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Ep 9. Prasun Kumar, Magicbricks.com
161 Plays2 years ago
On this episode, we speak to Prasun Kumar about what it takes to market a business like Magicbricks.com where customers look for information and content online and then go visit the physical spaces to complete their journey!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
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. 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 the art and science of marketing. After all, we are a show for marketeers by marketeers. Listen in.
00:00:27
Speaker
Today's guest, ladies and gents, is Prasoon Kumar. He is the marketing lead at magicbricks.com. Let's join him as he talks to us about his long and illustrious career. And along the way, we'd ask him, what does he do at magicbricks.com on a daily basis? Listen in. Hi, everyone. This is Prasoon Kumar here. I am chief marketing officer at magicbricks.com presently and a career marketer. I look forward to sharing lots of interesting stories and tips with you. I hope it will be useful for all of you.
00:00:55
Speaker
Thank you Prasoon, we are so glad you could take out the time and give us your time and give us valuable inputs.
Career Beginnings and Advertising Journey
00:01:02
Speaker
The first question Prasoon that I have for every guest is if you can take us through your journey from the time you pass out of say a B school till the time where you are. So just take us in a chronological journey from that place from the time.
00:01:14
Speaker
Alright, quite an interesting and roller coaster journey I have had. I passed out from B-School in 1998 and I had two options in my hand. Either I could have joined a traditional FMCG organization in sales or I could have got into advertising.
00:01:37
Speaker
Now, when I was doing my MBA, advertising was something that had fascinated me to know. And this was something that I definitely wanted to try at least once in my life. And so I thought, why not start with itself? Let's jump into the river and learn to swim and figure out what this is all about and all the great stories over a period of time and during the MBA days that one had been hearing.
00:02:03
Speaker
all great case studies, the passion for building a brand and great advertising. All of that was so lucrative on my young mind and had left a massive imprint. I decided to jump into advertising.
00:02:22
Speaker
So I got into advertising and for the first eight years of my career, I was in advertising. Now, it has been quite interesting that every time I have made a progress or a progression in my career, I have been very, very fortunate to have been able to experience all sides of the spectrum.
00:02:43
Speaker
And so was the case in advertising as well. When I joined, it was just getting debundled as a full service agency. As a lot of my young friends may not know, but advertising in good old days was one single service provided by a company and creative media research and all other kinds of services that agencies used to provide was used to be provided under one roof.
00:03:12
Speaker
But then sometimes around early on mid-90s after liberalization had happened, the debundling of services started and advertising also started getting debundered. And media became a specialized function and we had independent media agencies which started operating. Creative remained a separate function and we had separate creative agencies. Some of the agencies branched out as direct marketing agencies, other specialized services.
Skills and Transition to Retail
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, so I was very very fortunate in the first eight years of my career I experienced you know all these different spectrums of that advertising had to offer.
00:03:51
Speaker
It was a very very good experience at McCann Erickson which was the world's one of the largest advertising conglomerate and at Madison which is India's largest communication company and worked on a variety of categories and brands very you know very very good experience on a lot of kick-ass brands you know worked on FMCG you know where I was working on Wreck-It Pink is a
00:04:18
Speaker
So I worked on brands like Datal and other brands that the kids had. I worked on Grazim, Gravira, General Motors, Gillette, fashion apparel brands, which was Madhura Garments at that point of time. And brands like Peter England, Louis Philip, Van Hoos and Ellen Solley and all.
00:04:37
Speaker
Very, very exciting days, lots of learning, all the fundamentals over there, how to think of a consumer, how to keep consumer at the center of everything that you do, how to develop a discipline and habit of looking at data and letting data drive your inputs and decisions and not one-night fancy thinking.
00:05:05
Speaker
Learn to put rigor into all the work that goes in. Learn to burn midnight candles over there. So advertising is really a place which, in a way, prepares you for any kind of challenge that might come in your way.
00:05:23
Speaker
It's such a high pressure environment that you operate in. You are always running against deadlines, always have last minute changes. You always have that last thing to look after and seem to it that a lot of things that you're doing is not going in wrong direction and everything has been tick marked and so on and so forth.
00:05:41
Speaker
So it really gives you an eye for detail. It really prepares you for managing the last minute deadlines. It prepares you to work in a very, very high pressure cooker environment. It prepares you to really be humble because being on the service side of the business, you are always at the mercy of your client. And you have to therefore be always prepared. You have to be nimble.
00:06:05
Speaker
to be able to take all kind of criticisms and point of views in your stride. At the same point of time, you have to have the quality of being able to put your thoughts across and to sell the product that you have in your hand. So it kind of prepares you, it makes you an all-rounder.
00:06:22
Speaker
And that's what I did to me. And very, very exciting day as McCann initially. And then I moved on to Madison. Madison was a full service media agency. So after seeing the servicing and other side of business, I got into pure play media. And at Madison, I worked on two big automobile accounts. One was Hyundai and second was General Motors.
00:06:45
Speaker
And then after Madison, I got opportunity to get onto the business side of things. And so I made a move. I joined Levi's. Levi's is the world's leading denim brand, as all of you might be knowing. I joined Levi Strauss in Bangalore. And a very, very exciting journey was there. Levi's as a company was going through transformation. And it was trying to change his skin for being a product company to a retail company.
00:07:15
Speaker
It wanted to move away from just being a supplier of denims to large retailers, to becoming a retailer by itself. And so the time that I spent at Levi's was full of exciting store opening. We opened close to about 200 odd stores in a very, very short period of time, and driving footfalls to those stores, looking at consumers' upright clothes, seeing to it how product assortments are working, and what are the things that are coming.
00:07:44
Speaker
is getting attracted to and so on and so forth. So a lot of exciting things done at Levi's. Levi's is also, as all of you know, is a sexy brand to work on. You know, purely from a brand market point of view, that was a kick because you could do a lot of edgy stuff.
00:08:02
Speaker
and targeting youth. And so, you know, very, very interesting thing. Now, Levi's was a great journey. At that point of time, obviously, telecom was booming in India.
Digital Marketing and MTS Experience
00:08:12
Speaker
Those were the good old days of, you know, telecom, you know, service expansion and, you know, mega budget marketing and advertising and everything else in telecom.
00:08:24
Speaker
and we had lots of new players entering the market and India was becoming one of the most hotly contested telecom market in the world. And telecom also provided one thing that I had missed till then in my career, which was ability to manage scale of operations. And that was one of the biggest draw for me to get into telecom after that.
00:08:47
Speaker
And I got into MTS and that was a double sort of benefit for me because not only I was looking at managing scale and building scale, I had joined a greenfield operation. So MTS, you know, whose parent company was Sistema. Sistema had entered Indian market in partnership with Sham Telecom in India.
00:09:11
Speaker
And there was a time when lots of operators had entered, including Eti Salat and Telenor and all those kind of things. And the job was to launch the brand in India. Here I was getting an opportunity after 10 odd years in my career to actually work from scratch, build a brand and launch it. And for any marketeer, that's a never to be missed opportunity.
