The Advertising Club of Bombay hosted a discussion last evening on the topic 'Consumer is the new devil', featuring panelists Agnello Dias (founder, Taproot India), Sanjay Purohit (Executive director-marketing – India , chocolate category – Asia, Cadbury), Vikram Sakhuja (CEO – Group M, South Asia). Sunil Lulla, the newly appointed MD and CEO of the Times Global Broadcasting Company, was the moderator of the discussion.
Dias was the first to speak and he admitted that creatives were coming to terms with the new consumer. "Consumer is a devil with a split personality. A consumer can be many different things and still exist in the same body. Creative agencies are grappling with this phenomenon," he said.
"As a society, we’ve moved from being depth-centric to width-centric. A few years ago, we wanted to know one thing in detail; today we want to know a little bit of many different things. Marketers and agencies nowadays are not sure what goes right when a campaign succeeds. Earlier, it used to be the other way around," Dias said.
The future, according to Dias, would be about skill-agnostic ideation. He said, "In the coming days, creative agencies will have to work with brands to create products that can be revenue models for clients."
Sanjay Purohit of Cadbury’s felt that consumer was not the new devil. "The devil lies in the approach. Mediocrity in advertising and marketing gets tolerated when the times are good. Thankfully the year 2009 holds lessons for marketers, since mediocre work has not been pardoned," he said.
"Fundamentally, advertising attempts to change consumer behaviour. As marketers, if we are not able to articulate what behaviour we want to change and correlate it with results for our business and say ‘See, this is what marketing can do’, then we are not doing our jobs," Purohit said.
Group M’s Vikram Sakhuja said there was no need to address the consumer as a 'devil'. "If the consumer gets a chance to opt for a 'per second billing' plan, he will go for it. If he gets a cheaper flight he will book his ticket. If he gets more TV channels and has a small price to pay for it, he won’t decline the offer. So the consumer is not a devil - he's in fact quite an uncomplicated person," he said.
"The devil is in the lack of differentiation amongst brands. Which is why, investors are now looking at business models, rather than pedigree. And there is a formula...a process, for delivering hits with consumers. Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) and Indian Premier League (IPL) are examples. Marketing is no longer about hits and misses," Sakhuja said.
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