Obsession with the customer is the new normal: Atul Raja

At the e4m PR & Corp Comm 40 under 40 Summit, Atul Raja, Executive Vice President, Global Marketing, Wadhwani Foundation, delivered a keynote address on the ‘The Changing Face of Marketing in an Increasingly Digital World’, wherein he delved into the ever evolving marketing and communications industries as more interactions, transactions and everything in between move into a digital setting.

“There have been two defining shifts. The first is the strategic shift from brand-centricity to customer centricity, which is almost complete. Given that the pandemic has changed the rest of the world, why won’t it change marketing? And point two is the corollary of point one, in that obsession with the customer is the new normal now,” he said.

Taking these as the two jumping off points, Raja proceeded to lay down ten points which he said were involved with the transforming nature of marketing thanks to increased digitization during and post the pandemic.

“Firstly, the very economics of marketing has changed. Even smaller players can enter what I call the advertising dogfight,” he said adding, “I'm not saying that bigger players with deep pockets don't still have an advantage, but they no longer have a decisive advantage, and it's a more level playing field. So from a marketing perspective, a higher spend may no longer translate into a higher ROI.”

Secondly, Raja noted that inbound marketing has taken center stage, and with the media landscape virtually exploding, the number of footfalls coming into all platforms of these organizations is following suit. “These are the footfalls that have done a lot of research and are very pre-purchase savvy. Inherent to this is a tectonic shift from brand push to brand pull. When I started my career, we used to concentrate on pushing what we want to say through ads in different media, but today we have to put out what the consumers want to hear, and so inbound is changing the face of communications.”

Thirdly, Raja said that content has taken pre-eminence over creatives. “At the time of my induction into the advertising field, first we used to conceptualize creatives with our ad agencies and the content used to come in as an afterthought and that too has reversed today. Some brands are very content driven, like Zomato, which has a million and a half followers on Twitter and two million on Facebook. You'd think a brand like that would be concentrating on getting footfalls to their app, so how are they getting so much traction on their social media channels? It’s because they use so much humour and local cultural cues. I think content plays a big role in Zomato’s size.”

“Fourthly and critically, Data has come into marketing in a big way, and it is helping marketing in smart decisions, and if you look at scenario based marketing it is helping in measuring the ROI on your marketing in a very scientific manner,” said Raja, noting that recently, AB InBev said their sales have gone up by 80% by using the data of their 2.5 billion customers, while Nike is snapping up tech companies, as examples of how brands are harnessing the power of data.

The fifth point, Raja said, was that customers are increasingly promiscuous in their brand relationships. “Be it a manufacturer or a retailer or any other organization, their marketing departments are finding it very hard to find what will ensure consumer stickiness. I think brand and customer loyalty are going to be the bane of marketing in the future and will be very hard to figure out,” he said.

Another aspect is ad blindness. “50 per cent of internet users are averse to any kind of pop-ups. When AT&T introduced the very first ad banner back in 1994, the CTR (Click-through Rate) was 44 per cent, while today a CTR of 0.5 is considered very healthy. So marketers are going to have to figure out whether it is still worth spending on pop-ups and what are the alternatives,” noted Raja.

Seventh was the very changing nature of consumer engagement, with Raja observing, earlier, the typical marketing funnel had a wide base at the bottom, and that used to be called the considered set. He said, “It was where we attacked consumers first, then went down another level and attacked them again, and then reached the apex of the funnel where there are two three brands left and you would endeavor to be one of them. But now there is no considered set and the consumer starts by having only two or three brands so it becomes a channel to hit them directly and be on their list because there is no second opportunity.” 

Point number eight was the clutter and how brands could manage to avoid it. “I personally feel that to avoid clutter is to become part of the clutter. High frequency is high engagement. In six months’ time, I must have done 600 creatives. There used to be a time when we gave front page solus ad on TOI and a back page premium ad on HT, and we thought we were done for the quarter, but that's no longer the case,” said Raja, adding that today you needed a creative factory to leave any kind of impression on a consumer in a crowded market place.

“Then with digital media exploding today, I feel becoming human has become paramount. Today consumers are looking at brand values and that the values are those that they want to associate with. It's no longer just about functional features, and this digital explosion is bringing the human side of the brands to the fore,” said Raja.

And finally, “360 degree view of the consumer is paramount today. You have to dissect your consumer and understand them and what they want from every side and angle. It's all about deep consumer intelligence and insights, because if you don't understand your consumer, they will move out of your value chain very soon,” concluded Raja.