00:09:37
Speaker
I was very, very lucky to have got that opportunity. When I joined that company, I was about seventh or eighth employee to join that company. And when I left that company, we were about 5,000 strong. And we had launched our services in about 15 circles or a state of India. And we had more than 10 million consumers.
00:10:00
Speaker
So MTS was a complete transformation for me as a professional. It gave me an ability to look at business very, very up close. At MTS as a marketeer, right from designing the first visiting card of the CEO of the company, scaling it up and making it a pan-india operator, launching multiple million dollar campaigns and everything, I was at the helm of all of it.
00:10:27
Speaker
And so it was a good one. Sorry, I'm just interrupting you. That's a good one. You know, from designing a visiting card to actually launching a multi-million dollar campaign. So that's a very, you know, wide, you know, range of work you've done at MTS, obviously. So that's really cool.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yes, I was lucky enough there and it was transformative for me because I was not boxed for a moment. When you are advertising, you are looking at business from a certain perspective and communication is what is in your mind and consumers and brands are what is in your mind.
00:11:00
Speaker
you're not bothered about, you know, you're not really looking deep into other aspects of business. Otherwise, I did have that opportunity. But you know, my my area of operation was slightly different. And so I had limited exposure. But at MTS, I looked at everything very, very closely and very, very minutely.
00:11:17
Speaker
And, you know, at one point of time, you know, telecom operators used to have these stores for recharges and all is this hotel has a store and geo stores and etc. Yeah, at one point of time, you know, those stores that MTS was opening was also under me as a business unit. And I, you know, my retail experience as Levi at Levi's had come in handy, was designing and, you know, operating those stores.
00:11:41
Speaker
And through a very, very diversified experience at MTS, I built the, you know, I got my real digital transformation at MTS. Because those were the days it was, you know, early 2007, 2008, 2008 onwards. You know, those were the days when internet was just about kind of taking off in India. Those were the days of not Facebook, but those were the days of Orkut.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah and I don't know how many of my young friends would know Orkut but it was the first social networking platform that had come in our life. And so in those days I got the exposure and opportunity to build a website. So the OTS website was completely built by me from scratch and huge amount of learning there because that was a new thing for me.
00:12:28
Speaker
To learn and and you know did that got into social media marketing big time over there You know kick started a lot of stuff You know got into payment gateway integrations and whole lot of other stuff, you know when it comes to digital so and gave me scale MTS gave me a greenfield, you know work experience MTS gave me my first career brand launch experience and
00:12:53
Speaker
MTS gave me my first digital learning experience. So I had lots of first at MTS. So that was enriching. So, you know, as I told you in the beginning,
00:13:08
Speaker
I have been lucky enough to get all sides of experiences, whichever industry I've gotten to. And same thing happened to me with telecom as well. I got into telecom, you know, telecom typically has two sides of business. One is the operator or service provider side.
00:13:24
Speaker
That is the equipment manufacturer or the device or the OEM site. There are a lot of smartphone brands and smartphone players operate. Now I got an opportunity to get on to the other, see
Sony and Reliance Challenges
00:13:38
Speaker
the other side of the business.
00:13:39
Speaker
And MTS was a CDMA operation. The telecom operators are of two types, GSM service providers and CDMA service providers. These are different distinct technology platforms. Now, CDMA is a technology platform used to have a concept called bundled handset, right? So you are not going to be buying a SIM or a SIM connection used to buy the entire package, including a handset.
00:14:01
Speaker
Okay. Now, so that was happening in MTS, though it was not directly under my preview, but I had an indirect experience of that. I moved on to a smartphone brand from MTS, and I joined Sony. When I joined, it was a joint venture between Sony and Ericsson, and we used to sell as Sony Ericsson.
00:14:27
Speaker
The Sony Ericsson phones in the feature phone era, before smartphones had happened, was the number two brand in the country after Nokia. It was a large brand, but by the time I had joined it, there was this wave of smartphones that had entered, and Samsung had already launched its Galaxy series of smartphones and all those kinds of things. And when I joined Sony Ericsson, I joined with a mandate of launching and building the smartphone business.
00:14:57
Speaker
And so I'll join Sony and I launched the Xperia range of smartphones in India.
00:15:03
Speaker
Wow. And this was my second launch experience and Sony Xperia business was launched. We launched that brand and we launched many handset propositions, many smartphone propositions under that. And Sony was also a very enriching experience because again, there was a first in my career that I experienced, which was M&A, which was mergers and acquisitions.
00:15:28
Speaker
Now, Ericsson decided to sell its part of the stake to Sony, and we became 100% subsidiary of Sony. And Sony already had a different business in the operating, which was Sony Electronics, selling the Bravia television and the laptops and everything else.
00:15:49
Speaker
So our division was to merge with Sony and we went through that in that process. So as a business professional, I got that learning of seeing up close and front a merger and acquisition activity and what goes on and how it happens and so on and so forth. So that was a very, very enriching experience again.
00:16:10
Speaker
Now, after merger, you know, Sony had a kind of a change in the strategy. And the focus was in a way shifting away from emerging markets like India to more established market like Europe and US and all, with more margins and all. So globally, there was a shift. And so I decided to, you know, join, go get back onto the operator side of the business. And that's when reliance happened.
00:16:37
Speaker
And Reliance Communication was the third largest operator in the country, with more than 100 million subscribers. And I joined Reliance as CMO back around 2012. And Reliance was, again,
00:16:58
Speaker
a bit of a roller coaster ride because while this was a very very strong brand and the brand had all the scale and you know huge top lines going for it, it was facing severe challenges in the market because Airtel Vodafone and Idea were stealing a lot of market share away because Reliance was little late in getting onto GSM as a platform and India as a country had moved to GSM as technology and Reliance was a CDMA technology provider initiative.
00:17:28
Speaker
when launched initially by Dhirubhai during Dhirubhai Ambani days as Reliance. And because the brand was late, we had several challenges in terms of keeping up with competition and that was really the challenge up there. So I had some interesting roller coaster ride over there, some good, some bad, some memorable, some not so memorable.
00:17:55
Speaker
And so that's how the Reliance story continued. So when it was going on, I was already looking beyond telecom because telecom in India had started to struggle in a way. We had a lot of controversy related to the 2G.
00:18:14
Speaker
a wavelength allocation that had happened from that point of time and Supreme Court had decided to cancel all the licenses for a lot of players who had come in new in India and all. So there was an absolute chaos and difficult times that the industry was going through.
00:18:34
Speaker
and you know internet was emerging as a sunshine industry because of you know the increasing internet penetration and also a lot of smartphone adoption.
Magicbricks Role and Industry Insights
00:18:46
Speaker
I decided to look at you know internet as my next destination to become interesting work and that's when I hit upon magic tricks.
