e4m MarTech League: ‘Both data & creativity key to reach consumers’

“MarTech is a notion that has been around for few years. We have talked about AI and ML for quite some time. But now people really want to know what’s happening with these technologies. They talk about data, programmatic and a whole lot of other things,” said Sabyasachi Mitter, MD, Fulcro, while throwing open a panel discussion as part of exchange4media's ongoing virtual series MarTech League on Friday.  

On the eminent panel, Chaired by Mitter, were Sonali Malaviya, Senior Vice President, Client Partner, India and Southeast Asia, Essence; Pragati Basu, Marketing-India & ROW, Talkwalker; Umesh Krishna K - Director Brand Marketing & Head Media, Swiggy; and Malay Harsha - Director Marketing, Clevertap. The topic of their discussion was - ‘Technologies for enhanced customer engagement’.

When asked about use of technology in today’s world, Basu said, "Marketing is no longer just about creativity, it is the Science. Without data it is not going to have the desired impact. Everything we see today has data behind it. ROI is the magical word, and MarTech is important to trace that and justify spends, especially in times like today.”

She added that marketing will take the brands anywhere if they listen to their customers, and give them a piece of what they want to hear, or fill a need that exists in the market.

Building on Basu's opinion, Harsha said that it's a fact that what marketers practised some 10 years ago is completely redundant today. “A behemoth of marketing data rests in the backend. But the net essence is that it needs to be simple enough to make people take actionable insights out. Lots of data leads to just analysis paralysis,” he explained.

Backing fellow panelists, Krishna said, “Earlier MarTech was treated as backend, but with a lot of technological advancement over the past 5 years, solutions are brilliant. They talk to each other. Without tech there is no branding or marketing strategy.”

Sharing a slightly different view was Malaviya who advocated for creativity. “While I agree that marketing has become a lot more of science, and everybody is in equal parts intimidated and in awe of MarTech as a concept and want to jump on the bandwagon, a couple if things come up. First is we are currently in the best place today to take advantage of art and science, especially as everything has started to look the same. There is also the fact human intelligence is something that powers the technology which we have today.”

Currently, we are at the best place and we are poised to take the most advantage of art and science, Malaviya said. “Saying that creativity doesn't play a very important role, I think will be a disadvantage to our brand.”

She further added that MarTech is not cheap and investing in the right tool is the single most important thing today.

When asked how messaging is being powered by data today, Malaviya said that though creative agencies were the slowest to adopt technology they have realized how powerful technology can actually make their creative. It isn’t a one size fits all solution anymore.

"Data and analytics today allow us to cut our audiences in many different ways at scale to figure out where these people are, how to target these people and what is the best way to start eliciting a response from them,” she added.

Talking about the importance of the role that customer insights play in brand building, Basu said consumer insight data can help in getting sentiment analysis and consumer engagement for brands. She informed that insights can be generated not just through not just text but with images too.

To explain further, she cited the example of the work her company did for a pizza brand in Italy. "For a Pizza brand in Italy, we were looking for a new place. We used image recognition technology and then sentiment analysis. Based on these, 10 cities were shortlisted and we customized the offerings according to consumer sentiment."

Talking about the importance of personalization, Krishna explained, “Brand needs to be relatable to customers, and for that personalization is very important.”

Basu added that mapping the spiking conversation is really important for ROI and in terms of acquisitions.

Citing a 2017 study at Harvard Business, Harsha said that customers have 65 per cent higher probability to make a purchase with the brand again if they have purchased once with you before, and data can help brands approach the said customers.

Concluding the session, Mitter summarized that there is creativity on one side, data and technology on the other and we are in the middle. In this connected world, a combination of data and creativity should be used to reach out to the consumers.