People come first when we talk about brand building: Panel

At the 6th edition of India Brand Conclave 2023, industry leaders came together for a panel discussion on how to build future-proof brands. The panellists were Deepak Khurana, Co-Founder and CEO, of Vserv; Lakshmi Narayanan B, Chief Marketing Officer, CEAT Limited; Dhrubajyothi Sarkar, Director, Product Marketing and GTM, Consumer Platform Advertising, InMobi; Pallavi Barman, Business Head, HRX; Puneeth Bekal, Director- Marketing, Mastercard. The following session was chaired by Rubeena Singh, Country Manager India & MENA, AnyMind. 

Before starting the discussion, Singh described how brand marketing has evolved in the last few decades, which includes challenges like navigating the changing market and dealing with the complexities. Barman opened the discussion by explaining the brand’s playbook to tackle the complex market system. She mentioned that classifying brands as marketers can be divided into three stages; Brand creation, amplification of brands, and underlining the factors impacting the brand. Further focusing on sustainable brands, Barman, said, “Brand needs to be consistent with its character to fulfill the consumer demands every day. Brands like Colgate and Lux were resilient that’s why they survived. The brand playbook includes; identification of brands and keep adding value to the brand until consumers become familiar with the brand.” 

Furthermore, Bekal explained how brands can be more consistent and resilient in the present arena. She said, “We need to convert consumer passion points to marketing opportunities. At MasterCard, we have identified nine passion points across geographies, which include music, sports, fashion, travel, and much more. Besides investing in popular sports like cricket, we also invested in women’s sports.”

Khurana elaborated on the process of how a brand segregates the audience to cater to their specific demands. He said, “The feedback process is very active which helps in understanding what consumer desires. Nonetheless, there are complexities to simplifying what consumer wants. In the more democratised and decentralised world, it has become easier to trace consumer behavior. Also, technology and data are driven by people, so people come first when we talk about brand building.” 

Discussing how to evaluate technology, partners, resources, and data within an organisation to build a brand, Narayanan, said, “Brand must be loyal to the consumers. Coming to the partners, a brand must try to get the custodians, who can direct the brand about what to do and what not to do.” 

Talking more anecdotally, Barman, said, “Brand purpose must be coherently aligned to achieve what brand is aiming for.”

Elucidating on how brands are using AI, VI, data, and IOT, Sarkar, said, “Brands are working more on identifying and segregating the content which is available online to fulfill the customer demand as soon as possible. Alongside, brands are also working to provide authentic content to the users.”

Quoting the examples of Tata Tea and Swiggy, Sarkar explained how both brands targeted the customers using market trends. He mentioned that Tata and swiggy designed their campaigns after deeply evaluating customer interest. 

Before closing the session, the panellists gave their concluding remarks which includes; Consumers inclination towards more brands instead of sticking to one particular brand, Usage of AI and blockchain to boost brand growth; Brand consistency as what stands out brand in the clutter of the market; Brands must understand the changing consumer and market trends, and the last but not least; Purpose based marketing defines the future of brands.