00:18:57
Speaker
And magic mix was an extremely exciting opportunity because real estate, you know, not a lot of people know real estate and construction contributes to about 7% of India's GDP. And it's a massive industry. And it is one of the largest employers of informal labor.
00:19:14
Speaker
And just aggregating this industry, structuring this industry, bringing all elements together onto a platform was a massive task. And Magnaprix had been one of the pioneers.
00:19:31
Speaker
in the industry and it was the leading aggregator of demand and supply in real estate and you know there was you know much growth in front you know for the industry. So Magicbix had an opportunity was an absolute again kick-ass opportunity coming my way and so I'm here it's been four years with Magicbix now and done some very very exciting work
00:19:57
Speaker
So as you see, my career has moved from being a service provider to being a service seeker, from advertising on to the client side. And whenever I have been doing things, I have been lucky enough to get opportunity to see all sides of businesses and do IT of things. So all these things have enriched my experiences, did a lot of things. And during the course of the discussion today, I'll be happy to share some lovely examples from there.
00:20:24
Speaker
Wow. So what a journey. I mean, I have like some 20 questions from this journey itself, which are not plan of my, you know, which I didn't plan to ask. I'm going to ask a couple of questions, which I'm super curious about. So from your MTS days, I mean, you know, the logo and the design language of MTS was super unconventional, right? Everybody went for flashy, large, you know, deep, meaningful things. And from what I recall, MTS was just I think a bite
00:20:51
Speaker
oval shape in a red box, if I'm not right about this? Absolutely, your memory is serving you absolutely right. I think it's the age, I think it's the age because I saw those stores next to my place as well. So how did that decision, you know, came out? Because that looks very, very inter-dimensional, right? I mean, nobody will even sign up for that. How did you sign up for that? What was the thought process?
00:21:14
Speaker
So, you know, lots of stories there, you know, for want of time, I probably would share a few. MTS was a very, very unique challenge because, you know, while it was a greenfield operation in India, it was already the largest network of Estwhile Russia and CSS, CIS countries and Eastern European countries.
00:21:38
Speaker
So when it came to India, it already was a big service or telecom operator in that part of the world. And it already had its own identity, including logo units and color schemes and everything else. But when it came to India, it came to India as a 14th player to enter that market.
00:22:03
Speaker
And one of the first challenges that I had to think about was the brand personality was of a leader because the leader in the market that was operating and you are entering as a challenger. How do you make a balance between the two? Those who understand brand and brand marketing, the brand architecture and architecture
00:22:28
Speaker
So people who understand brand marketing and branding concepts, archetype model of building a brand, such that if you have a certain archetype as a leader, that archetype is kind of rigidly defined. And your personality has not changed as a brand. And you remain within that personality.
00:22:52
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So there was a, there was a leader archetype personality that the brand had in the market that it was operating in. How do you launch that in India? Because we had the big baddies of Airtel Vodai's ideas of the world again and so on and so forth. Right. And so you couldn't behave like a leader because you are not a leader. Okay. Now that was the first major work I had to do.
00:23:16
Speaker
I had to redefine the entire brand architecture. I had to redefine the brand tonality. I had to work on a lot of things. I put that logo, you mentioned about that logo. There's a very interesting story up there. That logo, as you know, was a red box. And instead of the red box, there was an oval shape, white shape, oval shape. And I put that logo to consumer testing in India. And while there were not too many gross negatives against that,
00:23:45
Speaker
Interesting thing that are coming out is lot of consumers, especially in some part of the country, objected to that logo, saying that this is looking like an egg.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, we are a vegetarian country. This will never be accepted. And there was a box around it, so that could be non-vegetarian, big egg. Yeah, so lots of interesting anecdotes there. And huge amount of debates used to happen internally. Is that the unit that one is to go ahead with or should we craft something else? In fact, we actually designed a lot of other variations.
00:24:22
Speaker
We put all of that to consumer testing. But the funny thing is, I am from that generation when we had these 14-15 players. I mean, I remember every real estate company would suddenly go buy the license and create a telecom operator of their own.
00:24:38
Speaker
I mean, those were the days. Now, I do not recall a single logo, I mean, apart from Airtel would have gone, you know, the big ones. I don't recall any other logo, but that, you know, red box, because, because that's so distinct. And so, you know, how do I clean this? Like, it just sticks, man. Like, it was, it was a super attempt. I do not know what it did to the brand. You absolutely got that. That was the reason, Saurabh, that it was actually launched.
00:25:04
Speaker
We ultimately figured out that the logo was so distinctive and it was unlike anything else in the market. If you wanted to really and for a 14th player in a cluttered environment.
00:25:19
Speaker
The last thing and being a red color brand where you already had a red color brand. The last thing you would have wanted is to look like them and not to have your own distinct memorable structures. And that was one of the major reasons why I decided to launch that logo. So that's the story behind that logo that you asked.
00:25:44
Speaker
So a lot of my listeners, Prasoon, are people who are about middle level managers in the marketing roles. And they often wonder that, what do I do so that tomorrow in three, four, five, 10 years that I become a CMO? So if you were to give some dope or some insights to those people, what would be those few things that you think you did differently to have reached a CMO level?
Career Advice for Aspiring CMOs
00:26:11
Speaker
Well, that's a very good question, Saurabh. I'll try to answer this question by giving you a few examples from my own career. Absolutely. Listen, when I was in MTS, I was about 10 years in my career. And I was at that mid-senior level, and very, very eager to make my strides into senior management and grow. Now, one of the things that I obviously learned and would want to share with your listeners
00:26:41
Speaker
is one thing that you must learn as you grow into a senior role is to look at your business, your output, your function, your strengths, your talent in a very dispassionate way. Because what happens is when you're growing up in your career, you are likely becoming a function specialist.
00:27:04
Speaker
But as you grow further, your demand is to grow from being a specialist to a generalist. And you want to look at multiple other aspects of business as such as well. And at the very least, you've got to appreciate other aspects of business as well.
00:27:19
Speaker
And this is one of the first things that you need to be learning. You need to become dispassionate about your own function, your own inputs, per se. And for example, at MTS, when I was launching it, spending about $2-3 million every month, $10 million worth of marketing money every month in launching the brand and so on and so forth.
00:27:48
Speaker
After about an year of doing all that activity, a year and a half of doing all that activity, one moved into a stability phase. And that's where a lot of maturity needed to seep in.
00:28:03
Speaker
So when you are launching, you are in a different mode. You are always operating on the fifth gear. You are always in an action mode. Almost most of the times you are acting before thinking. You become a go-getter professional.
00:28:20
Speaker
But when you get into the stabilizing part of the business, when you have to manage a running business and grow from there, challenges of businesses are very very different. And the success that it demands from you as a professional is very important. So when you are moving from a mid-senior to a senior profile,
00:28:39
Speaker
This is one of the things that will come your way where you will have to change your skin and you will have to become far more steady in terms of your business thinking, in terms of your contribution, in terms of how you see things because your outlook needs to become little more long term.
