented The Annual Marketing Conclave on "Downturn and the Emergence of New Age Marketing" on 13th September in association with MediaVest Worldwide. The participating companies included Google India, ITC, Starcom MediaVest, Spice Corporation, Philips India, Makemytrip.com, Nestle India, Dentsu Communications, McCann Erickson, Exchange4media.com.
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The Annual Marketing Conclave 2009 @ FMS Delhi
-- MarkSoc, the Marketing Society of Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi presented The Annual Marketing Conclave on “Downturn and the Emergence of New Age Marketing” on 13th September in association with MediaVest Worldwide. It was hosted at the Jubilee Auditorium, PCI, North Campus, University of Delhi.
Ved Agarwal, President, The Marketing Society at FMS said “The Marketing society at FMS is the pillar for all marketing activities at FMS and has been active in organizing the flagship conclave annually. The conclave organised last year on ‘Brand Paradigms’ was a resounding success and we were confident of a bigger event this year. The fine mix of speakers from diverse industries and sectors ensured that we did not get myopic in our approach. Participation from organisations like Google India, ITC, Starcom MediaVest, Spice Corporation, Philips India, Makemytrip.com, Nestle India , Dentsu Communications, McCann Erickson, Exchange4media ensured a great event. The event saw around 300 student delegates from across Business schools in the country and about 50 industry delegate”
The conclave was divided in two sessions.
Session one was on “Marketing Tools in Recessionary Times”.
This session was aimed at understanding the reverberations of the economic downturn felt in the corporate environment. However, the recession has provided the opportunity to rationalize marketing spends and innovate to manoeuvre the downturn. Marketing strategies found a need to integrate the traditional and unconventional tools to attain the marketing and organization objectives.
The panel for this session included
Mr. Ravi Kiran, CEO, South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group
Mr. Sai Nagesh, Chief Growth Officer & Exec. VP, Dentsu Communication,
Mr. Vivek Bali, Group President – Global Brand and Marketing, Spice
Mr. Vikram Khosla, National Sales Head, Foods and Personal Care Businesses, ITC.
The session started with a keynote lecture by Dr. H.V.Verma, Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Management Studies who questioned the very existence of ‘downturn’ and suspected it to be a hype. He also dwelled on the need to innovate in current times.
Mr Nagesh from Dentsu Communications reaffirmed innovation as the key in these turbulent times. He suggested the need to use common sense resulting in uncommon action, and to measure the market on consumer behaviour. He emphasised that the product mattered much more than the packaging, to indicate that gimmicks to sell an incompetent product could fall flat. He cautioned though, that this focus on the packaging should not make us forget that at the end of the day product matters the most.
Mr. Ravi Kiran of Starcom MediaVest Group awed the participants with his presentation. He emphasised thatin times like these the need is to focus on customer need and interest. It is extremely imperative to ‘listen to your customer’. The customer is the centre of all activities and should be treated with respect.He also indicated the change in the way social media has changed the scope of interaction and has given marketers a deeper understanding of consumer profiles etc which should be leveraged upon aggressively. He ended his presentation by highlighting the point that tough periods have created the greatest companies in the past (for e.g. GE in the panic of 1873, Microsoft in downturn of 1975, Walt Disney in 1923.
Mr Vivek Bali of Spice Group explained strategies employed by Spice group to beat the downturn. He explained how they did this across the various verticals of business they operate in. Having spent over a decade in the FMCG industry prior to joining Spice, Mr Bali have insights on how any brand has to evolve quickly and provide more value-for-money in times that are tough. “Invest wisely and innovate continuously” was his focus.
Mr Vikram Khosla of ITC talked about the need to read beyond the obvious and in-between the lines. He said that juggling with the marketing mix was a good idea. He talked about creating a ‘catcher brand’. This would be a cheaper brand catering to the financial constraints of the consumer. He indicated how ITC has done it across different verticals like hospitality. He also said that these times require a company to restructure and introduce a larger range of products to capture consumer at different price levels. To illustrate this, he used the classic example of Maruti, which has a model at every Rs. 20,000 price point.
