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Ep 1. Rohit Kaul, HCL
155 Plays2 years ago
In the first episode of this new season of Marketing Connect, we have Rohit Kaul, General Manager (Marketing), HCL Corporation.
He is also an avid blogger and his blog ‘Seeking North’ delves deeper into the subjects of behavioural science and product management. He raved about the importance behavioural sciences hold in the marketing domain and not to miss – he gives excellent suggestions about how one can venture into this discipline.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast, a show where we get up close and personal with some of the most celebrated marketeers in the country. We talk to them and discover nuances of marketing that we often miss. After all, we are a show for marketeers by marketeers. Listen in.
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to the second season of Marketing Connect Podcast. For the very first episode, I have with me Rohit Kaul, who has a super interesting profile. I would let Rohit talk to you about it. Over to you, Rohit.
Rohit Kaul's Career Journey
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey, Saurav, thanks for having me. It's lovely to be here. Thank you, Rohit. Rohit, do you want to give my audience a quick intro about you, your journey from the time you passed out of a B-School, and what do you do right now?
00:01:02
Speaker
Sure. So right now I work with HCL in the corporate marketing function where I manage the brand assets, large brand assets for HCL and also for the not-for-profit Shimada Foundation. We could say my marketing enthusiasts have spent 13 years in the corporate gig now across sales, marketing, consulting, and a bit of education management.
00:01:26
Speaker
So that's the corporate side of my work at the same time.
The Story of Seeking North
00:01:30
Speaker
I am also You know what you would say in today's parlance a side hustler So I have started many side hustles and I have closed many side hustles But my current side hustle is a blog called seeking not which on which I write about behavioral science and product management
00:01:48
Speaker
In fact, for my listeners, it is that Seeking North is, I mean, it caught my eye and I had to chat with Rohit about that because he was doing something that not a lot of people in India typically do. Rohit, you want to talk about how this Seeking North came about? Apne, how did you start? How did the name came about? What was your thesis and so on and so forth?
00:02:10
Speaker
So it's a funny story. Like this podcast, I started a podcast around two and a half years back. It was called Masters of Brands, where I used to talk to CMOs and large brand leaders. I did it for, I think, six months before, for some reasons, I shut it down. I also realized that maybe at that point of time, I actually wanted to write about startups.
00:02:36
Speaker
And so that is why, you know, seeking not because that is what typically start up is doing with chasing some sort of not star metric or a growth metric or something. That is what is seeking not. So obviously I booked the domain name and I started writing a blog and all, but I also realized that if you're not operating in an ecosystem, it's very tough to write about something from the sidelines.
00:02:58
Speaker
So again, one of the side of sales I put to rest very quickly, but the blog stayed on as in the domain name stayed with me. And when I was looking to, and I would surround a year by I started getting interested in behavioral science and its applications on marketing and product design and product management. So I looked at, so I don't know.
Rohit's Domain Name Habit
00:03:19
Speaker
So it's again, a funny fact about me. I right now have 13 domain names booked in my name.
00:03:24
Speaker
So whenever I have an idea, I'll just go find the domain name, which is available and I'll just book it so no one else can book it. So I'm hoping that someday some millionaire will come and give me like a million dollars for my domains. But yeah, not yet. So I look at all the domain names I have and seeking out sort of felt the best fit. So yeah, that is why seeking out and that is how it started.
00:03:45
Speaker
So, unrelated story, but I also own about, I think, 19 domain names and same thesis. That's how it is. And in fact, what I do is most of my domain names are like three-letter, four-letter vanity ones because these are the ones that are in short supply, right? I mean, these are the ones people want to buy.
00:04:06
Speaker
So yeah, so, okay, got this. So you're also a competition to me, right? In a sense that you started podcast about three years ago, right? Two and a half, three years ago. So you are a competition to me.
Challenges in Podcasting
00:04:16
Speaker
So tell me, let talk to me about the podcast, right? So what was the, you know what I'm saying? What did, what did it,
00:04:25
Speaker
What did it change for you? So it started on a personal note. There were two reasons to wait. One was while there is a lot of marketing and branding literature out there, which you can read and consume and become better at marketing and branding. I kept on feeling that there is still a lot, a lot of that is written by people who are actually in the US or in UK or in Singapore for that matter.
00:04:53
Speaker
There is not a lot of marketing literature which is generated by Indian practitioners, so to say.
00:04:58
Speaker
In India, typically the profs will write marketing books and obviously they are great profs and they write great marketing books, but it sort of that there is a gap in the market, you know, so to say. So I felt, yeah, I think it will be good to get some practitioner's point of view into the fold and podcasts seem to be the easiest medium to do because it's a recording, quick editing and we're out there rather than, you know, like talking to someone over email and getting lengthy posts out and everything.
00:05:25
Speaker
So, that was one reason why it started and second of course, I said, you know, I like to have some sort of side hustle. In fact, I call it like a second career and I don't know, I wrote a post way back on my blog, you know, which talks about it, everyone should have a second career.
00:05:40
Speaker
without any offense to the first career, which first career is definitely important because that is what pays the bill. But it's always good to have second career for a variety of reasons. So that is how the podcast started. I reached out to a lot of CMOs, senior brand leaders, and almost everyone was very generous with their time. So the people like Karan, who's now a DLF, Amit Tiwari of Havels, Arif, who was then with Accord Motors, I think now has moved on.
00:06:06
Speaker
Sajid Pai, who was then a marketer and now he is a venture capitalist. So people are very, very generous with their time. And I had a good run of six episodes before which I realized two things. One, three years, this is almost two and a half, three years back. It was slightly ahead of curve for podcasting in India because podcasting was very niche at that point of time.
00:06:34
Speaker
And second, obviously, there were work pressures and family constraints and figuring out product and distribution at the same time is quite a tricky thing, is what I realized. That's the reason. Yeah, that's the reason I felt I basically ran out of steam trying to do both product and distribution at the same time. So yeah, that was the thing.