00:28:58
Speaker
And your outlook needs to become a little more outside in than inside out. Some of the changes that one experiences as one grows up in career, and this is one of the things that probably a lot of my friends would also experience as they move up the ladder, and they'll have to manage.
00:29:19
Speaker
Amazing. So I'll now move to the parts where I talk about magic bricks per se, right? Because there's a lot to cover there as well, I presume. So the first question is obviously what is a typical day in the life of a CMO at Magic Bricks? Talk to me about from the time you wake up till the time you go back to sleep, how does your day look
Daily Life as a CMO
00:29:39
Speaker
like? What are your team meetings?
00:29:42
Speaker
Who do you fight with? What other departments within MagicBricks do you talk to? For example, do you talk to the dev team? Do you talk to the sales team? So talk to me on a typical day at MagicBricks for a CM. Sure. See, internet business has very different demands and internet as a business is in perpetual acquisition mode.
00:30:02
Speaker
And so the first thing and the last thing that you worry about is consumer acquisition for the day. And this is true for all internet businesses almost. And I think this is no different. So my day starts early morning and after a bit of freshening up and exercising a bit, it's all about getting ready for work.
00:30:27
Speaker
you know in pre-covid days it was all about getting ready to go to office. Right now it's all about getting ready to you know get into your home office and sit in front of your laptop. Unless unless you are mandated at home to you know do the kitchen and you know do the dishes. I'm not covering that part right now because that really include the professional services that I provide otherwise. That's part of everyone's life right now.
00:30:52
Speaker
So you do get ready for that. And we have a team hustle that happens over video call at 9.30 in the morning. And we spend about 45 minutes to an hour discussing about the challenges in front of us on the table and what are the things that are lined up for that particular day.
00:31:18
Speaker
and how is one going to go about it, if there are any challenges that need to be mitigated for that day, what does one do, work on that and so on and so forth. And we kind of sitting in our own homes, all my team members, we all motivate each other.
00:31:34
Speaker
And we started out there in that fashion. And then it is about senior level leadership management reviews, Apple, where we look at the business from the very top and look at how to build or rebuild business and what aspect to look at and where to intervene and what needs to be done.
00:31:59
Speaker
And then it's all about individual projects and sub-functions. There are requirements. There is a video hustle that immediately happens, or through WhatsApp, or through phone, whichever means of communication one is using at any point of time.
00:32:17
Speaker
So a whole of the day gets structured in various kinds of meetings, meetings for different projects, meetings for within the team for different sets of challenges or different sets of work that people are working on. And almost the entire day kind of passes in this fashion. And we again have an evening hassle.
00:32:44
Speaker
for about half an hour. In the evening at about six o'clock we all come together but we do not discuss business.
00:32:52
Speaker
We only discuss the fun aspects of life. We discuss things in general, what's happening with COVID, what's happening with the lockdown, and what's going to happen, who's doing what, and so on and so forth. So we kind of tend to discuss trivialities and relax each other. And prepare ourselves for catching up again next day.
00:33:19
Speaker
During the day also one of the important aspects of the day is to go through various MISs. It's very very important to keep a track of progress. During these times especially when you are unable to meet people one-to-one.
00:33:34
Speaker
So it's very important to have strong MISs in place so that you have a clear view of what's happening on a project or in a business. And that also occupies a lot of time. As marketing remains at the center of the business, so we almost align with all teams, including product, technology, or sales, if there's a requirement for support functions to be aligned with, which includes HR or finance, and so on and so forth.
00:34:03
Speaker
So we almost on a daily basis align with all these teams and because we work, we have a very startup culture and a very startup value system and so we work on a very project-project basis.
00:34:22
Speaker
So there are a lot of projects that go around in the company and each project has cross-functional teams to interact with lots of teams, you know, during the day for different projects. And that's how, you know, the day goes by. Amazing. So now that we've jumped onto COVID directly, I want to talk quickly and understand the recent campaign that you've done,
Notable Marketing Campaigns
00:34:44
Speaker
right? I mean, Ghar Baid Ke Ghar Dheka and Ghar Baid Ghar Parekar Ghar Dheka.
00:34:49
Speaker
So just tell me, how did that campaign came about? And especially in the time when you can't shoot a film, when you can't talk to people, when you can't do a lot of things. How did this campaign come about? What were the thought process? And how did you execute it? Sure. This is extremely exciting to share. The challenges of lockdown and the resulting business challenges that everyone is going through.
00:35:15
Speaker
Makes it imperative for brands to really rethink their strategy.
00:35:22
Speaker
And we are obviously not untouched by it. And we also have to rethink a whole lot of initiatives or a whole lot of ways of doing things. So I would say that this crisis has forced all of us as professionals to reset a lot of buttons.
00:35:46
Speaker
and to reimagine a lot of things. The way of working, which otherwise would have been a standard operating procedure and a certain way of doing a thing. Now, everything is up for the view. And everything has to be looked at because you're forced to really look at it. And that is, while it's a challenge, there are a lot of hidden opportunities there. And if you really come to think of it, and if you really are very, very solution-oriented,
00:36:16
Speaker
You would, you know, while the problems are there, but you would not end up just, you know, kind of getting bogged down by the problem or keep living about the problem, but you try to find a solution.
00:36:26
Speaker
okay and that's always been our approach and that's one part of the story. The second part of the story is that magic mix is the leading brand in the category and therefore in lot many ways it is our responsibility to build the category.
00:36:46
Speaker
Right. And so, you know, you know, it's a kind of a responsibility to take the lead in the category and, you know, and do a lot of things which are, you know, kind of first in the category. And, you know, that's also a mindset that we as marketing team work with in magic. And so that was the second part of the story. Now, the third part of the story is looking at, you know, the first two things, you know, it was imperative that we did not want to sit idle.
00:37:17
Speaker
and let the crisis play out the way it plays out. While we know we did a lot of consumer dipsticks in the period, forced to sit at our home, we reached out to our consumer base, we asked them what is happening, are you still in the market, are you still looking at purchasing a home, are you postponing your decision, what is happening, what is it that you're looking for, and so on and so forth. So the first thing that we did is understand the consumer mindset really well.
00:37:44
Speaker
Where does the humor stand? And therefore, as a leading brand, the next obvious step for us was to take some meaningful steps. And one of the things that we definitely wanted to do was not to sit idle. We wanted to take the crisis head on. And in order to reach out to consumers, because two-thirds of the consumers told us in our research that, listen, we are still in the market. We still want to buy a home.
00:38:09
Speaker
Okay. Again, you know, I mean, COVID may have pushed our decision by three months or six months, but we will still be buying homes. Okay. We are not moving out of the category and we are not, you know, canceling our decision. No problem. Now, that gives us a lot of heart. And, you know, we said, we find if consumers are so positive, as a brand, we have to be doubly positive. Okay. And we decided to, therefore, reach out to consumers.