The second session was on “Advertising is the answer…… What is the question?”.
The session aimed at understanding the myopic view due to recession that has resulted in questioning the last rupee spent on advertising. It dwelled into clearly defining the role of advertising, its changing landscape; its newly sharpened tools & component.
The Panel for this session included
Mr Vivek Sharma, CMO, Philips Electronics India Ltd.
Mr. Manasvi Rasgotra, Marketing Manager, Nestle Professional, Nestle India
Mr. Kishore Chakraborti, Vice President, Consumer Insight, McCann Erickson India
Mr. Mohit Gupta, CMO, MakeMyTrip.com
The session was moderated by Mr. Anurag Batra, MD, Editor in chief, Exchange4media Group . The session started with discussion on the overall economic sentiments being weak and management being more risk averse. Mr Batra highlighted that owing to the current conditions there are cheaper solutions in the market. He also raised questions like the minimal use of digital and social media, selection of the media by companies, reaction of media agencies to the shift from the focus on building brands to focus on generating sales.
Mr. Kishore Chakraborti of McCann Erickson started the session by emphasising on the changing behaviours of the customer. He related these changes to the changes in times, aspirations and touchpoint. He explained how the change can be seen in various aspects of life, such as multitasking, reduction in space, reduction in customer patience among other factors. Then he moved on to the reaction from of the companies. He mentioned company changing logos, international companies changing their brand proposition and how brands are getting liberated from the confines of the product and trying ( successfully in some cases) to enter into the lives of the consumers and become a part of it.
Mr Vivek Sharma of Philips stressed on the ways of winning in a downturn.He said that one should try to put the weaker competitor out of the market. The company should use offensive strategies rather than defensive strategies and should continuously focus on growing market share. The focus should lie on improving the value for money, rather than lowering down the price of the product. To achieve this one can also exploit seasonality. Another key area to be considered during this phase is to focus on the retailers. He concluded by saying that aligning sales and marketing is a must in times of downturn. He also indicated how Philips had strategically planned its campaigns, making them 15 seconds each and at focussing them to target markets.
Mr. Mohit Gupta of Makemytrip.com stressed upon the benefit of using online world for marketing. He suggested that the wired world offers a new set of opportunities. The scope of innovation in this domain lay vastly unexplored. He said that the use of online techniques to observe consumer behaviour is far better than the existing models. The behaviours that can be easily tracked are purchase, search, media, post consumption, promotional preferences and reaction behaviour.
Mr Manasvi Rasgotra of Nestle started with the role of a manager as a custodian, wherein the manager takes care of the brand of the company and the profits related to them. He said that consumers don’t go away, just grow more conservative. He suggested a strong correlation between advertisement and recession. The phase of downturn was a good time to invest. He said that as the competitors may be cutting back on the investment in marketing, this would be the right time to grow the market share. He also emphasised that the positioning should be adapted to the changes in the environment and concentration on core values and keeping the message consistent. He concluded by saying that this is a time for aggressive techniques and increasing your spending.
Both the sessions were followed by a panel discussion and question and answers put up by the audience mainly focussing on the downturn and the strategies adopted by the marketing world in these times. A few specific questions focussed on the segmentation of the market, to the future of mass marketing, ROI in marketing and sports marketing.
The audience won a lot of goodies. Lots of the participants won themselves free stays at Hotel Polo Towers, Shillong for an refreshing holiday. Vodafone ZOOZOO kits were also given away at the event. Thanks to ITC, everyone took back the entire Fiama range of personal care and a lots of Bingo !
While Indian Express partnered as the Print Partner, Exchange4media-Impact-Pitch partnered as the Media Partner. Shillongs premiere Hotel Polo Towers partnered as Holiday partners while one of India’s hippest hotels, Chrome Kolkata contributed with Design inputs for the conclave.