00:06:54
Speaker
So here's a funny anecdote. I don't know if this will make it to the podcast as in the final recording or not. But podium and Marketing Connect also was a side hustle for me and my partner. And luckily, luckily, I had a partner and he is one of those people who likes to build companies. On day zero, he said that, let's put a team together. So he hired like three people on day zero to sort of
00:07:18
Speaker
from the podcast. So I have somebody who does best outreach, there is somebody who does distribution and there is somebody who does the technology part for us, editing and other things. So I think I was lucky with Akshay as my partner there, to be honest, but I hear what you're saying. That's a very valid
00:07:36
Speaker
And couple of names that you mentioned are obviously familiar. Sajitha is sort of no, fairly okay. Amit is one of the guests in this season. So I've always spoken to him briefly. So we will probably do a recording next week sometime. I don't know when that will happen. The other gentlemen are if I'm not aware of that person, but Amit is still with Havel's and he's keen on doing the podcast.
Understanding Behavioral Science
00:07:56
Speaker
Anyhow, so tell me, for my listeners who don't understand what behavioral marketing is, behavioral psychology is, give me a one-on-one and try to demystify what behavioral psychology, behavioral marketing essentially is. So behavioral science is essentially understanding how humans think and operate. It's as simple as one-line definition of that. And people call it, I mean, psychology.
00:08:24
Speaker
But behavioral science is slightly wider than psychology. Psychology is like a part of it because then there are other aspects to it, which involves economic decisions or social decisions, cultural nuances, which along with psychology sort of all fold into behavioral sciences. Again, this is my way of looking at it and there are people who look at it differently and people are more stringent about, you know, definitions, but this is the way I look at it.
00:08:51
Speaker
As I said, you know, it's how to understand human beings. And when you're understanding human beings, you know, that can be applied to a number of contexts. You know, that can be applied to marketing, that can be applied to finance, that can be applied to operations. Then you can literally apply those concepts anywhere. Of course, you have to first understand the context and the relevance and is it needed, not needed.
00:09:15
Speaker
But yeah, that is what behavioral science is. The part of behavioral science I try to focus on is where behavioral science meets product management and marketing, which is something in your b-school and in our my b-school, we read a course called consumer behavior. You know, I think we all sort of had a conby books and consumer books. So that is consumer behavior and behavioral science sort of builds on top of this. This is what behavioral science is.
00:09:43
Speaker
In fact, I was lucky to have studied with this professor called Sanjay Bakshi and he would teach us behavioral finance. I mean, he would use behavioral psychology for finance. I think he taught at IAM Lucknow as well. I'm not sure if you studied from him, but he would give us all these interesting anecdotes. So, tell me, give me a couple of examples of behavioral psychology in application in marketing.
00:10:08
Speaker
So there are a number of such applications. I can give you a very simple or rather simplistic one. When you are searching for any product on Amazon for that matter, you are searching for a pair of pillows on Amazon. So Amazon will do a couple of things. You will see a badge, which will say best seller. And given that there are hundreds and thousands of choices,
00:10:38
Speaker
you may gravitate towards a best seller sort of a choice. Amazon is saying best seller, so it must be a best seller, right? That's one of the thoughts. The other is when you are looking at it, Amazon will show you a deal, which it will say that expiring in 10 hours or one hour or something like that, right? Then it will also show you ratings and reviews for all the products. Five star rating, four star rating, it will give you options to filter.
00:11:08
Speaker
So at a very simplistic level, Amazon is utilizing a few biases. One is when it says the best seller. So again, so before we go there, bias is something which is inherent in all of us as human beings. These biases are a result of our experiences, our culture, also millions of years of evolution. So a bias is something where you are rationally expected to behave in a certain way.
00:11:36
Speaker
but you deviate from it and you deviate from it in a predictable manner. That if I give you X stimulus, you will do Y output. If it happens for a long enough period of time or long enough number of stimuli, then it becomes a bias. So all of us have biases and by showing us a best seller tab or a badge, Amazon is sort of playing into our authority bias.
00:12:02
Speaker
We all hold Amazon at a high pedestal and you know, it's like, you know, that WhatsApp University thing, WhatsApp payer to say yoga. Amazon is saying it's best alert and it must be a best alert, no one questions it. That's one.
00:12:16
Speaker
The ratings and rankings are Amazon using social proof bias. We are social animals. We like to see and do things that people around us are doing. So if I provide you with two pillow brand options and where you don't know any of the brands, neither of the brands, none of the brands are known to you.
00:12:37
Speaker
and one has a rating of 3 and one has a rating of 4.5, more often you will pick up a 4.5 rating than a 3 rating. It's standard human behavior, most people follow that, it's social proof bias.
00:12:51
Speaker
And by showing us that ticker, that a deal is going to be over in 10 hours or 1 hour and running lightning, it's playing on something called loss aversion bias. So as human beings, we are happy to have a game.
00:13:10
Speaker
But we are almost twice or thrice as much sad to have a loss of similar potential. So if you get 100 rupees, you're happy. But if you lose 100 rupees, that's much more painful than getting 100 rupees. So by doing that, it is prompting you that, you know, if you don't do it, next 10 hours, reduce them to end. So it's playing a new loss aversion bias. So it's as simple as that, you know, and these examples are everywhere. Uber, Amazon, Netflix, Canva, all large companies, Starbucks, all large companies, all over campus.
00:13:39
Speaker
Got this. So next question, moving on to the next question. Tell me if somebody were to get started into this behavioral psychology and marketing kind of a career, obviously, they can start by reading your blog.
Learning Resources for Behavioral Science
00:13:53
Speaker
But what other resources, teachers, people that they can follow? Who are some of the bigger ones in this industry, in this discipline?
00:14:04
Speaker
Right. So behavior science is a huge discipline and it is something which is now taking more prominence, especially, you know, with the COVID scenario, behavior science suddenly has become very well known, I would say, you know, so the awareness of the discipline is going up. I have taken an approach of getting self taught in behavioral sciences. And in fact, the field I work on is more behavioral economics and behavioral sciences because I'm more interested in marketing transactions and also that's more behavioral economics.