00:38:37
Speaker
proactive and not really wait for a revival signal to happen to us or, you know, lockdown to get over and get back into offices and businesses, then try to do something and so on and so forth. We said, okay, so what if you are in a lockdown? The job is to, you know, leading brands in difficult times, handhold consumers. They show the way to the consumer, the real, the correct way to consumers and what we should be doing.
00:39:01
Speaker
And so we decided to do multiple brand interventions. But the challenge in front of us, obviously, was that we did not have a production budget to say so. Because of the devices, everything was reset. We were working on a zero-based budgeting. And so we said, finally, if we don't have money, what do we do?
00:39:24
Speaker
Right? And we were ideating. And then one fine day, we just were sharing our experiences. As I told you, every day in the evening, we share our experiences. And we were just sharing our experiences. It just came about, at least in sitting at home.
00:39:39
Speaker
We all are unable to now observe our home very, very, you know, kind of upfront and deeply. We all are feeling that, listen, I mean, you know, you also have to work from home, your children, if you have children, your children have to do their schooling from home, you know, there are E classes happening and so on and so forth. So, you know, there's a lot of pressure on this small space. Okay. And the home was not really designed for all these activities.
00:40:07
Speaker
And so you have to really retune your home at this point of time to make one corner of your home become an office for you, to make the other corner of home become a schooling place for your kid, where the kid can get into e-learning and so on and so forth. All these things require separate spaces.
00:40:26
Speaker
And then you have your regular things at home. Some of us have parents at home. Some of us have, you know, larger families and so on and so forth. And so it's rather difficult, you know, to manage a lot of these things sitting at home. And so all of us have felt that, listen, I wish I had that one extra room that I couldn't have converted or I wish I had a bigger balcony.
00:40:45
Speaker
I could have exercised and I could have taken my daily dose of oxygen there. I wish I had a third room or a larger kitchen, for example, because there's a lot of pressure on kitchens right now.
00:41:02
Speaker
Everyone sitting at home, the demand for food and the demand for kitchen to be open is almost perpetual right now, 24-7 times. It was not the case. People used to go out, kids to school, people to offices, and kitchen used to relax for some time.
00:41:17
Speaker
The kitchen cannot relax in a way. So all of us have gone through that experience and are thinking these things. We said, this is something which is a consumer truth. And it is an experience that everyone is going through in life right now. If we as an internet brand or a property brand has to intervene, how beautiful this story could be. And this is extremely contextual. This is something everyone can relate with.
00:41:45
Speaker
This is something that brand can take on as an additive. We are short consumers. But listen, there are good days which are going to come. And as and when you are ready, we as magic bricks are there to help you find that perfect home that we'll be looking at in future.
00:42:00
Speaker
That was the genesis of this and with this idea we went forward, with this insight we went forward. The next challenge obviously was to give it a shape and produce it with no production budget. The thing that obviously one had to look at was to crowdsource it somehow. We reached out to our partners, our creative agencies, our digital agencies, our other partners and so on and so forth.
00:42:23
Speaker
you know, production houses and you know, people that you are working with over a period of time. Listen, this is an idea we have, but we don't have money, okay? But we do think this is a very, very good intervention in consumer space to be done right now.
00:42:38
Speaker
to be kind enough to contribute to it on a voluntary basis. And I am glad to share that all partner without blinking their eyelid. Yes, we will do it. And yes, we will do it. I think that the power of an idea, right? If the idea is such a strong proposition, then everybody wants to be on that, take that ride along. Absolutely. It was part of the idea and everyone wanted to contribute to this.
00:43:02
Speaker
And that's how it happened, so it crowd-sourced it. The images that you see in that film, they have been crowd-sourced from about 15 different places, including US and Dubai. And this is all friends and family and relatives of our employees or our partners and their employees and so on and so on. So all of this was reached out to all our network and said, can you just capture yourself a candid moment of your day in life, a day of your life today, at home?
00:43:32
Speaker
Send it to us.
00:43:33
Speaker
We had multiple entries. We selected a few that we thought were appropriate for the narrative. It was a powerful narrative written by one of our copywriters in our agency. The voiceover that you hear there was contributed by one of the partners that we regularly work with. And he brought regular voiceover services to us. And the video editing, et cetera, was done all sitting at home, production house that we have.
00:44:02
Speaker
over a period I worked with. And so everyone sat sitting at their home, kind of got suited to it. Technology was of great help in having everything together. And so you have the film in your hand. Got this. Amazing. So the other thing, continue with the question, right? This brings me to two questions. I do not know which one do we want to take first, but I want to answer both.
Innovation and Lessons Learned
00:44:24
Speaker
So one is, if I was doing the research on magic bricks, per se, right? And I realised, you know,
00:44:30
Speaker
piece after piece after piece that comes from magic bricks is innovative. We can use the word innovative in communication and marketing. Everything seems to be a new or an industry first per se. So I want to understand what is the process behind it. I understand that your team does huddles and they throw ideas at each other and you try to look at inspiration. But is there a process, is there a method to the madness with which you keep creating these innovations over and over again?
00:44:59
Speaker
So that's first question. And second question is, you know, I really want to know about something that failed for you guys, right? I mean, I don't see, I mean, I was doing a research and I could not find a, you know, a failure from magic bricks team. I mean, there has to be a, you know, you can't be
00:45:19
Speaker
Gods, right? You have to make mistakes. So yeah. Yes. No, we have had failures. Yes, of course. So whatever you want to take up, whichever you want. I'll take the failure first, right? Because I'm quite proud of all the failures that I have had. So I'll give a very, very interesting stuff that we are doing which failed. About three years ago, we decided to get into an offline mode. Now we are an online brand. We decided to get into offline mode.
00:45:48
Speaker
Okay? And, you know, we were looking at consumers very, very closely. And, you know, we saw that one of the pain points that consumers had in the industry, in this category, when you are looking for a home or a property, you have to do a lot of site visits, okay? One from one, you know, project to another project to another project, and you're looking at sample flats, or you're looking at other stuff, you know, this is an essential part of your home buying process.
00:46:17
Speaker
or a PR process. And often you have to devote your weekends because during weekdays you will not get time. So often you are devoting all your side days and fun days and visiting different, different places if you are a serious buyer and trying to take a decision. In part, can we use technology to ease it out a bit for our consumers, to make it easier for them so that they do not have to do so much of running around?
00:46:41
Speaker
OK, got it. And so we said, why don't we launch a concept called magic books experience centers?
00:46:48
Speaker
And these experience centers would use innovative technology, futuristic technology, like virtual reality, augmented reality, and hologram projections and so on and so forth. It will give a consumer a chance to experience a project without visiting the project. And so it will give consumers a chance to really shorten the list and do a site visit only when they are very, very sure that this is what they were looking for.
