The month of July in SCMHRD witnessed the Marketing Conclave – an initiative of the Guest Lecture team to bring in eminent personalities in the marketing field to share their experiences and talk about the latest industry trends centred on the theme, REIMAGINING MARKETING IN THE NEW ERA.

The marketing conclave was a huge success, and the students benefitted from new and industry-specific discussions to understand current trends. It also helped many students understand the scope of opportunities in marketing and helped them better equip themselves for the year yet to follow.

Session 1: Automation in Sales & Marketing – The New Rules.

The Team invited Mr Amit Sethiya, Head of Marketing at Syska, Mr Pawan Pandey, CMO at Shadow Fax, and Mr Abhisekh Gupta, CMO at Edelweiss Tokio, to speak at the first session. The faculty moderator for the session was Dr Yogesh Mahajan.

Our guest, Mr Pawan Pandey, highlighted the need for organizations to adopt Automation in Sales and Marketing. He stated that a company should only proceed to go ahead with Automation in the process when there is an omnipresent channel of marketing, displaying examples of Vi-John, which has not adopted Automation in their sales and marketing processes as they are a D2C business model and Automation is not the need of the hour for them. In contrast, companies like P&G have to venture into automation practices as their marketing channels are omnipresent, as AI and ML can play an essential role in the effective engagement of consumers.

Mr Amit Sethiya elaborated that Automation in Sales and Marketing can significantly track the performance of Territory Sales Managers working closely with retailers. The weekly reports of the Territory Sales Manager can be digitized, which can help draw valuable insights and effectively work out strategies.

Mr Abhisekh Gupta stated the challenges of selling Insurance as a product due to three main challenges: the product’s complexity, mistrust amongst the customers due to past experiences in the industry and a sense of invulnerability amongst the customers. He added that 905 of the Insurances are sold through an Insurance Agent, and Automation in the Sales and Marketing of Insurance can play an essential role in detecting fraud.

The session witnessed our guests sharing valuable insights about how Automation in Sales and Marketing will ease the tedious and redundant processes and provided facts to support the fact that salesforce and retailers will not be losing their roles due to the automation process. The automation would ease the process for all stakeholders involved and ensure that products and services reach customers faster.

Session 2: Customer Centricity and Product Led Marketing.

The Team invited Vanda Ferrao, Head of Marketing, Fresh to Home, and Anand Taparia, Director of Innovation, Colgate- Palmolive, and Rohit Gulati, Director of Marketing, Johnson and Johnson, as the speakers for this session. The faculty moderator for the session was Dr Gauri Joshi.

Our guest, Mr Rohit Gulati, highlighted the challenges faced by customer-centric organizations. He mentioned the following challenges: For good research, a lot of investment is required, as the focus on the customer increases, the focus on the product decreases, customer centricity is time-consuming, it is not a shortcut, it involves a lot of patience to drive customer loyalty. Lastly, he mentioned keeping the customers at the centre and revolving the strategies around them.

Vanda madam spoke about how to deal with biases in customer feedback. She stated that feed backs are never misleading or biased. It is what the organization thinks it is. She suggested focusing on market research to get insight from the customers and involve them in decision-making. She elaborated that there are two lenses for product-led marketing, which are the lifecycle and the category of the product. She also touched upon how to satisfy customer-centric employees by focusing on continuous training and review mechanisms.

Mr Anand Taparia elaborated on maintaining the customer relationship throughout the customer lifecycle. He said that customer relationship is an important aspect and is needed to keep the conversation alive. To achieve this, he said that strategies should be tailor-made based on the context. He spoke about how other fields can tap into their potential as the software field has leveraged product-led marketing. He ended by saying that distribution was an advantage back in the day and helped capture market share. Still, with all the emerging channels today, distribution is no longer an advantage. The mind-set of the organizations has to change and evolve through methods such as social listening, consumer feedback, and consumer days to understand the real challenges the customers face and keep the connection alive.

Session 3: Customer Experience in Experiential Marketing.

The Guest Lecture Team invited Mr Sandeep K Ruhela, Head Product Marketing & Head Sales PMO, Kubota and Ms Aradhika Mehta, CMO TASVA, ABFRL, to speak at the first session. The faculty moderator for the session was Dr Yogesh Mahajan. He talked about what Experiential Marketing entails, how it is perceived and talked about the interactions between customers and brands.

Our guest, Ms Aradhika Mehta, highlighted the need for technology in the growing domain of experiential marketing. She enlightened us about the experience of customers with brands and dynamic markets. She emphasized that the experiences of customers are subjective based on what their stimulus and interaction have been. She spoke about individual brands such as lenskart and how amidst the pandemic, they have retained the customers and also brought in customer engagement by introducing an AI-based technology which is based on immersive technology. She also insisted on the fact that, ultimately, it’s the product that attracts customers. She also talked about the inclusivity of men in the fashion industry.

Mr Sandeep K Rubela spoke about some of the campaigns he and his Team worked on with respect to experiential marketing by means of relevant trends .

He talked about how important it was to stay relevant with respect to current industry standards and also emphasized on the decreasing average age of companies. He reiterated that marketing has become an important facet of the experiential marketing industry and how important being creative and being relevant is.