00:14:33
Speaker
There are other aspects of behavioral sciences about motivation and cultural, this thing which I wouldn't get into. But if you don't, one is you can be self-not, you can pick up books and podcasts. So, there is one option. Second way is to do structured education.
00:14:52
Speaker
So there are, again there are two ways there. If you want to be formally educated, there are reputed universities in UK and US which offer both undergrad and grad level courses. For example, King's College London offers a course and Oxford University offers, you know, programs. There's MSc level programs and again undergrad programs. Harvard University has a behavior economics group. So they offer their own undergrad and grad level programs. So they are there.
00:15:18
Speaker
In India also there are universities I believe Ashoka offers a economics program which has a significant part of wave economics and of course there are psychology degrees and you know undergrad and grad level. There are other ways to have you know more structured approach to it by doing online courses and given that in-person course are not happening anymore.
00:15:42
Speaker
So I would say there are courses by a guy called Richard Shoton, who is a well-known writer of a book called Choice Factory. He runs his course on 42 courses. So that is one course. The other is by Ogilvy, UK, by Rudy Sutherland, Sam Tatum. All of them are like, you know, one of the, I would say, torchbearers of this discipline. It's available on a website called Mindworks Academy. It's a great course. I've done it. It's very good.
00:16:11
Speaker
Last, I would say if you have to look at it in a more structured manner and you have to go back to the basics without necessarily looking into marketing or product management, there's a course on edits by Dilip Soman, who is a professor at the University of Toronto and I would say one of the best teachers of baby electronics I have ever come across. So that course is definitely a must do if you are seriously interested in baby products.
00:16:38
Speaker
Got it. And tell me just curiosity.
Careers in Behavioral Science
00:16:40
Speaker
I mean, I'm scratching my curiosity. So if I were to do all these courses and become, let's say, super good at understanding these biases, are there career options available right now that specifically ask for these skills or it's just a, I mean, just a sweeping trend right now around us? So the career options are there. I'm not so sure about the Indian companies offering these career options, but there is something called the Chief Behavioral Officer.
00:17:08
Speaker
which companies like Lemonade, companies like Netflix, companies like Google, Grab, Uber, they all have this designation. And because there is this designation, there are large departments they run. Of course, these departments intersect with data science, because a lot of these discussions are theory-based discussions. So then you A-B test them and you know, you map user journeys and all.
00:17:30
Speaker
So, behavioral science and behavioral scientists are, I mean, if you just go, if you have to go to Glasgow right now and do a quick behavioral science or data science, behavioral science job search, we'll find a number of opening across Google, Grab, Uber, Lyft, all these companies with licenses. I am yet to see that strong trend in India so far. So, in India, the options right now seem to be more gravitating towards academic side, you know, you can become a prof.
Productivity and Skill Acquisition
00:17:58
Speaker
or you can start your own online course and make some money. The next question is, tell me, as somebody who's a big advocate of side hustles and has a demanding day job, what is your productivity mantra? How do you ensure that you track things on a day to day basis?
00:18:19
Speaker
I am trying to find it out. If I find it out, I'll definitely tell you. But productivity is honestly a shifting goalpost. There are days when you feel you're super productive. And then there are days you feel like honestly, like terrible that, oh, I've spent and died in doing this. There are three or four things which work for me, which I'm happy to share. They're not like a mantra or anything. These are more like things I've learned from personal experiences.
00:18:45
Speaker
First thing I realized is that to-do lists don't work for me. They don't work at all. For me, what works is calendarizing things. So if I calendarize it, that thing gets done. So any heavy duty item, like for example, recording of this podcast, writing a blog post for my newsletter,
00:19:04
Speaker
reviewing some work of my team at office or launching a marketing campaign and reviewing it. So I put it in my calendar. I'll block half an hour, one hour, whatever. I have to block 15 minutes, whatever, but I put it in my calendar. So if it is in my calendar, it gets done. Any light items like today, I have to order biscuits. I'm out of biscuits. I have to order it from Amazon or wherever to go by. I put in my to-do list.
00:19:28
Speaker
I don't have to structure my to-do list into projects or whatever. It's a running to-do list. The moment I do something, I strike it off. If it doesn't, I don't do it, it remains there. That's one. Second thing is something which I borrowed from Shane Parrish. Shane Parrish is the founder of this website, Funam Street.
00:19:47
Speaker
which is probably to my mind the best thing ever to have an internet after of course internet in that sense mental models and everything so he I was into one of his interviews and he made a very important point that a lot of productivity thing talks you know podcasts and books talk about tools and processes
00:20:06
Speaker
What they don't talk about is making the right decision in the first place. So if you make a wrong decision, then you waste that much time chasing the wrong decision. So it's like a lot more thought has to be given to making the right decision. So that's one of the things I try to do. When I'm making a decision, I tend to think of it, is it a reversible decision? Is it an irreversible decision?
00:20:30
Speaker
If it reversible, I'll just go ahead and do it. If it's irreversible, I'll think, pause, deliberate over it, maybe postpone it. I'd also think if I can do something in two minutes versus if I can do something in 10 minutes, if it's too good in two minutes, I'll do it right now. Suppose I get a mail, I got a mail and I have to respond to it. If I can respond in next two minutes, I'll respond right now. Otherwise I'll file it, I'll respond it whenever the right calendar item sort of pops up to respond to that mail. So that's second.
00:20:56
Speaker
Third is also slightly philosophical. You will be thinking, I'm going into, you know, slightly philosophical discussion, but again, as I said, these things, these things work for me. Absolutely. Third is, from when it comes to productivity, you know, we, again, this is borrowed, this from a guy called James Altucher, if I pronounce his name correctly. He's a very famous. Altucher, I call him Altucher. Altucher, right. So you know the guy, right? He's a podcaster, investor, writer, lots of things. Phenomenal, phenomenal guy.