00:47:16
Speaker
and not do blindside visits. And we thought we had hit upon a very good problem statement there and a very good solution for that problem statement. We also analyzed this entire idea from the customer side, the people who are going to pay for this idea. And we said, we reached out to developers. And we said, you as a developer are completely dependent on the footfalls that are coming on your site.
00:47:41
Speaker
Okay, on that site visit and you're trying to convert a certain percentage of that footfall into actual sales for yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. But a footfall can only be limited. Okay. Yeah. Your funnel is very small there. And especially if the project is at a little distance, then who to go to, you know, where to buy a property 100 kilometers from, you know, where I live. I'd probably not go. Correct. And so we said that, listen, you can just increase the top end of the funnel and get so many more people to experience a project.
00:48:09
Speaker
We just use technology and not force them to come to your site. And so we are opening this magic experience centers. Why don't you invest in making those virtual graduate tours or those stuff for your project. And we will put it up there.
00:48:27
Speaker
You know, you reach out to many more consumers, okay? Those, you know, in whose consideration set you are not even part of, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought that we had, we had full-proofed this idea, okay? And so with a lot of these things, we launched these experience centers.
00:48:44
Speaker
And we launched this in high-footfall areas. So we launched this at airports, we launched this at malls, you know, and multiplexes. And high-footfall, I think, these are expensive. They are inexpensive. These are expensive ideas, yes. And that was one of the reasons why it didn't work out eventually. Now, you know, so we said we have to get into a captured, you know, captive environment. Consumers are already there because you cannot make a consumer-county experience center.
00:49:11
Speaker
to experience a project, a consumer would do that if he has free time in hand and the technology is in front of him. So the objective was to take the technology to the consumer rather than make the consumer come to the technology. And so we opened this in these high-footfall areas. We said that, listen, if you are in airport and you are just killing time, you have 30 minutes to board or one hour to board yet, you could just walk into experience center and experience all of this.
00:49:34
Speaker
Or you are in a mall and typically the male audiences, which is the largest set of audiences in real estate, you are not very interested in shopping and window shopping. And so you are looking for venues to pass your time.
00:49:49
Speaker
whereas other members of your family or your better half is engaged in shopping or window shopping per se. And plus, I think at these high football areas, anyways, the TG that a builder wants to reach out to is the right TG for them, right? I know somebody from the airport had enough money to sort of... Absolutely. And we selected these real estate very, very carefully.
00:50:11
Speaker
And so we said, you know, this is a very good proposition and let's just launch it. And so we launched it. And, you know, initially we got some, you know, very good responses because there was a novelty factor. There was a curiosity around what this experience center all about. And there was a lot of technology gizmo and zing-bang inside it. So people are very curious to come and experience and virtual reality, you know, is something that not too many Indians have experienced per se.
00:50:35
Speaker
And so you have to sit down and put up that VR headset and do that VR tour, etc. It's a novel experience. And so initially the response was very good, but then it papered off. And we figured out that it was not really adding a value to the consumer. The movement told us later that, listen, it was a very good experience.
00:50:56
Speaker
to see these projects and so on and so forth. So it's not that it is not useful, but it did not eliminate my need to do a site visit. By investing a crore of rupees, I would really want to be doubly sure and I would still want to do that site visit.
00:51:10
Speaker
It might appear a pain to you. For me, it's a necessity. I would not be doing it. So that's the reason why we failed. And so that was the experience of failure at Magic Bricks. But very proud of that failure because the product that we had created was KICAS.
00:51:27
Speaker
Got it. And we do believe that with enough tinkering and a future with a different proposition, we are able to bring that product back. Got it. Now, yeah, so. I'm trying to ask a question. I'm so sorry. I've been trying to interrupt you for last. Not at all. So tell me, is it because technology was very new? Because VR was still expensive and clunky about three years ago. Now, obviously, we have come to a point where VR is far, far immersive.
00:51:54
Speaker
Is it because you were ahead of the time? Is it generally customers said that they still want to go and visit the house? Like you said, it's a necessity. Well, see, one thing I have learned in life is there's nothing called being ahead of time.
00:52:06
Speaker
If you are solving a real problem for a real consumer and you are providing a real solution to a consumer, you will have that concern. It doesn't matter whether technology is futuristic or backdated. I think we failed because we were not solving a real problem. I think we had hit upon a wrong problem.
00:52:26
Speaker
Got it. So the first question that you had asked was about innovations. Another thing we take pride at MagicBix is for our innovation and our innovative DNA. We are always perpetually encouraged to innovate and fail.
00:52:47
Speaker
And, you know, the Experience Center example that I shared with you was also an example of innovation. And we noted and we failed. But there are many innovations when we have succeeded. And we do keep doing these innovations and, you know, new things in our scheme of things. Now, where does it happen? You asked me, is there a method to this madness?
00:53:10
Speaker
Yes, there is a method. At Magic Bix, I had launched a marketing philosophy about four years ago when I had joined, what I call as heartbeat marketing. And heartbeat marketing is nothing but looking at a sharp consumer problem, providing a real solution to a consumer.
00:53:41
Speaker
narrating in a very warm storytelling manner and use a lot of data science to get your narrative right. Now we follow this method whenever we are ideating. We always look at whether we are trying to solve a real consumer problem.
00:54:01
Speaker
Whether we have an exciting and foolproof solution in our hand, that's the first part of it. The second part of it is to, then we look at a lot of data, a lot of insights coming out of data, and we try to idiot-proof and foolproof our concepts using data.
00:54:21
Speaker
Sometimes it's secondary data, sometimes it's conducting consumer research to collect primary data and so on and so forth. Because we are a platform and a very popular app, as it is captured consumer behavior through zillions of data points every day. We sit on a huge pile of data and we have a very strong data analytics team which shares or validates or revalidates a lot of hypothesis that we have.
00:54:46
Speaker
Then we get into the final leg, which is converting the proposition into a warm storytelling narrative. And there, a lot of brand elements come into play, which is to really have that consumer truth, to really have that empathy, enough amount of empathy for consumer in your narrative.
00:55:11
Speaker
have that emotive angle in the narrative and to have an execution which really touches your heart. So if you have seen, if you analyze our communication historically, if we have campaigns, our campaigns have always told a warm narrative to consider.
00:55:29
Speaker
I've never been very product, first kind of communication company. Never said, listen, come to my site and do this and you can sell your property and you can buy your property. Of course, that's part of the narrative. But our story is not about that. Our story is always about a consumer. It's always about you and me. It will appear to you as if it's your story.
00:55:51
Speaker
Just before this particular film that we had just discussed about a little while ago that during COVID we had lost now a much award-winning campaign and we had for the first time engaged with celebrities and we had brought on both Aishmaan Khurana and Kriti Sanam.
00:56:11
Speaker
And through them, we have narrated the story of how changing an address can change your life. Okay. Whether it's upgrading, whether it's moving from a rental accommodation to a owned accommodation, you know, whether it's moving from a small town to a big town and getting the PG accommodation. Wherever, whichever leg of business you look at, there are warm stories because, you know, we do not experience walls and cements.
