'Consumers have become more comfortable with digital approach of brands post-pandemic'

At the 21st edition of exchange4media Conclave 2021, industries leading Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) shared their insights on 'Pandemic Impact: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities for CMOs'. The panel consisted of leading CMOs of some key brands including Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director, Maruti, Vivek Sharma, CMO, Pidilite Industries, Shivam Ranjan, CMO, Motorola, Siddhartha Butalia, CMO, AirAsia, and Sujatha V Kumar, Head of Marketing, Visa. The session was chaired by Vaishali Verma, CEO, Initiative. 

Verma started the discussion with questions like- How CMOs agile in the digital world? Has the pandemic-led, fast-paced digital transition forced the industry to rethink its marketing strategy as marketing plays a vital role in stimulating demand for goods and services. The auto sector, which is one of the sectors, went through challenging times in the last 20 months. She asked Shashank Srivastava, about the auto sectors and how Maruti Suzuki adapted their marketing strategies during the past year?

“I must tell the audience here that for the first time ever in the auto industry of our country, we actually had zero sales in April 2020. That was really shocking and in fact, that sort of changed the entire outlook, not only towards marketing but to consumers and business in general, “ answered Srivastava on how COVID has affected their marketing outlook and strategies.

He further added, “At that time we really didn't know when the auto industry would bounce back. Fortunately, it did after a couple of months. We saw a complete change in consumer behavior and because of this increased safety perception, there was a move away from public transport and shared mobility towards personal mobility. We found that the shared mobility and public transport came down and that means the first time buyers went up. In India, the first-time buyers are large about 45-46%, then jumping up further by 3%. The additional car buying increased that's probably because people didn't want to use shared mobility. Additionally, utility and functionality buying increased.”

Srivastava also noted that the consumer's approach toward buying was digitized. “We had about 2-3% of the inquiries coming from our web platform and it took us four years to actually reach from 3% to 15% in March 2020 but in three months we reached from 15 to 50%, and that was a real big change as far as digitalization was concerned.”

Taking the discussion ahead, Verma spoke about how personalisation at scale is a big advantage for digitization. She further asked Sharma about the key learnings through this pandemic. Adding to Srivastava’s opinion, Sharma shared that the consumer has become far more digital in his/her behavior and more value-conscious. “There is obviously a fragmentation of touchpoints, more towards a touchless economy and health-conscious etc. We have seen more consumers participating in e-commerce. They have become more comfortable with the digital approach of brands and consequently, there is a rise of B2C approach and B2C direct to consumer brands.” 

Sharma noted, “There is nothing called all India marketing anymore after the pandemic because markets are opening and closing at different points in time due to the pandemic. The role of localised/regionalised campaigns that are city-specific and only digital can deliver on that became far more common. We laid more emphasis on performance marketing. There is, of course, more pressure on bottom lines and consequently, for CMOs there is increased pressure on delivering ROI-driven targeted specific campaigns. Therefore, a lot has changed since the pandemic.” 

Sharma concluded, “As a marketeer, we have become more digitized. We are beginning to use more analytics, all that is happening but one thing which pandemic has taught us- the biggest learning is that in these changing times, brands must actually adopt a far more empathetic approach.”

Meanwhile, speaking about the brand Motorola and the category in which the brand operates, Ranjan said, “We've been growing fast and thankfully the reason for that is actually the COVID impact made a lot of people move towards working from home, the healthcare, education all of that move to home. The need for tech products including laptops or tablets or smartphones, the need for the consumer demand for these products actually went up during the pandemic and this helped the industry overall and not just Motorola.”

Further talking about the retail business, Ranjan added, “While it has decreased in terms of the amount of presence that it had or the market share that it had before the pandemic. I personally believe that retail is here to stay. However, how will it evolve? If it has to stay, it has to evolve to give consumers the flexibility, the convenience that they're looking for, because a lot of consumers, while it is important in their decision journey to sometimes go and actually experience the product and they might end up buying online later on but they still need retail to give them that experience and hence, retail is here to stay but I think what is important and how I see the future of retail is actually the way it evolves to give consumers the flexibility.”

Adding to Ranjan’s point of view Verma said that she believes that retail will coexist. The share might keep changing between digital and retail but it's not going away.   

Kumar, who heads the marketing of Visa- a global leader in digital payments technology shares her experience and learning at Visa during the pandemic. “Every brand and industry has seen a huge change in the past 20 months. India has been largely a cash-driven society. We did have demonetization where there was a slight change to cashless, but then we saw that it came back. What the pandemic did is it actually necessitated people to move from cash to cashless because we had an extended period of lockdown, which was not there in any other part of the world. So suddenly, people were stuck in their homes not able to meet or go out, but need to purchase things and needing to buy things and therefore there was a huge adoption of online and e-commerce. Therefore, what was the role of our brand was to facilitate the customer's journey, but also alleviate all the worries they had about the safety and security of that transaction.” 

She further added, “We used a lot of tech, telling three things to consumers- feel free to make your purchases, whether it's offline or whether it's online in a cashless method. Two, your transactions are completely safe and secure, and every transaction is encrypted. And three- it takes much less time and you will find the purchase experience very favorable for you. We saw  unprecedented growth in the last 18 months both as an industry payments via e-commerce and as well as face to face at outlets once the pandemic and the lockdown was lifted, people moved away from using cash even at face-to-face purchases and prefer to use cashless methods.” 

Travel was another category that was most impacted during the pandemic. Speaking about the sector, Siddhartha Butalia shared, “Travel was one of the most adversely impacted sectors globally due to the COVID pandemic. The year 2020 saw a 60% decrease in travel. In 2019, 4.5 billion passengers flew whereas in 2020 the number was 1.8 billion. We saw some major shifts in macroeconomic drivers. China became the largest domestic market for air travel in 2020, which is a good indication of the size and scope of a domestic market. In India also we pivoted significantly into relying predominantly on domestic, which became an advantage for us in many ways.” 

He further added, “In terms of digital engagement, not just booking behavior, which at least in the case of Airlines has been largely digital for a few years now, whether through the direct channel or online travel agent partners. But things like web check-in, which used to be at 30 to 35%, suddenly moved up to nearly universal web check-in, which gives a lot more data and insight from the period of the booking to the period of the actual travel. The other thing that we saw is that the younger age groups 20 to 29-year-olds, particularly those who are the most resilient during the last year and a half. So they traveled only reduced by about 16% versus an average reduction across other age groups of 42%. At the same time, we had many new first-time players come on board, traditional train travelers.”