00:21:25
Speaker
He does so much work. I have no clue how he does it. Exactly. Right. He's all over the world. Exactly. So four things came from him from one of his interviews with this guy, Rabit Sethi, who is again like a productivity guru and everything. So him said something very fundamental. He said a lot of us, all points of time are time traveling.
00:21:45
Speaker
You know, we are thinking what will happen in future? What will I do tomorrow, day after? I am launching this product. How will it look 10 days from now, one year from now? I've got 10 subscribers. What will it look 30 days from now? Will I have 5 subscribers and all? Is that we should stop time travelling? At best, focus on the next important stuff. What is the next step that you want to take? And just focus on that. That brings down our anxiety levels.
00:22:10
Speaker
Bringing on anxiety levels obviously makes us more productive. Now this has been a very hard thing for me to do. We are all marketeers and MBAs and we are all taught strategy and lead time and project management and stuff, right? But whenever I've been able to implement it, it has brought on anxiety levels, made me more focused on task at hand. And it has worked for me. And one last thing, again, borrowed wisdom is, and I believe borrowed wisdom is the best.
00:22:37
Speaker
from a guy called Josh Kaufman, he's author of 20-hour... his point was, you don't need 10,000 hours to learn a skill, you need 20 hours. And the point he drives towards it, that when you're doing something, suppose you're picking a new skill and it is not really picking up a new skill, it could be like, okay, for example, I'm trying to create a new marketing campaign for something that I'm doing, right?
00:23:02
Speaker
I have to be cognizant of only two things, the end objective and the next step. And that is that. For example, if I want to launch an SEO for my blog, I don't really have to become an SEO expert. I have to define my goal. Okay, I want my blog to be featured on Google's first page in next five months. And then I work towards it. If I just say, okay, I have to be an SEO expert, I'll spend the rest of my life doing it.
00:23:31
Speaker
nothing will come out of it, right? So these are the things which helped me in trying to balance their stuff, of course, in family support and everything else obviously is there. Can I ask you a personal question? I'm okay to skip it in the final edit, but are you married? Do you have kids? I just want to chat. Of course. Yeah, no problem. So I'm, yeah, married. I have two kids, a six and a half year old daughter, a five month old son. So he just, he was born just before COVID started. And so my wife works, she's a corporate lawyer.
00:24:01
Speaker
And yeah, we stay with the family. So it's a joint family stay with your parents. Nice. So what is your take on all this, you know, this content blast that has happened in as an outcome of the COVID
COVID-19's Impact on Content Creation
00:24:16
Speaker
crisis? Everybody's doing content. There is podcasts, news, articles, interviews happening around us. So how do you shift noise and how do you find signal from all these various things happening around us?
00:24:28
Speaker
So my honest answer to what I think about it is it's great. It's great. It's like if there are very some very smart people out there who are making some very good content and obviously some people are some of the content maybe it's not up to you know that quality level but yeah I mean a lot of people are getting out of content universities are going online online courses their prices are crashing there's competition which is bringing prices down so it's making education more affordable
00:24:58
Speaker
In any case, we are moving in that direction. And this has accelerated the crisis, accelerated the pace of innovation in that sense. But yeah, as a marketer, I would say, and as a person who very keenly consumes content pretty much every waking hour, I think it is great. It is better to have a lot of content and then sift through it rather than having more content and just sort of sit at home twiddling your thumb. That is one part.
00:25:26
Speaker
How does one sift through it? Very straightforward, I would say. One is, I think you have to be very clear about what you want this content. Why do you want to consume this content as a consumer? Yeah, so for me, it's very straightforward. So I think it boils down to why you want to consume this content. That is the first point. So maybe you want to consume some content for entertainment.
00:25:52
Speaker
So you have your Netflix and you have your Amazon and you have your Spotify. Maybe you want to consume some content for getting informed. So you have your news and you have your all these, you know, morning context and your Ken and everything. Then maybe there is you want to get.
00:26:12
Speaker
knowledge, information different from knowledge. So I'm segregating information knowledge. You want to have some knowledge. Within knowledge, again, you have to define what kind of skills you want to learn. You want to learn skills which are more static in nature.
00:26:23
Speaker
like psychology, like behavioral science, like physics, chemistry, maths, or you want to learn skills which are more progressive and agile in nature, like digital marketing, like email writing, like podcasting for that matter, right? So if you first define it, then it becomes very easy to sort of find out what content you want to consume.
00:26:46
Speaker
And second, the second is, you know, the mantra for all product managers, A B test, you start watching something, you start seeing something, you like it, you do more of it, you don't like it, you stop it.
00:26:58
Speaker
I would say this. And of course, there are enough tools right now. I think people have to come up with aggregation websites on podcasts, on webinars, on email newsletters. So there are newsletters for newsletters. You know, so we never, I never thought 10 years back, I'll see a world where there are newsletters, which collate other newsletters. So, but yeah, that is the world we live in. But yeah, I think the objective has to be clear. You need to be sure why you are doing it.
00:27:25
Speaker
In fact, one of those side hustles that I'm working on is actually this only that somebody is trying to create a newsletter of newsletters, like you mentioned. So I am actually helping him create the tool by giving him feedback. So I can relate to what you're saying. Got this. Cool. So tell me as a marketeer, how has the world changed for you in the last four or five months after the COVID crisis?
Adapting Post-COVID Marketing Strategies
00:27:51
Speaker
Right.
00:27:55
Speaker
I think one of the things which has changed for us is that we had to redefine how we reach the customer. And given that my primary job is corporate branding and managing large brand assets, which were all basically physical in nature. So I do concerts, it's a physical in nature. So then we had to find out a way to
00:28:23
Speaker
take that experience to people through digital media, which had its challenges and its benefits. So that is one. So then we have to go back to the drawing board, think about what to do and how do we take, what is the experience we can create? It is impossible to recreate a physical experience digitally. That is something that I am very sure about these days. So what is the experience that we are giving the customer? So it was one.