00:56:36
Speaker
We experience the stories, we experience life in those four walls. And we as a brand always try to tell that story of a life within that four wall and not about that four wall. You know, that four walls, those four walls just kind of are setting of the story. Our stories are set inside a home or around a home. But the stories are very real. They are very warm. They are the stories that you would relate to.
00:56:58
Speaker
Right? And that is how, over a period of time, we have become a very, very relatable brand. And we get a lot of preference as a brand when it comes to brand tracks and a couple of other consumers that we capture.
00:57:17
Speaker
And so there is obviously a method to this entire thing that we do. It's extremely structured. It goes through its own steps and processes. But the method is developed to ensure that the final product that we have in our hand is something that stays true to that concept of heartbeat marketing.
00:57:37
Speaker
So next question, it's a tough question.
Leadership Qualities and Storytelling in Marketing
00:57:40
Speaker
A lot of other guests tend to fumble at it. Imagine I told you that this is going to be your last week at Magic Bricks and you have been tasked by the
00:57:51
Speaker
the management to find the replacement for you. And you need to find I mean, you can find somebody from your team, or you can get somebody outside. The question essentially is that, you know, what kind of questions would you ask that person? What qualities would you look at in him or her? And what kind of
00:58:09
Speaker
What would make you decide on a certain person to replace you at magic? I would try not to fumble. So the first quality I would look at in the person is whether the person is an ideas person.
00:58:24
Speaker
In our business, it's very important to constantly ideate solutions for a consumer, and constantly ideate and improve the experiences of consumers on our platforms, on our website, on our app, et cetera, and so on and so forth. First of all, you have to be an ideas person, and that's a very rare quality. The second thing is you have to have a flair for technology.
00:58:50
Speaker
We are a technology brand and we are a technology business and every solution that we provide is through using technology in one way or another. And so you have to have a flair for technology and you should be comfortable with technology. That's the second thing I would kind of look at. The third thing I would look at is your ability to manage complexities.
00:59:14
Speaker
Okay. You know, the business that we are in is extremely complex to the extent, you know, that, you know, as a marketeer, you are always, you know, taking care of two different kinds of consumers. And that it sounds, you know, very oxymoronic, but, you know, what happens is you are trying to stay true as a brand to your end consumer, the person who's looking for a home,
00:59:42
Speaker
either for renting or for buying or whatever. But your source of revenue, your source of income is your customer who is either a developer or a broker or an individual who is willing to sell his home or a landlord who is willing to put his home on rent.
00:59:59
Speaker
Now, these two have very, very different need states. They are very different and their approach is better. Now, this is a complex enough problem to solve because you are not at liberty, you don't have endless resources.
01:00:15
Speaker
to be at liberty of targeting consumers and customers and doing multiple campaigns and all those kind of things. Now every time you are giving a marketing input, it needs to pass through the filter of talking to both the sets of consumers. That's one part of complexity.
01:00:32
Speaker
Now the complexity is most of our solutions are very cross-function solutions. It's not about marketing working in isolation and developing something and launching something, even a campaign for that matter. We need to constantly work with product, we need to constantly work with technology teams, we need to constantly work with our operations team, our sales teams and so on and so forth.
01:00:55
Speaker
Really present one solution to a consumer however small it may be. Because even if there is a marketing campaign which can remain in pure marketing domain, that campaign has to be integrated on our platform.
01:01:10
Speaker
which is where our product and tech team would come into picture. The campaign has to be taken forward in our apps as well because you would not want a consumer experience to break from an offline communication to an online experience. Your campaign has to
01:01:28
Speaker
work for your partners who are your customers who are paying you. So there is a bit of a sales input that is always involved in everything that you do. Every single activity of marketing goes through multiple stakeholders, goes through multiple functions and has its own challenges within marketing itself.
01:01:53
Speaker
So, the ability to manage all this complexity and yet arrive at a solution within deadline, within targeted timeline is something that is again an ability to probably catch and learn.
01:02:08
Speaker
And that's the third thing that I would look at in that person. And of course, the last but not the least is, of course, the credentials of the person, the kind of work the person has done over a period of time. And the kind of brands, businesses, consumers, solutions.
01:02:25
Speaker
challenges, failures that the person has gone through in career. I think all these things come into picture. So last thing I would look at would be the credentials of the person, what kind of journey person has gone through in terms of businesses, brands, what kind of challenges one has had in career, what kind of solutions one has worked at, the failures very, very importantly, and so on and so forth.
01:02:50
Speaker
And so these would be probably four things that I would look at look for in my replacement amazing cool, so I'm gonna just close the conversation with a few questions to end I want to talk to you. I want you to Talk about a couple of things when I was reading about you You are a huge huge advocate for storytelling and you also spoke about it when you spoke about this heartbeat marketing piece of yours so maybe
01:03:20
Speaker
talk to my audience about, you know, storytelling piece. That is one thing. And there was one more article wherein you had said that, you know, there are three big levers that you look at, you know, in terms of, in terms of what consumers, in terms of how to reach to reach to consumers, right. And then you had read, used words like video for Mac Killer and voice. So these are two things that I wanted to talk about. And then we will try to just close the conversation. So you can take one of the two. I mean, I'm okay if you want to take both, but you can take one of the two also.
01:03:49
Speaker
either storytelling or that 3D model. Sure. So let me take the storytelling one. Yeah, cool. Yes, you know, you're correct. I have been a big advocate of storytelling. You can say that it's because I started out in advertising and I have a DNA of a storyteller therefore.
01:04:13
Speaker
in advertising, all you are thinking of is converting business propositions into stories for consumers. And so probably one learned the trick early there, but then the point remains that that's a fundamental truth, right? And it's not something that is unique or I'm saying something which probably one doesn't know about.
01:04:34
Speaker
Every brand, since time immemorial, has been trying to tell stories to consumers, has been trying to sell stories. And, you know, and, you know, great brands that you see around have always been great storytellers, right? You know, be it a Coke or, you know, you know, say a Tata, if I were to take an Indian example,
01:04:59
Speaker
or if you have to take example of say a Volkswagen or a Volvo or a BMW, any of the automobile brands. So if you look across categories, brands have always been storytellers. BMW never tells you that, listen, my car has this technology and so much of engine rev power, et cetera.
01:05:28
Speaker
That's just hygiene. VRNU tells you a story of a sports lifestyle. And Mercedes doesn't tell you a story of the technology in the car. It tells you a story of the finesse and the luxury. And so every brand over a period of time, Atata, whenever it reaches out to you, it always tells you a story of trust and why you should be trusting Atata.
01:05:58
Speaker
So, brands inherently are storytellers. And marketing, per se, marketing's job is to tell relevant stories. These stories are, of course, very, very different from, you know, otherwise generic understanding of stories that one may have had. Because stories have to be very, very actionable. These stories have to be very, very relevant.
