The Pitch CMO Summit Delhi 2023 saw an interesting panel discussion on ‘Marketing in the Era of Technological Disruption’. Marketers from different industries spoke about their experience in the digital era and how they are putting in efforts to get the attention of tech-savvy consumers.

The session was chaired by Avik Chattopadhyay, Co-founder & Partner, Expereal. The panel members were Ashish Tiwari, Chief Marketing Officer, Home Credit India; Charu Malhotra  Bhatia, Vice President - Marketing, Hindware Limited; Gaurav Mehta, Chief Marketing Officer, Noise; Mukesh Ghuraiya, Chief Marketing Officer, Modi Naturals; Sachin Vashishtha, Chief Marketing Officer, Paisabazaar.com

The discussion started with Tiwari giving the audience a glimpse of what it is to be a marketer in the times of fast-changing technology.

“The life of a marketing person in the event of technology is like being on a treadmill which is only increasing the speed. When I started my professional life, the Chief Marketing Officer of a company would have three campaigns and a couple of creatives.”

“But now, an average company with two digital assets, which can be a Facebook page or a website, creates 600 creatives a year. In simplistic terms, your marketing fundamentals are the same. The only thing is that the depth of understanding of the marketing fundamentals has grown multifold. Information is ubiquitous as long as somebody has a device and data connectivity.”

Sharing his take, Mehta said, “Data doesn’t flow as rapidly here as any of my previous organizations, but then the biggest part of working in an omnichannel organization like Noise is that a large part of our place comes from marketplaces. Also, we have our own D2C channels as well as offline mode. Everyone is speaking about first-party data, but 80% sales come from places where first part data isn’t available.”

When asked why there is only a 2% conversion rate in the online BFSI category, Vashishtha, said, “We get roughly 20% of the industry but we can only convert two percent and that is a gap of around 90%. What my fellow panelists are saying is right, but for me, the role of the marketer hasn’t changed. From text ads 20 years ago, to now conversational AI, we have come a long way, but the role of a marketer is to be present at the right time and at the right place with the right message, how do you do it keeps on changing whether it is only a channel.”

He went on to say that because of earlier practice of distribution channels, there is a huge gap of 90% and the conversion rate is only 2% and they are trying to solve this.

Representing a traditional business, Malhotra of Hindware said, “The way this whole tech-led marketing environment is changing has also changed the consumer mapping journey. Today, there are a lot of tech-led data-led interventions that are required at the right places. I represent a company, in a manufacturing-led industry. The way you communicate with consumers has undergone a transformation. “

Ghuraiya said that the digital disruption has helped them to be efficient in their approach. “Interestingly, the technological disruption for our category would be two fold. One part is how we as a marketer use it; my team uses technology internally to maybe optimize our work. I think we are busier now than we were ever in our professional life and any technology, any tool that saves us time and makes us more efficient is an interesting technology disruption for us.”