00:28:47
Speaker
Second of course is one impact is that we are now jostling much more for attention share with our customers than we were doing earlier and in an
00:29:03
Speaker
Okay, to use jargon, we live in an attention economy. If you don't have attention, then you're pretty much out of stock and out of shelf and out of money and the company shares them essentially, right? So the jostle or the struggle for customers' attention has increased a lot more digitally, I would say, than it was earlier. So we had to rethink the entire digital strategy as to how can we appeal to someone.
00:29:29
Speaker
in a better way. So, we have to sharpen our USB, we have to find simpler ways of consuming. So, in fact, a lot of our communication at HCL phone sites has now become very simple. We realize, you know, simple is better right now. So, we have made it very simple. We also decided to make it more positive.
00:29:48
Speaker
So, that is something that has helped us and we also realize that frequency is of high importance right now because attention share is essentially message into frequency, right. So, message became simpler, we had to significantly improve our frequency of digital concerts or number of times we are able to touch our customers, so that changed. That being said,
00:30:15
Speaker
Given that ours is a brand thankfully we were able to migrate to digital quickly unlike say a hospitality brand or you know a real estate brand or a mall sort of a brand.
00:30:27
Speaker
We now understand our customer much better. So that has been one of the positives which came out of it. All the data that we are able to collect. Our feedback loop has become very short. If people like something, they'll tell us upfront. It just takes a Facebook comment or a Facebook DM. If people don't like something, they'll come and sort of tell us that. So our feedback loop became shorter. So our product has improved much more than we could have probably improved in, say, two, three years.
00:30:54
Speaker
Got this. So tell me what opportunities do you see getting created as the aftermath of the crisis for marketeers or brands, for entrepreneurs, because you seem to be enjoying a lot of these side hustles. So what do you think are some opportunities that people can look at? So I think one opportunity is right in front of us. You know, one is aggregation. So people have become aggregators. So that seems to be you yourself that you know, talking about newsletter newsletters, right? So with so much content being around,
00:31:24
Speaker
uh, curation as a service, you know, we have had, uh, infrastructure service, we have had platform as a service, but curation as a service is going to become more and more important. Uh, so that is one opportunity, which I think a lot of marketers are tapping into. Uh, the other opportunity is of course, uh, any is of course on a digital media, right? So if you are an agency or a person who can help me better understand my customers digitally,
00:31:54
Speaker
And I have been approached by many firms which have given some tools or something around this, processes around this to help understand customers better. That is a huge opportunity which is there. And if you are an entrepreneur which is into digital transformation and making it easy for large companies to adopt digital tools, because as you would know, large companies struggle to
00:32:23
Speaker
pick up digital tools or to use things with digital because complex structures, different rules and regulations, policies, legalities and all right. So if there's a way you can break those silos and make it very easy for them to start using this thing, great opportunity over there. NetNet I would say that if you can, the fundamentals of being an entrepreneur or
00:32:50
Speaker
being a solution provider have not really changed. You still have to find a large enough problem to solve. You still have to persevere with it for as long as it takes to make money. You still have to find customers. You still have to find product market fit. The nature of products may change. You will be doing more digital than you will be doing physical, but I don't think fundamentally things have changed to that extent.
00:33:19
Speaker
In fact, I could relate my behavioral science experience to this. There were lots of discussions in the first phase of I would say, this thing around March and April, where people are talking about using behavioral science to create long-term change in behavior. See, that is a holy grail of behavioral science. If you can create a process which can create long-term behavior change, and if you can put it in a framework or a process, and you can productize it,
00:33:49
Speaker
There are many other companies flocking to you, you know, just to buy that model or for you to lease it to them or, you know, rent it to them so that they can also use it. Do you have any examples in your mind? Do you, can you think of any example? The best-selling author and Stanford prof Neerayal, he created this framework Hooked. The entire premise of Hooked is that it will take an extrinsic trigger and convert it into an intrinsic trigger so that that behavior that you're doing becomes a habit.
00:34:18
Speaker
It means it becomes effortless for you. That is his definition of having you. It becomes effortless. So imagine companies like Netflix or Uber or you know, whatever. They'll be happy to pick up a framework or a model like this, which gives actionable insights into, okay, you do these 10 steps.
00:34:40
Speaker
there is a 50% chance or 95% chance or whatever that these percentage of your customers will habitually start using your product six months down the line provided you give them X, Y and Z stimuli. So if you're able to structure a product like this, there'll be people who will be running to your doors to sort of do this. That being said, long-term behavior changes, again, something which has been very difficult for even the best of behavioral scientists to implement.
00:35:10
Speaker
And the fundamental reason for that is the biggest bias of human beings. And I say biggest people differ from me. It's called a status quo bias. We are very happy we have here. We don't want to change. Status quo bias is something which stopped internet from coming, which posts challenges in the way podcasts are listened, which posted challenges when YouTube was launched. Hey, who's going to watch this? So status quo bias.
00:35:39
Speaker
So that is one bias which stops a lot of good things from happening. And in the initial part of this crisis, there was a lot of discussion around using behavioral science, for example, to create interventions. For example, people will wear masks, you know, long-term behavior change. You know, we don't know when a vaccine will come out. So if you're stepping out, you have to wear a mask right now, right?
00:36:05
Speaker
The techniques have had limited efficacy so far and even at this point of time when the numbers in India are not going down and we don't have a vaccine right now, my anecdotal observation is 30 to 40% of people who used to earlier wear a mask are no longer wearing a mask when they are going out for a variety of reasons.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, for a variety of reasons, they're exercising or they're feeling suffocated, they forgot, they felt, oh, what COVID, you know, it's like, it's going to happen, it's going to happen, all right. So all those things are there. So as I was saying, to alter fundamental human behavior, status quo bias is a very fundamental human behavior. To alter that is a huge task.