01:06:23
Speaker
And these stories have to be very, very contextual for a consumer. Only then a consumer would empathize with your story.
01:06:30
Speaker
And so storytelling is an art as much as it is a science. The art of storytelling is all about your ability to convert hard numbers or hard technology or hard product idea into a narrative and making consumer believe that this is something that one identifies with as a story and therefore one would wish to own.
01:06:59
Speaker
It needs to work at that level. And come to think of it, think of a consumer, you as a consumer and me as a consumer, when investing any single dollar on any particular product.
01:07:14
Speaker
ultimately somewhere down the line in our subconscious mind have heard the story of that product and it is the story that we are buying into and not so much into product because at in lot many categories let's say smartphone in lot of categories there is absolute parity at a product level right there's nothing that differentiates a smartphone brand A from a smartphone brand B when it comes to features and performances but why do you want to own brand A and not brand B?
01:07:43
Speaker
Just because you believe in the story that Bandai has told you.
01:07:47
Speaker
Yeah. And so storytelling is very important. I think every marketeer must learn this art of storytelling. The science part of storytelling is all about staying true to the consumer inside, is trying to what data has to tell you and not letting your story kind of get out of that certain wavelength in which it has to operate. And data helps you.
01:08:14
Speaker
Data science helps you in keeping that story well within that wavelength where you want your brand or product to be in. So an interesting gamut there, which is why marketers are often left brand and right brand both. And that's how you want to take it forward. So yeah, and that's my story time. So last set of questions, Prasoon. Obviously, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, and you are a business that actually sits back in the middle of it.
Impact of COVID-19 on Real Estate and Digitization
01:08:43
Speaker
construction activities getting installed, people are not buying houses. So what kind of impact do you see, you know, COVID bringing around us, as you know, what would change for businesses, what would change for brands, what kind of things we market, you have to look at again. You've answered quite a few of these already in the campaign that we talked about. But if there is anything more specific that you want to chat about, we can include those.
01:09:08
Speaker
Well, I would talk about how positively it's going to impact us. Now, it's a crisis, all right. But every crisis is an opportunity. And I do see lots of opportunities opening up because of this crisis. The biggest opportunity in my category, in my industry that is going to open up is massive digitization. The United States has been a brick and mortar industry.
01:09:32
Speaker
And developer brands have not been at the forefront of adopting technology. COVID crisis will now fasten the process of digitization of the category of the industry. And we'll see all players of the ecosystem adopting or adapting to digital very, very fast.
01:09:54
Speaker
Just to give you a small example, a developer, today, consumers are not going to go for site visit, for example, for fear of COVID. Now, how do you, therefore, give consumers a chance to have a look at your property? You will have, for example, solutions involving live costs or
01:10:17
Speaker
on a live session happening for consumers using various technology platforms. All of a sudden, we will see a huge developers and other players of the ecosystem starting to use a lot of technology. So the first benefit and the first major impact of COVID is that the industry is going through an immediate digitization and technology will be adopted at large scale. And that's the positive impact.
01:10:45
Speaker
The second positive impact that is going to happen, because of this, is consumers are going to look at newer value propositions. Now, we will look at birth of new ideas in construction and in layouting. So for example, we already have a few developers who are talking about a certain bandwidth of data as a standard offering along with the hub.
01:11:14
Speaker
Okay. Now, this is all keeping in mind that the future home is going to be a connected home. Okay. At any point of time, someone will have to work from home. At any point of time, you know, there could be a need for e-schooling and there'll be demand for bandwidth. Okay. Now, instead of therefore depending on a service provider and an individual to reach out to a service provider and take, you know, services, you see probably these kind of propositions getting into construction itself. And this will become a kind of feature of, you know, a home on offer. Okay.
01:11:43
Speaker
So there'll be lots of new, I mean, there could be a proposition where someone might want to build a, you know, a co-working space inside an IT apartment complex, a grated complex, okay? Instead of building a, say, a clubhouse, okay? Because a lot of people are going to work from home, and, you know, all the time it's not comfortable working from home for a lot of people. You might just want to, you know, pop into the co-working space within your own society complex.
01:12:11
Speaker
hire a place, hire a seat for 5, 4, 5 hours and go and work there and peacefully and come back. So there are a lot of propositions that will come out in the market and that will be very, very exciting for consumers. And last but not the least, the positive change would be that you will see real consumers
01:12:33
Speaker
coming into the market and a lot of speculative investments that used to happen in real estate. Those speculative investments would go out. The process already started the demonetization and I think COVID is just going to complete that process.
01:12:51
Speaker
A lot of speculative investment in real estate which used to fair up real estate prices is going to go out of the market and it will become a real end-user market and that will work very well for the industry. So I see a lot of positivity and a lot of positives coming out of this crisis and we as a brand would obviously work on a lot of these things.
01:13:15
Speaker
Got it. So last three questions, very, very short questions. A, what is that one question that you always wish you were asked in an interview? Like nobody's asked that question, but you want to answer that question. Have you ever won an award? What is the answer, sir? I am.
01:13:34
Speaker
Okay, so that is one. Second is, what are some unconventional ways to get inspired about marketing? One of the guests says that he watches a lot of movies and takes inspiration from those. What are some unconventional ways you can learn marketing? Oh, I love to learn marketing by looking at data.
01:13:52
Speaker
And those endless sheets of Excel are my playground. And I get a lot of my ideas by just looking at how data is trending. Got it. Super. And the last question that I have as part of my research is that if I told you that, Prasoon, you need to throw open a marketing challenge to the listeners of the podcast. And this could be a personal beef that you have with the world, or it could be a magic mix related challenge. What would that be?
01:14:22
Speaker
Well, this is one that requires a bit of thinking. I think one of the challenges that I would want to give to anyone who's going to probably work on anything of magic bricks.
01:14:38
Speaker
work on propositions to make consumers become aware or make consumers invest in emerging real estate opportunities.
01:14:55
Speaker
which are, which is what we call fractional ownership. It's a new concept in real estate where you not own the entire real estate but you only own a part of it as if you, the way you own it in a share market.
01:15:10
Speaker
and fractional ownership as a concept is something that I would want anyone to take up as a challenge and see the consumers you know primarily because the problem statement is that if you are saying that listen I am of you can you have a chance to invest in a upcoming mall or a marketplace or a large building
01:15:27
Speaker
Okay. Without owning a real estate, piece of real estate in that. Okay. You know, how would a consumer be able to understand investing in real estate without owning a piece of real estate? I think that's a good problem to solve. And that's, that's one of the challenge I want. You just heard Prasoon Kumar from MagicBricks.com. I hope you had as much fun listening to the conversation as much as we had recording it. Please write into us and tell us what can we do better at the Marketing Connect podcast.
01:16:00
Speaker
viewers heard the latest episode of the Marketing Clinic podcast, a show for marketeers by marketeers. The show was brought to you by C-Puri and The Poon Show.