00:36:56
Speaker
So, there is a huge debate right now happening in BMS circle that, you know, will this pandemic change us fundamentally? I am in the camp which says that it will not change us fundamentally. There are people who are saying it will change us fundamentally, but yeah, that is where we are.
00:37:15
Speaker
Got this. So the next question is tell me if you are a middle mid-level manager right now, marketing manager, let's say you are at the top of the pyramid,
Career Advice for Marketing Managers
00:37:25
Speaker
right? If somebody was let's say six years, seven years out of B school, and they want to figure out what could they learn so that they could become a marketing lead, like yourself, for example. So what all could they be doing?
00:37:37
Speaker
So, I would say the concept of T-shaped marketer is still not out of fashion. It's still pretty much in fashion. At this point of time, I would say there are, of course, you need to have your fundamentals of marketing. One of my issues that I face at times with some of the younger marketers is that there is a lot of focus on jargons.
00:38:03
Speaker
like growth hacking, growth marketing, you know, all other things, but not so much on the fundamentals, like 4Ps. People think 4Ps are outdated. There's nothing like outdated, you know, nothing, I mean, how can you say product and pricing are outdated? They're pretty much invoked, right? But to give a shorter repair to your question, I would say there are two things that the marketer should really focus on right now. And again, these are two different things.
00:38:29
Speaker
If you are the type of person who enjoys more unstructured environment, experimenting and taking more risks, I would say go for courses and go for learning which are more focused on growth marketing and customer acquisition.
00:38:47
Speaker
because that has been one of the responses that companies have given to this pandemic. They have tried to acquire more customers because you feel your current customers are going to reduce wallet share or they're going to drop out. So you have tried, all companies are pretty much trying to acquire new customers by whatever means, more marketing, less marketing. So that's growth marketing.
00:39:05
Speaker
The other sphere is something which we call conversion rate optimizations, which includes things like landing page optimization, revenue optimization, you know, that's a whole science in itself.
00:39:20
Speaker
And that is a kind of science we fall back on in bad times. Because if you don't have much, for example, you are part of a company where you don't have money to spend. So then you go back to drawing board, you optimize the existing set of customers and their behavior. So that's the other thing if people can, there are a variety of courses again on both that you can do.
00:39:40
Speaker
So, I would say if you go deep, you go deep on one of these, but you have your fundamental, which is the top priority, clear. You need to understand how website works, how social media works, how, you know, marketing fundamentals work.
00:39:55
Speaker
Got this. So tell me what are some of your favorite gadgets? As a marketeer, and let me make it more work per se, as a marketeer, what gadgets do you rely on to sort of
00:40:11
Speaker
I'm very straightforward. I have a phone and I have a laptop. And that pretty much takes care of everything that I need to do. There was a time five years back when I used to invest a lot in gadgets. And then I realized it's not about the tool, it's about the process.
00:40:30
Speaker
So if I'm running a process correctly, all dashboards, everything, Google Analytics has an app. Facebook Analytics has an app. Quora has a mobile-friendly website. Reddit has an app. So pretty much everywhere where I want to advertise or where I want to talk to my customers gives an app which runs nicely on my phone.
00:40:53
Speaker
And if I want to do something fancier, I have my laptop. So that's pretty much that. So I know a boring answer, but that is pretty much that.
00:41:02
Speaker
There is no boring answer or not boring answer. It's just a question that a lot of my leaders want to get answered. How do these marketeers keep them abreast of what is happening in the world? Just to add one more point. How a marketeer can get abreast of this thing is...
00:41:26
Speaker
sort of tangential answer and probably a very cliched answer but you have to talk to your customers like that is the only thing right you can use a laptop to study data patterns you can use a phone to study phaso analytics it will not work beyond the point because all the data analytics basically regress towards mean
00:41:47
Speaker
They are out of conflict. So what we do in data analytics, we strip out the context and we look at numbers. I am a firm believer in concept of thick data and not only big data. Thick data is all the anecdotes, all the context, especially in India. India is a very culturally sensitive place. Something which Saurabh likes may offend Rohit.
00:42:13
Speaker
because of just being from Delhi and Bombay. You know, as simple as that, right?
00:42:20
Speaker
That is something so you talking to customers face to face, observing what they are doing in their daily lives, especially the context in which they are operating. So for me when I do Excel concerts online, it is very important to understand and we have actually done a whole study and try to understand this. What are the different contexts in which people listen to this? Are they listening to this at their office, at their home?
00:42:44
Speaker
Are they listening to it with their family around? So the entire family listen to it? Are they listening to it as a background noise or as foreground? All these things help us, but you only get to know when you're talking to people. There's no other way.
00:42:57
Speaker
Got this. Got this. So that's an interesting one,
The Concept of 'Thick Data'
00:43:00
Speaker
right? Nobody else has sort of spoken to me about data. And it's an interesting way to look at things. Do you want to build more on this? I mean, if you have content, we can build more on this. Otherwise you can skip it. It's interesting. Yeah. So this is again a borrowed concept, as you can see, you know, if you can't make something yourself, I don't know some quote about stealing or inspiration or whatever, but this, this is borrowed concept.
00:43:22
Speaker
There's this very famous researcher called Tricia Wong, if I'm not mistaken, and she is a tech ethnographer, and she coined this term, thick data. And I happened to see her video at Nudge Talk, which is a congregation of all the behavioral scientists. This was a 2018 edition, I think, or 2019, if you forget. And she talks about the same thing. She coined this term, and thick data essentially means
00:43:53
Speaker
putting a layer of context, emotions and culture on top of your big data.
00:44:01
Speaker
and then using that to make decisions. So in the age of performance marketing and clicks and thinking if a customer, so it's like this, a lot of people tell me that if someone has liked my Facebook page, that means they like HCL concepts, right? And this is how Facebook has been selling this Liker campaign for the longest time.
00:44:28
Speaker
And you know, my response is usually the reverse. I said, no, that is not how the causality works. They like HCL concerts. That is why they have liked my page. So there is a subtle but profound difference. So take that as about getting context, emotions.
00:44:46
Speaker
that is something which we lose in big analytics and it basically goes down to ethnographic studies. You go and sit with, stay with your customers, you observe how they work, you observe how they use your product, you know, what challenges they face, you understand their culture sensitivities, you take all of that out and then, so it's going beyond FGDs and one-on-one interviews. You actually sit and live their life. That is what they get about.
00:45:11
Speaker
Got this. I got this. That's interesting. So in fact, this is something that I will go back home and read more on, to be honest, which is an interesting piece that you brought up. I never knew about this, funnily. But coming back. So tell me, you've done your share of podcasts and you have done enough interviews and more around the internet. So tell me the toughest question that somebody has ever asked you in your life. The first question.
00:45:37
Speaker
This is itself a very tough question to answer actually. But on a more serious note, I think I did one interview where I think I was asked to answer and this I've been asked to answer a couple of podcasts. In fact, how will marketing look five years from now?
Predicting the Future of Marketing
00:46:02
Speaker
Wow. Okay. Right. It may seem like a very simple question to answer, but if you are genuinely trying to answer it, it is very, very difficult to answer this question because if I had answered this in August of 2019, my answer would be very different from what I would answer right now, right? So people think that it's an easy question to answer, you know, Thoda, we'll get some yarn out of this person.
00:46:31
Speaker
but to genuinely answer it with all honesty, I have always struggled and I still struggle to answer this question. Got this. And what is that one question that you always wished somebody asked you in an interview, but they've never asked that question to you? You've already asked it in some way, but I will, so I'll just ask it, is how to become a better marketer?
00:46:57
Speaker
You know, a lot of people confuse marketing with advertising, which is the way, you know, social media has made us understand LinkedIn sort of makes us feel, but marketing is obviously much, much bigger than advertising, right? Not advertising in itself is small, right? Marketing, obviously you are a marketer and you will understand this, right? So, not enough people ask this question as how to become a better marketer.
00:47:24
Speaker
So give me like a two or three bullet point answer to this question all over again so that I can just say bullet point one, bullet point two. How to become a better marketer? Yeah. So two, three bullets. One, you take very keen interest in people. Second bullet point, read as much as you can, non-marketing stuff.
00:47:49
Speaker
So not Kotler, not Keller, not Acker, non-marketing stuff as much as you can. Third, take copious notes when you are reading and refer back to them whenever you can.
00:48:05
Speaker
Fourth I would say is be very agile and learn project management. So fourth is learn project management because a lot of marketeers are terrific at creativity, they are terrific at finding solutions, but marketing is almost 50% project management and 50% rest of the stuff. So that's it.
00:48:31
Speaker
So in fact, you sort of prompted me for the next question that I have already. So what are some unconventional ways to learn
Unconventional Marketing Insights
00:48:40
Speaker
about marketing? Like some of the guests have told me that they like to watch movies, they like to go to the cop shops. So what are some of your unconventional ways to learn about marketing? So one, as I said, I try to read as wide and as diverse as possible. And most of these are blog posts and podcasts.
00:49:01
Speaker
because reading diverse set of books are difficult. So, I try to do that. And within that I have some favorite as a funam. It is one favorite and there are other websites which I try to read. So, reading wide and diverse set helps. The other unconventional thing that I have seen, again it is, so,
00:49:30
Speaker
One of the other ways is to observe transactions very carefully. Right. So it could be a transaction that you are doing on a website. It could be a transaction that you are doing at a Kirana store. It could be something you're buying at a large store retail chain. It could be anything, you know, maybe you're some elder is handing you some money on some festival. Right. Because fundamentally all marketing boils down to getting people to transact.
00:50:00
Speaker
If you're not transacting, my marketing is not really helping, right? Because I want you to do something, do some transaction, right? By observing a variety of transactions and understanding the nuanced differences between each transactions has helped me a lot. And I'll give you an example, you know, if we have time for this, I'll give you a quick example. So, when I was in Asian Pains,
00:50:22
Speaker
We used to go to these retailers, you know, like do sales call and go to these retailers. I used to cover some 10, 20 retailers every day with the sales executive. So I was a trainee and there was an executive who was telling me how to do sales.
00:50:37
Speaker
We used to go to this guy who was a big retainer and there was always a crowd at his store, you know, like there were some 10 people jostling for space and these were painters, you know, so paints is like you and I don't go and buy paint, painters buy paint. We tell them which paint to buy, right? Jostling for space and fighting with each other and he was very slow in serving them. He'll take his time, pick up his stuff and all. And it's like, I'm sure he can serve his customers better. This is terrible customer service. I was freshly minted MBA, you know.
00:51:06
Speaker
full of energy and incorrect notions about how I will change the world, right? So, I said this is terrible customer service, he should improve his customer service and the guy is like, no sir, that's not how it works. This guy has understands that
00:51:21
Speaker
There are 10 shops. So how this works is, you know, paint shops are in a certain part of the market. There are three, four, five shops in the market. So if you will serve them very quickly, they will leave the counter very quickly. So that means Exa Mountain counter will be empty. The painters are coming. We'll see an empty counter and think, Oh my God, this shop is empty counter. It's not a good shop. No one wants to buy from here.
00:51:44
Speaker
Just because there is a crowd at his counter, people think that this is a popular shop and any new painter who will come, will obviously come to a popular shop, then to a... Yeah, I understand. This is something, in Devya's Sun System, I'll say it is social proof in some sense, right, because he's getting more people at his counter. Now, it's something I observed very early on and then I could see people like Big Bazaar and all have implemented this, you know, their case studies on Big Bazaar implementing something like this, right.
00:52:11
Speaker
I observed this and there are times when I have used it in my life. So again, you have to observe transactions.
00:52:19
Speaker
Got this. So, in fact, Big Bazaar at me mentioned, yeah, in fact, when I read somewhere, I don't know where it was that the entire idea of keeping the aisles, you know, crowded in Big Bazaar was to give the feeling of a typical bazaar to a house where that goes to Big Bazaar, right? Are you mentioning about that? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And they had people, you know, standing on top of containers with megaphones, shouting, you know, this is a sale is happening and all. Just to make people feel comfortable. They are very familiar with this.
00:52:48
Speaker
Got this. So last two questions, I'm running out of time, but last two questions. A is that tell me if is there any message or branded initiative that you saw around COVID that you really liked as a marketeer? You know, you you could have said Kishita Marini Kiai. So is it a campaign like that that you saw? So I saw a bunch of things. I really love the ones where we company, instead of doing advertisement, focus more on programs.
00:53:14
Speaker
There were all those nice gestures by companies by splitting their logos and inverting their logos and all that fancy stuff, which were great. But frankly, it was important only for the marketer to do it, not for the customer. But there were companies like Louis Vuitton, which converted their factories to actually create hand sanitizers. Then companies like Asian paints, which was my former employer.
00:53:40
Speaker
Literally overnight they started creating hand sanitizers and now they have this whole range of hand sanitizers as surface cleaners. They had no idea how to make it. They ramped up the knowledge, they made it. The companies like Pretmanger in US, which said, you know, all the frontline health workers, they will get meals and coffee free. I think those are the things which really attracted my attention. I felt that, you know, I wish I could do that.
00:54:07
Speaker
which inspired me to do some, we did something of that sort in our work also. But do I think it inspired me rather than just messaging. Okay. And the last question that I have is that, you know, if you were to, if I asked you to throw open a marketing challenge to the listeners of the podcast, let's see what I can come up with. What would that challenge be? Challenge as in like a business problem? Yes, marketing problem, business problem, whatever you want to call it.
00:54:34
Speaker
This is top of my mind right now, but how like create, I would say if they can create a marketing program to get people to start booking Airbnb's again.
00:54:49
Speaker
I think that is going to be an interesting and also economically important problem to solve. So if anyone wants to give it a shot and if they send it to Airbnb, if it works, I'm sure they'll get hired. So yeah, that's the thing for me.
00:55:08
Speaker
That's amazing, especially when they are like thinking about getting back to, you know, they're trying to file up for an IPO also. I don't know if you track them or not, but in the US, they're trying to file for an IPO. So let's see. In fact, yeah, it's been derailed a bit because of this, but they have a bigger problem, right? They're not a hotel chain. You have much more trust in a hotel chain, right? So you're going to like someone's house. So how do you ensure, you know, again, so it's a, it's a player challenge, but to crack that, it will be great.
00:55:33
Speaker
Got this. Amazing. So I think these are the questions I have. If there is any question that you think I should be asking you, I ask that question and we can include that. But more or less, this is what I have. Do you have anything else to sort of that I should have asking you? Yeah. In fact, I wanted to ask you a question. So I don't know if you want to retain this as part of your question. Please. Why you are doing this podcast and where do you see this podcast going?
00:55:58
Speaker
Okay, so what I also was trying to do along the side is that when we started this podcasting company, so marketing podcast is just one podcast that we do, we have some seven, eight other podcasts on air right now. And we are trying to create a podcasting network. So when we did this podcasting company, and we did research to understand what content will be available and will be useful to
00:56:20
Speaker
to our listeners. A lot of people said that, you know, a lot of people are stuck at middle management roles. I mean, look at yourself, right? 2007 batch of IMNO. I'm 2006 batch of MDI. So, out of 50 people that passed out in marketing from my batch, not more than two or three are now CMOs. Everybody else is struggling at a middle level marketing range, marketing sort of a role. Yeah, that jump is very difficult. Yeah, look at your batch mates, right? I don't know how many people are in the marketing cohort in your time, but
00:56:47
Speaker
But not more than 10% would be at the top of the hierarchy. So plotting gets stuck. And they said that, can we talk to the CMOs and understand KiR? How do I get a promotion? What do I do? What is it that I'm doing wrong? So we wanted to create a content piece that gave some gyan to these mid-level marketeers.
00:57:08
Speaker
not to people like me and you, but to people who are like five, six years out of B-School. So in fact, when we do a serious conversation around a business, like for example, I spoke to Vivek Sharma of Pidilite. So a lot of, and he was able to share content about how Pidilite goes about marketing. So a lot of questions to him were about...
00:57:30
Speaker
So those questions are not very useful to the listeners. So that's the serious on record answer that I give to my guests. I mean, a lot of guests ask me this question. That's one part of the question that you had. The second part that you had was, what is the vision with this podcast? So answer is, again, simple answer. We want to, and it's a audacious goal that we have. We want to become a better version of AFax, E4M,
00:58:00
Speaker
and so on and so forth. So we will become a marketing media and not just with this Marketing Connect, but every podcast that we're trying to create, the ambition is to create a publication or a media outlet for that niche. So this marketing niche that I'm talking about, there is a podcast on
00:58:17
Speaker
on entrepreneurship, there's a podcast on HR, there's a podcast on careers. So for each, we will evolve into a community of sorts wherein we'll do content and we'll do meetups. In fact, for marketing podcasts, we will do an event at the end of the year. I don't know when that will happen, but we will do a physical event whenever that happens to anyone or whatever. And in that event, we will do like a TED kind of an event wherein we'll do master classes, workshops, and probably take on a design yatra or a kansa.
00:58:46
Speaker
So, it's a long-term vision. This is very, very early days. In fact, you are the only guest to have asked me the vision for this business and I'm glad that I can articulate for you. So, that's a motor motor vision here. I don't know. So, thank you, Rohit. It was great having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for taking your time out. It took us a lot of time to coordinate for this, but I'm glad I could catch up with you. Great insights. Thank you so much.
00:59:14
Speaker
Thank you, Saurabh. It was really worth it and I look forward to be on this podcast sometime in future months. Thank you so much.